Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant | Hacker News Reader

Full text: An epic Bill Gates e-mail rant

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116 pointsnickb89 comments

Why is this surprising? Bill Gates doesn't need to fanboi Microsoft internally; it's his company. He needs to be as critical as possible so the outside world gets a good product. It's his company that looks bad when things like this happen, so of course he is going to "rant" about it. It's his job.

It's surprising because you might think Bill Gates would have some pull at his own company. Most of these issues he raises have been problems for years, and have gotten even worse in some cases!

That's a good point; he shouldn't have to point things like this out. It should be obvious that you shouldn't clutter add/remove programs with "tests" and so on. (etc.)

Many of these problems are still prevalent in Microsoft. Confusing processes and the like.

So, it's not Gates. Gates is a good guy and he sounds like he gets it. Is it the corporate structure then?

> Is it the corporate structure then?

Yeah, probably. However, it's hard to keep a big company like Microsoft under one person's control. Look at Apple's success; they have a tiny product line (compared to Microsoft), and so Jobs can make sure everything is good.

Really? I've got no interest in counting them all up, but I thought Apple would have more products than Microsoft.

Well, think about...

Windows Vista. Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business, Enterprise, Lite.

Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Office Standard, Office Small Business, Office Ultimate, Office Enterprise, Office Professional Plus.

Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft Intellimouse, Microsoft intellimouse Explorer, Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer Bluetooth, Microsoft Intellimouse Presenter.

Windows Media Player, Windows Media Player Ultimate Pack...

Compared to:

Mac OS X

iWork

Mighty Mouse

iTunes

I think the lesson here is obvious.

yes - but many of those MS products are just configurations of the one thing, not a separate product.

This is not necessarily a good thing for end users when there's a handful of different versions of Vista. Assume the average consumer in the US...that's Vista Home Basic and Home Premium and possibly Ultimate to choose from. At first glance do you know what the differences are? Or whether or not you need an upgrade or full version? (Let's not even get into the other versions of Vista, System Builder/OEM, EU versions, Windows Server et cetera.)

Compare with OS X (ignoring OS X Server). There are only two versions, period: OS X and OS X Family Pack. How obvious is it what the difference is between the two? Very. You just count the number of computers in your household you want to install OS X on, and buy accordingly. No upgrade/full version worries, no "what does this have over the other one?" worries, no buying something you don't need...

Sure, OS X doesn't come in so many "flexible" configurations as Vista does, but the thing about it is that you could just do that on your own if it meant so much, and otherwise you get a default config that works for most people.

Its a terrible thing for consumers.

Yesterday I spent some time online looking for a new laptop. I would like 14'', thin-and-light, and long battery life. I needed no more than five minutes to know all the offer from Apple.

Other companies like Sony or Asus are extremely annoying with dozens of "lines" of very similar products with confusing names. I didn't look at HP, but I remember it was weird, because they kept the Compaq brand so it was even worse.

Lenovo's T series is probably the best one in that class. Linux is well supported. Not sure that it is a better buy than a Macbook though.

Fujitsu has some good, relatively inexpensive ultralights. I use whatever their 13.3 screen model is. Anything bigger is tough to use in an airplane/cram in a bag.

I didn't mean to provoke an off-topic, but thank you anyway :-)

Yeah, all those, plus you missed a couple whole divisions:

Entertainment: XBox, Zune

Servers stuff: Windows Server, Visual Studio, etc

Online stuff: Live search (and ads, etc), hotmail, etc

Have a look at the organization and you'll see Microsoft is WAY bigger and more complex than Apple.

Visual studio part of "server stuff"? All those versions of visual studio are replaced by Xcode for the basic functionality, then you mix and match whatever else you might need that may or may not come with Xcode/OSX e.g. svn for scm. There's OS X Server as well...

Also, iPod and Zune (to be fair, this is where the tables are turned with iPod nano, iPod touch, iPod classic, etc.), iPhone OS and Windows Mobile..

Visual studio part of "server stuff"?

