2003 Bill Gates email reveals frustrations with Windows XP
By Donald Melanson 
posted June 25th 2008 2:38PM
posted June 25th 2008 2:38PM
While Bill Gates' imminent retirement from Microsoft is understandably a cause for some quiet moments of reflection for some, it's also given folks an excuse to dig up some tidbits from Gates' tenure that have somehow gone unnoticed or unheralded in the past few years, one of the juiciest of which comes in the form of a 2003 email that Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post-Intelligence has thankfully given fresh light. In it, Gates rips into "how Windows Usability has been going backwards" as he details his long, arduous attempts to download Moviemaker and buy the then new Digital Plus pack. While there's far to many gems to include here, a few of Gates' stand-out observations include how "crazy" it is that it took six minutes to install "a bunch of controls" before he was able to install Moviemaker, and his disappointment that he had to reboot his machine even though he reboots it every night. Eventually, after (apparently) getting Moviemaker installed, Gates decided to go digging in the add/remove program options to ensure that it was installed, only to find it missing, which prompted him to declare that, "someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable," adding that, "this program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up." Needless to say, we'd recommend hitting the read link below to check out the full must-read email.
This was pretty funny.
Yes it was.
It's funny and sad. MS got so big he has to complain by email to his people. If I was him, I would be storming down the hall/road/state to wherever that team is and reaming them a new one.
They didn't expect you to download from the download center?
Microsoft has always been full of functionality, it's usability they can't seem to find.
Yeah, it is kinda sad too.
Yeah, it is kinda sad too.
What's really funny is that he actually had to buy the Digital Plus pack. Imagine Bill Gates fumbling around for his wallet and having to enter the security key from the back of his credit card.
Pretty funny. Of course, after Gates kicked MS's arse with that e-mail - amongst other things - they did produce SP2 in August 2004 which pretty much sorted a lot of the problems making XP the dominant OS that it is today.
Funnyiest part to me :
"So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download?"
Billy G - its Amir - what else did you expect?
Well, I'm happy to hear that I'm not the only one who doesn't like Windoze.
After reading the email I have more respect for Bill and less respect for Microsoft. It shows his own frustration at the usability of the product. So its not like Bill has blinders on, he gets it. After 5 years Microsoft hasn't made big strides in fixing the usability. That is just a bad sign for Microsoft as a whole.
It's funny how Bill Gates was frustrated by XP, but sang the Vista tune in front of cameras.
I'm looking forward to his comments after he's not making money on Microsoft (although he'll probably own stocks, so that won't be for quite a while).
primetime, obviously he didn't *have* to buy it, he was just doing it to check up on what the people working under him were doing with their projects and seeing if it was up to spec. If you read the e-mail most of his frustrations are obviously from the perspective of your average computer user. I'm pretty sure Bill Gates himself knows whether to open or save a file-he was just pointing out the inanity of the process.
And damn, it's kinda good to see that even Bill Gates hates the stupid ass list of patches that show up in add/remove programs...I *HATE* how the stupid patches clutter up the list of programs with like 20 f'ing entries that all say see Q390299493 or something similarly obnoxious.
@mark anderson
Yeah, since XP service pack 2 fIxed the usability problems of Windows.. ARE YOU KIDDING??
The domination of Windows is a result of their having been ZERO effective competitors for a consumer OS. For the past 10+ years, Linux was way too fragmented and Mac OS was only available on Apple hardware. I don't think I even need to bring up OS/2, BeOS, etc.
Also, this domination continues to happen only out of the momentum provided by the tendency of most humans to resist change, the use of legacy software, hardware compatibility/drivers, etc.
Linux (Ubuntu, etc) is in a much better position than before, but many legacy software applications and hardware drivers are not available for the platform. I think Ubuntu needs to lean heavily on (consumer) hardware manufacturers and (consumer) software developers to embrace the platform and create more competition for windows, else they will continue to be slaves of Redmond..
Apple's Mac OSX is also in a much better position and is experiencing incredibly rapid market growth, but is still limited by exclusive availability on Apple hardware.
So was he frustrated at Windows or Moviemaker?
Microsoft...
Dear Clak
Before you leave Engadget for good, we would all like to thank you for your dog-whistling inflammatory trolling. There's nothing like a clunky pre-fab response like that tl;dr you copy-pasted above that makes me wonder what your legacy will be.
Do you want to be remembered as a low-ranked troll? Or a stealth marketer? Or a works-for-free stealth marketer?
