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Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

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Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#51

Post by regularfry »

wisty wrote: post #25
fraserharris wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usability is hard. This superficially simple example crosses many products / teams (being Microsoft, we are talking about 100s of people involved). A small startup has the same challenges because your engineers build features, not user experiences. It takes a great product manager to advocate effectively for the user.

I know usability is hard, but this is just an install. It's not like he's actually up to making a movie, yet. The user "stories" (are these even stories?) should be: 1 - Bill types "movie maker" or "moviemaker" into a search box (any search box) in the Microsoft website. 2 - A button / link that says "Download Microsoft Movie Maker!" appears on the first page (preferably the first link). 3 - Bill clicks the link. 4 -…

That's four steps too many, and you've missed the step where the user chooses that Movie Maker is the specific app they want. It should be:

1 - Bill searches for "video editing" or similar

2 - Bill runs an app he selects from the result list

Everything else is pandering to technical details. Advanced options can be presented as a right-click menu on the result list.

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#52

Post by sankara »

emilsedgh wrote: post #46
Maro wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on now. > products that bring intense pain to it users I'm a Mac user and I love Office (over OO and iWork). > as frustrated as anyone else about the problem It's not "a" problem. It's a large organization with tons of products, and some are more sucky then the rest. > is completely powerless to stop it He wasn't the CEO anymore when he wrote this. Also, even if he were the CEO, he can't go in and fix every anno…

"If it weren't for Bill Gates, we might not be having this conversation..." I hate it when people give Bill Gates and Microsoft credit for whole computer and IT advancements. We are having this conversation because many many people worked hard on these technologies. Microsoft and Bill Gates are only one of them. Of course, DOS and Windows accerelated wider adoption of personal computers, but even if they havent, some…

>>but even if they havent, someone other company would've done so.

This is a hypothetical statement and there are n different ways our world could have diverged. Better not to speculate on how things could have moved forward.

In any case, it didn't look it was a natural progression of technology before Windows became popular as the preferred OS for a personal computer.

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#53

Post by JamesBlair »

sorbus wrote: post #28
tzs wrote: post #7

Is there a better link for that document? Slated.org blocks large swathes of the internet from accessing them. If they think your ISP uses something called "phorm" you get blocked and told to find a better ISP. Unfortunately, their block is not well done. For instance, Sprint the ISP apparently used "phorm" and was blocked. However, the block also caught anyone whose packets ended up getting routed over Sprint the ma…

Does the link to scribd not work (such links are inserted in brackets whenever HN detects a story going to a pdf)? It doesn't give you the pdf, so you have to read it in the browser, but it seems perfectly functional otherwise.

Not for me: http://i.imgur.com/Cw8Rx.jpg

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#54

Post by steventruong »

tripzilch wrote: post #45
nhebb wrote: post #9

Dear Bing, I went to microsoft.com and entered "moviemaker" (one word, just like Gates) in the search box. The top site search result - powered by Bing - is an XP downloads page, which of course didn't have a Movie Maker download. I tried a Google site search with "site:microsoft.com moviemaker", and and the top result was the (correct) Movie Maker 2011 page. I also searched google.com for "moviemaker", and again the…

You realize this email discussion dates from 2003, right?

And you do realize his argument is base on how bing works in 2011, right?

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#56

Post by nhebb »

steventruong wrote: post #54
tripzilch wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize this email discussion dates from 2003, right?

And you do realize his argument is base on how bing works in 2011, right?

That was the point I was making. Bill Gates' initial problem was finding the download on Microsoft's site. Eight years later, the same problem persists.

I'm not knocking Microsoft for the sake of knocking Microsoft. I really do wish they would make their site more usable. I used to call their link system NASCAR navigation - looking for information, you keep clicking promising links only to end up back at the page you started on. Now when I search MSDN, I just use the Google custom search [1].

[1] http://www.google.com/cse/home?cx=001706605492879182808%3Ayr...

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#57

Post by geon »

My question is: Didn't anyone at some point say "Hey, this UX sucks. I'd be embarrased to ship this."?

I know from experience how certain people can be completely unconcerned with quality, only qorking for a salary without any pride of their craft. But a whole company like that? It blows my mind.

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#58

Post by w1ntermute »

aristidb wrote: post #47
Michiel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried finding software on OS X, and I could find many pieces of software by searching for them in the App Store application. Also, the app store seems to combine download and install with marketing, as it was heavily promoting OS X Lion at the time of my visit. I also learned that OS X Lion solves the problem where after a reboot your program state is gone, something that Bill Gates was also complaining about. OS X…

The price of a Lion upgrade is pretty much immaterial, as the relevant price of OS X is really bundled into the price of the hardware. You cannot buy a Lion DVD and install it on a non-Mac PC.

Of course, that doesn't mean that running Lion on a PC is out of the question: http://lifehacker.com/5823837/how-do-i-upgrade-my-hackintosh...

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#59

Post by beernutz »

throwmeahway wrote: post #44

My dear Bill, how have you been this century? Please consider making a true light and modular Windows OS. I cannot do simple things like Alt-Tab on Windows 7. I beg you, create a streamlined Windows XP-like OS that allows full functionality based on a modular approach. I'd also like to know what all the programs and services are running (am I running adware/malware/virus or is this vital etc). And not Windows 7 start…

What the hell are you talking about?

Alt-tab works just like it always has. the task manager works better than it ever has.

Ohhhhh..... I see. Obvious troll is just being obvious.

Re: Flame from Bill Gates Re: Windows Usability

#60

Post by mtkd »

This is a now legendary email thread.

You can build some great software and leverage the revenue to acquire and expand further - but if you lose sight of the big picture then stagnation, disfunction and decay is not far away.

When I first saw Google+, my first reaction was that Google has risen to this challenge that Microsoft faltered on - and may have just bought themselves another decade of stellar growth.

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