"So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated."
WTH???!!
Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
211–219 of 219 posts
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#212If Gates had maintained a dictatorial death grip on his company like Steve Jobs has, MS probably could have made some decent products. It's one thing to yell at the people who made this system via email. It's quite another to never allow them to ship it in the first place .
Microsoft has made a bunch of very good products: - Windows 3.0 and 3.1 clearly hit exactly the sweet spot between DOS and OS/2 - Word and Excel were legitimately better than the competition (and still are, although there is not much competition left). - Internet Explorer 4 was so much better than Netscape 3 and 4 that it wasn't even funny - Windows 2000 and XP were very good operating systems
Their Macintosh products tend to be really great. I really loved IE5 for Mac and was sorry when they discontinued it. MS Word on the Macintosh always seemed well designed too. I assumed this was because their Macintosh division was long established and very good at what they did, or designing for a platform they did not control brought Microsoft's true design talents.
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#213If Gates had maintained a dictatorial death grip on his company like Steve Jobs has, MS probably could have made some decent products. It's one thing to yell at the people who made this system via email. It's quite another to never allow them to ship it in the first place .
Correction... Microsoft /has made/ some excellent products. Here are some more for the list: Xbox SharePoint Sql Server DirectX Visual Studio Expression Studio Team Foundation Team Viewer Windows Server
Point of clarification -
They bought the source code for SQL Server from Sybase; the foundations of the product weren't created at Microsoft. The wire protocol is still heavily compliant with sybase.
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always bring up Flight Simulator whenever there's some MS bashing going on. I miss the Microsoft of my youth,
Sublogic made Flight Simulator. Microsoft later bought Sublogic.
I didn't know that. Still kudos to them for keeping the product going, and keeping it good.
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's right, and the difference between those kinds of threats is personal confrontation. Some folks will rip apart shoddy work because they don't care if the creators get personally upset about it. They're not looking for a confrontation, but if there is one, they feel justified. Other people are bothered that the creators are not personally upset about how shoddy the work is and make quite sure that they are. It's…
Other people are bothered that the creators are not personally upset about how shoddy the work is and make quite sure that they are. There's also a subtle difference between the 1st part of this sentence alone and the entire sentence.
Well, I'm saying that's what motivates some directors to rip into work; I admit it's not a common attitude. But I have seen the "How can you think this is acceptable?" attitude and it is hard to take for a lot of people.
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#216If Gates had maintained a dictatorial death grip on his company like Steve Jobs has, MS probably could have made some decent products. It's one thing to yell at the people who made this system via email. It's quite another to never allow them to ship it in the first place .
Utterly unfair comparison. The Apple and Microsoft business models are so unlike each other it's almost inaccurate to say they're in the same business. Apple can get product quality to the point they do because they laser focus on a few profitable segments. Microsoft's business model --- not "what Steve Ballmer thinks they should be doing this month" but their underlying business model --- involves them serving 80+%…
How do any differences in the business model cause or justify bad design/integration in either their web experience or software products? Duplicating popular software in higher volume isn't a burden on design, is it? I fail to see why popularity should be an excuse for mediocrity.
The distribution methods and relationships with customers differ a great deal, but both companies develop software, some of it very similar in purpose, and both also sell hardware. The problems outlined in the email were not related to problems integrating with others' hardware, so lack of ability to integrate with that isn't an excuse (this time).
I think it is the ice cream comparison that's the unfair one. Software sold in volume is a high margin business. With 80% market share there is neither the justification nor the excuse for the sort of blunders outlined in the email. Unlike ice cream, there are no physical ingredients to cut corners with. It's doubtful that things that compromised quality saved them any money at all. What resource did they lack?
It's not as if they were a hardware business operating on razor-thin margins to get market share and cutting corners to break even. They've got revenue, they've got cash, they've got many talented engineers. They spent about 9 times as much as Apple on R&D in 2007, about 7 times as much in 2009. Considering how often Apple has major OS updates, and introducing new/updated hardware designs, it seems like MS isn't producing as much fruit for the R&D money. Did I miss something?
R&D From the 10K filings with SEC
Microsoft USD 9 billion in 2009 https://investor.shareholder.com/msft/EdgarDetail.asp? CIK=789019&FID=1193125-09-158735&SID=09-00
Apple USD 1.3 billion in 2009 http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File? item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MTg1OTB8Q2hpbGRJRD0tMXxUeXBlPTM=&t=1
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#217Guys, has uncle Bill mellowed with age! In the past meeting with him about MS products meant keeping a f* score:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html
Now, he's just "quite disappointed".
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can use ubuntu without opening the terminal, and have been able to for a while, the problem with linux is not the terminal it is whether or not the hardware is supported and software people need is supported.
I recommend that you sit behind a non-technical relative or friend, and watch them use Ubuntu without offering them any help . There are quite a number of things that they'd like to do that isn't clearly expressed - or even easily findable! - though Ubuntu's GUI. They will struggle with it for a bit. Plus: even if we set that aside, there will be certain bits of hardware you'll want to use that would require opening…
I think you could say the same about any foreign operating system and any user, regardless of how technical. The more technical have better guesses at where to find things (e.g., Oh, it's not under 'System', maybe it's under 'Administration') based on familiarity with OS patterns, but if you sat me down in front of a Gentoo box running XFCE, I'd look just as much the fool as the next guy for the first 20 minutes or so (except I'd drop down to shell -- though the same applies for BSD even there.)
The best synopsis I heard (I can't remember who said it, nobody famous) was that "The hardest part about learning Linux is UNlearning whatever else you know first."
I think that correctly asserts that yeah, you won't find things in the "Control Panel", and you won't be able to "Win+R" for a run dialog, etc. Otherwise, I personally have had nothing but positive feedback from my less technical friends that I've turned on to Ubuntu, except for the usual complaints, or when they have to give up foo application because it doesn't exist (Photoshop, World of Warcraft, whatever.)
Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Other people are bothered that the creators are not personally upset about how shoddy the work is and make quite sure that they are. There's also a subtle difference between the 1st part of this sentence alone and the entire sentence.
Well, I'm saying that's what motivates some directors to rip into work; I admit it's not a common attitude. But I have seen the "How can you think this is acceptable?" attitude and it is hard to take for a lot of people.
Methinks you missed my point. I am not upset, however.