Yep, take a look at any Microsoft org chart (http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/sample/DOMIS/orgchart/s...)

Ah, under the server and tools division. Interesting, thanks.

Apple products you're forgetting include: iMac, MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, all the iPods (four types, I'm not gonna list 'em all), the iPhone, various keyboards, Apple TV, Time Capsule, Quicktime, iLife, Aperture, iMovie, Final Cut, Mac OS X Server (if we're going to count every permutation of the OS separately), Logic Express, GarageBand, Shake, WebObjects, and probably a bunch more.

It's true that Microsoft has more products in each category, but Apple (as a hardware/software/consumer electronics) company covers more categories.

Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Studio, Motion, LiveType, Color, ...

It comes down to the priorities.

Microsoft enjoys near monopoly hold on the end-user market (give or take) and they didn't arrive at this position by providing great end-user experience. So there's basically no need for them to improve it -> low priority.

Don't fix what's ain't broken (what's sort of working) approach.

When Microsoft started out it operated under a pretty flat organizational structure, similar to how Google is run. They've gotten fat in the middle (management) over the years and it's stifled any chance they've had of getting anything done.

See this blog post from a former MS employee about the year it took to design the shutdown menu in Vista: http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c...

Interesting read.

What's scary about Microsoft is that a company so big can develop software at all. They're like a mountain that can walk.

-Paul Graham

One of my favorite PG quotes.

Now we know. The singular intensity of Billg has meant that, even now, everyone has a bit of Bill's soul in them. A cult of personality is a modest foundation for a culture of trust, which ordinarily never springs in bigco.

Not surprising at all. You reap what you sow.

This is a company built upon bullying, intimidation, skirting the law, and violating ethical practices in order to shove its monopoly down anyone and everyone's throat. Anything except technical excellence.

So the rest of us suffer until the market finds its way around the lawyers and corrects itself (as it usually does).

This memo is simply a representation of all the B.S. that must have been going on for years between sowing the seeds of arrogance and reaping the harvest of crap.

This reminds me of the bug report Linus Torvalds submitted when he couldn't figure out how to get youtube to work on linux.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439858

It makes me nervous that I didn't see it as a rant as all. Am I that callous?

To me, it looks like something constructive that every CEO should do -- spend time dealing with their product like their customers do, and make sure the troops know when it isn't up to standards.

My favorite lines:

"Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.

What an absolute mess."

I also liked that one. But it also reminded me that I often use synaptic on Debian when I am looking for applications on my system which is rather similar to the "add/remove software" on Windows. The only place where I can do a sane search (including searching summaries what the applications actually do) and get an additional good categorization of the software. Funny how the package manager on both sytems seems to have better information about your applications than for example the typical startup menu (which is usually a mess after a few months - also on both systems).

"they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated."

And rightly so. Anyone who tries to use the download page to download something will give up and never try it again, so after a while everyone will ignore it!

Your logic is stunning raganwald... stunning..

I'm rolling on the floor...

How do you type while doing that?

Voice recognition?

Full-body keyboard.

Looks like Bill Gates knows how to communicate his thoughts easily for the reader.

Neither I nor the recipient of the email would have read that entire thing if it was in a large paragraph block.

I agree, it was a nice user story.

But, I'm damn sure that all the recipients would have carefully read every word of that email, even if it had been written in one large leetspeek paragraph.

And that's how a guy with "no taste" critiques. Imagine Steve Jobs' emails!

I'm not sure Steve Jobs uses email. I think he uses ninjas.

Steve Jobs said Microsoft has no taste, not Bill Gates. I think that if you're a good software developer (and BillG certainly qualifies), you need to at least have some degree of taste.

It's pretty clear that BillG has business, management, and technical acumen, but I'm not so sure that he has taste in the aesthetic sense. If he does have good aesthetic taste, he hasn't done a very good job of implementing it.

Actually I consider some of the new Microsoft designs to be pretty nice:

XBox 360, Silverlight, Live Maps, even Vista, are at least comparably pretty to the competition, and some would vie, even prettier.

With respect, I do hope you realize that "taste" and "design" are about an awful lot more than "pretty."

I would say that MSFT products being "pretty" demonstrates how little they get it. They think that making something "designed" means smearing pretty on it after you're done, as if you can design a web application by building something randomly then hiring a graphic designer to make the page slook nice just before you go live.

Okay. But throwing out Vista and Silverlight, I contend that the XBox 360, Live Maps are both highly usable, well designed products that people want. This may be true of Silverlight too, if they ever wake up and realize that good webapp, flash and UI designers/developers tend away from Windows.

I found the Xbox360 UI to be atrocious, actually. Why does the green X button turn the system on and off? Why are there 6 different versions of the Marketplace, none of them consistent? Why are there ads everywhere?

I enjoy the games themselves but the design seems extremely ad-hoc.

MSFT's failure is that some parts of it seem to get that, and others seem entirely oblivious to it.

Some of their products really are excellent -- usually ones that are largely independent shops that haven't been entirely squished into the conglomerate, like the Expression suite and a good many of the MS games.

It seems to me that the ones that have the most issues with inconsistency and usability botches are the ones that get the most micromanagement, like Office and the OS.

"Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer -- that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

- Steve Jobs

The problem is that microsoft doesn't need critiques as much as someone to fire the idiots in charge of the places the problems arise. The problem with microsoft is that no one fires the idiots who think it's OK to let customers see this kind of crap.

Bill Gates could be as good as critiquing things as Steve Jobs, but unless he fires the idiots who thought the dumb implementations were acceptable, all that valid criticism ain't worth two shits.

Well, I think Bill Gates is just using common sense here. These are product management issues and he's rightly pointing them out. Any great programmer (like him) is expected to do that. But, IMHO, when Steve Jobs talks about taste his mind operates on a whole different level.

The difference between Apple and Microsoft is that this rant would come from Steve Jobs long before the products were actually shipped.

Sometimes I can't help but wonder if Gates saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship to preserve his legacy.

If he did, it's surprising he didn't go years before this.

errr... he did - he's been stepping out since 2001.

Exactly, you can't just jet at the end of a day if you want your 20% of the company to be worth something when you're gone.

I don't think he gives a damn about his 20% of the company as far as cash is concerned. It's more of a legacy thing. He created Microsoft - it's his legacy, it's what he'll be remembered by, and he really cares for it.... it's a part of him.

too many cooks in the kitchen. MS needs a strong product management voice ala Jobs/Schiller to cut through the crap and insist on a coherent, consistent, and comprehensible product vision and user experience.

It is kind of suprising how much disconnected he is with the flagship product of his company.

He should have been able to be a lot more specific and detalied about what was going on, and not complain in generic terms "downloaded more stuff, this popup here, that thing there".

It seems that back then he was not involved at all with the development of windows. It feels like comming from somebody that just started using it, and not somebody that build it (or gave guidance on building it). And this was in 2003, so Windows XP had been out for about two years.

I'm not so sure the level of detail is an indication that he's disconnected with his own company's products. The vibe I got was that he was trying to describe to the people who build this stuff what it's actually like to be an end user. I think the whole point is that they're the ones who are disconnected and completely out of touch. I seriously doubt that Bill Gates _needs_ to download and buy Movie Maker from microsoft.com like a customer would.

Even if he is the one who is totally disconnected I thought all of his points were excellent and a perfectly accurate illustration of how Windows has gone wrong. What I'm left wondering is what's been going on there the past several years. If these critiques by Gates are something new it's a real shame for Microsoft that he didn't start sooner. If his statement that it's his job to do this every day is accurate then I'd say they have even bigger problems.

You can't deny that this is someone who gets software and knows how things are supposed to be. Now whether Microsoft gets software or not is debatable, but BillG most certainly does. Anyone that's spoken to him in real-life (even some of the most fanboyish Apple users) has confirmed this fact time and time again - it's a real shame for the software industry he "decided" to pull back from his company in 2001.

Duh, Bill:

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=download+moviemaker

I thought I'd try to install it to see if they streamlined it, but it turns out it was part of SP2. I guess I never needed to know about it...

"""Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?"""

Haha

% uname -a

Darwin Galactica.local 9.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.3.0: Fri May 23 00:49:16 PDT 2008; root:xnu-1228.5.18~1/RELEASE_I386 i386

% uptime

19:08 up 23 days, 6 mins, 2 users, load averages: 0.87 1.02 1.07

I had the same thought when I read this. I used to turn off my computer every night, until I switched from Windows (98) to Linux. In grad school, my roommate and I had uptime contests with our Linux boxes, which he won with something like 6 months of uptime. The most common causes of lost uptime were electrical power outages and moving apartments.

Now, like you, I mainly run OS X, but it's on a laptop, which wreaks havoc with my uptime. Ah, well. I guess you can't have it all.

I'm always amazed by this. Why would you keep your computer running if you're not using it? just for comparing lengths?

If you're running a server on it, or just want it ready to use whenever you need? There's always sleep/power saving modes anyway.

I generate a lot of torrent traffic on my machine. Im seeding something like 50-60 torrents.

I let my computers sleep. But that still counts as uptime ;)

Laptop:

10:56 up 83 days, 1:50, 7 users, load averages: 1.05 1.32 1.12

I don't reboot - but I do close the lid to let it sleep. My main reason for not rebooting is I generally have 100 things open at any time and that 'state' is important.

As memory and bulk storage become faster and faster and gain more and more capacity I think that the idea of losing application state just because your PC shut off will become a horror story to tell our children. Eventually it will become one large memory space backed by a variety of local and network stores.

I do the same thing, but even with sleep sometimes my machine gets hosed (the technical term) and requires a reboot. That never happened with my old Linux box.

I'd turn it around: Why would you turn your computer off if you don't have to? The power consumption is roughly $0/year, and by keeping it on you don't have to resurrect your editors, terminal windows, and browsers every morning.

-sh-3.00$ uptime 08:36:21 up 254 days, 10:28, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

Its good that these sort of issues are exposed, even if by Bill. The scary thing is that MS QA does not pick this stuff up.

As more of this stuff gets exposed this will hopefully make MS work harder. And as Apple is becoming a REAL contender, hopefully MS will pull their head out of their ass.

ain't gonna happen GMB.. ain't gonna happen.

I do agree with your observation though..... I'm just not as optimistic in regard to the outcome.

MS's QA is oriented towards making sure that individual pieces function, not that the right thing happens. Their aim is 100% automated unit testing... but nobody ever tests that doing something is intuitive.

The UX folks do, but that doesn't mean they get their way.

MS having unusable products is like Exxon not selling fuel. Very quickly users will abandon windows in favor of Apple if it gets too bad.

Well... BG isn't the only one who get's frustrated with windows.

I gave up on that crap environment a long time ago and started using Mac's...... the only way to go. Definitely worth the extra money.

Equivalent macs don't really cost extra money.

Because of the extra value of the system just working?

no, they just plain don't. they all come with isights and firewire and DVD burners and such. comparisons i've seen with equivalent PCs are roughly equal.

if you want lots of RAM or a larger harddrive, you probably have to buy that separately to not get overcharged, though.

OK -- I spec'd a Dell XPS M150 just now to be equivalent to the $2500 Macbook Pro. I got a better than equivalent config for $1678 -- it has 4GB of RAM, would be $1578 with 2GB of RAM.

It comes with a built-in 2MP webcam and bluetooth and N-wireless. It has HDMI rather than DVI out. A bluray burner is an option, as is a 1920x1080 screen. The only thing it is missing is firewire and I don't think anyone can argue that Firefire is worth $900, except people that need Firewire. The backlit keyboard is nice and generally indicative of the Apple touch, I guess, but that adds $900.

At one point, it was definitely true that you couldn't get a laptop with all the extras in a Mac. But this Dell Computer really seems equivalent. Perhaps not in build quality.

I guess it varies by when and what you compare. e.g.

http://www.macworld.com/article/49403/2006/02/pricecompariso...

has the macbook pro doing well.

or this

http://kb.wisc.edu/showroom/page.php?id=3045

has 150 more for macbook (not pro). they seem to have firewire and isight missing on the pc, and a modem missing on the mac.

-------

i just did a comparison of imac vs dell all-in-one.

imac = 1300 (add 1gig of ram)

the dell is 1300, but i need to change stuff like including a video card, which it doesn't look like i can do (dell's customization page sucks). anyway, apple seems to win.

the macbook pro isn't really for price-sensitive people, anyway. it's the imac, macbook, or maybe mini that i'd expect to price compare OK or well.

The biggest problem with Apple's lineup is for people who already have a monitor they like. Your options are the mini, or a ridiculously expensive Mac Pro. There's no middle ground.

Also, I don't think the mini is really price competitive even on the low end. I can get the same hardware specs for considerably cheaper elsewhere, though, of course, not with the awesome form factor/design.

I really like the mini in terms of hardware, but it's not a bargain.

MacBook or MacBook Pro in clamshell (closed-lid) mode.

Why is Mac's answer always to buy more? I want my monitor, so I should buy a laptop at a premium and -then- I can use my monitor? Never you mind that, of course, the Macbook & Macbook Pro have no docking station, so that's a minimum of manual connections every time I disconnect/reconnect. If I never use the laptop as a laptop, I've way overspent.

I had a similar conversation at WWDC about the 'no docking station' issue. Apple's response: buy everyone a laptop AND a desktop, and use roaming profiles.

Yeah.

iMac is the middle ground: http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore....

This is an old example but look at that chart:

Edit: is there anyway to show a table?

Apple MacBook Pro Dell Inspiron 9400 15.4-inch display 17-inch UltraSharp Wide Screen Radeon X1600(128MB) NVIDA GeForce Go 7800 (256MB) 4x SuperDrive(DVD±RW) 8x(DVD+/-RW) 10/100/1000BASE-T 10/100BASE-T Modem No Yes Built-in iSight None 2 USB ports 6 USB ports Remote Yes No S-Video Out No Yes Battery 60 WHr 80 WHr Size 5.6 pounds 8 pounds price $2,049 $2,031

Dell's system had a larger screen, better video card, a Modem, faster DVD drive, 4 USB ports, S-Video and a better Battery but Apple's system had 1000BASE-T network, iSight, and it's lighter.

How on earth are these in the same catagory?

PS: Today I can pick up a good 17" laptop from dell with T8300 (2.4GHz), 4GB of ram, 320GB HDD, Geforece 8600M for $1,024.00 (Google 1720 Discount and the second result is a discount code N6DT1G$64M79BW for 350$ off).

The cheapest 17" Laptop from Apple starts at $2,499.00 (googled to find a $300 off MSR discount) and but that it only has 2gb of ram and a 250GB HDD. Granted it's CPU is .1GHz faster which would would add $125 to the dell or you could swap that in and downgrade the ram and HDD size. But RAM and HDD is worth more than a slightly faster CPU.

Here we go again. Idiots that are downmodding because they don't agree, while the parent has taken time to present useful information.

I use a Mac, I love my Mac, but I get that some people dig Windows. Woot! It's just a damn operating system, be glad you didn't lose an arm today.

I used the XPS M1530 as a model because it seemed to match more closely. For $200 less the DELL had 100gb more hard drive space but no bundled software.

I also think it's weird that they don't just offer Vista Ultimate, they make you pay extra. Who wants to buy a limited version of the OS? I'm sure the shop interface is so confusing that most people end up with the default option of the Home version just because it's so difficult to read their cramped store (I tried in both Safari and Firefox and it seemed like tiny cramped font and a poor explanation of the differences, maybe it looks better in IE?).

So yeah, you do pay a small premium for macs. It's maybe $200-$300 before tax, which isn't much, but it's real and its there.

I generally want to buy the cheapest version of the OS possible because the laptop will ultimately run Linux.

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