I think you really want to be known as a reasonable person who just has to resond to the overwhelming flood of Microsoft Propaganda with sparing tidbits of truth and reason.
I've always appreciated your contributions
Sincerely
Decoy.
Is it my Appleness that makes me look smug or my condescending tone? Or is it having little quotes at the ends of my posts?
clak, you are indeed special. Especially if you think anyone at Microsoft read your e-mail. I especially love your lame argument for applications running with admin privileges for compatibility. It's poor programming practice to require your app to run as admin under normal circumstances.
Flame away =P
i have much dislike for clak but i cannot deny that he has several good points and makes a good argument, that makes me wonder how much time did you spend researching and writing this mini-novel about the faults of windows? I am and have always been a windows user but vista realy pisses me off so i'm buying a macbook, not as a primary computer but just for school and other little things that need a portable computer.
Mr. Clak I am going to sue you for grievous damage to my eyes with that lengthy post. You will be hearing from my lawyer in the morning.
@clak this was a pretty long rant but also pretty much on target. I guess ppl must have low ranked you out of habit.
And starting with the registry was great - that thing is the single biggest flaw in Windows and it's unbelievable it's still around. It's the registry which causes all Windows installs to deteriorate over time so that they become barely usable after 18 months. In addition, it's completely useless. Programs can run just fine without it, and if they keep all their crap in their own folder, they could be safely deleted by just trashing the folder. Sort of like on OS X.
I think I like this clak guy. He's right on the money.
:-p
Guys, guys. So much hate - share the love!!! :D
@ Clak
O_O
Man, if he that many troubles with XP, he must be contemplating suicide with Vista.
well, he did retire after all!
Ballmer was getting too idiotic for him to handle...
While he could possibly contemplate suicide with Vista, im sure all those billions of dollars and now his retirement package will make him see that the grass is greener on the other side. I wouldnt be surprised if Gates was a sell out by having other systems in his computers like linux, or even the most heretic os of them all for microsoft, OS X.
naa he just downgraded to XP
We make jokes, but from Gates' point of view this is probably heart wrenching
You know, when you read the email it's very weird. Gates talks about Windows and Microsoft products in such a detached fashion - like he isn't familiar with certain features or procedures at all (i.e., experiencing them for the first time).
I hate to bring in Apple here, but, whether you like it or not, you know that Steve Jobs personally approves and guides the development of every feature, app, and product that Apple makes. When you have that kind of anal retentive oversight, it's no surprise that Apple products end up more polished than their Microsoft counterparts. It seems like Microsoft was, and is, such a lumbering beast now that even the chief isn't aware of how to function their flagship product.
I think that point about Apple is a negative one. Who on this planet has the exact same opinion of everything that Steve Jobs has? Probably zero (with many thinking they do).
This means that other ideas may be completely blocked from being realized.
I think Apple and Microsoft are both on an extreme side. Apple is dependant on the opinion of one man for final decisions. Microsoft, however; takes it to the other extreme and relies on user groups (which are known to be a flawed approach to model product changes around user groups; many usability firms go beyond it) which can make them create bad decisions. Example:
-Steve Jobs didn't think 3G was important enough to focus on iPhone 1.0 and thus it was not released as such (even though phones have had 3G access for, in some places, over 5 years).
-Microsoft had a user group use the Zune and found that a 5 star rating was either difficult to use or not used frequently. This made the Zune team change from the Vista standard (Vista uses a 5 star rating system for music) to the new Zune standard of like or don't like (honestly, who puts music on their MP3 player they don't like?).
"...anal retentive oversight"... it's called micro-management
The apple fan boys strike again.
You know, the more comments I read like Kris's, the more I dislike being a fanboy. I mean I really like Apple and their design and their.....well I could go on all day. But it makes me mad that not even Apple can get some ridiculously easy things right. Like MMS on the iPhone. Or WMA compatibility on all of their iPods.
You come across a company like Apple and you think, hey, maybe this comapny is different. Maybe they care more about the consumer than the money they can get out of the consumer. But its never true.
I'm not turning in my fanboy license, but I'm definately dissapointed in Apple lately.
You have it wrong on a couple levels.
You say that it sounds like BG does not know his own product. That is a sign of a good software developer. When you write software, you need to approach it like you do not know your product. How would a new user, sitting down at the computer for the first time, handle using the software? You also need to ballance in how would an experienced user use the software. If a new/inexperienced user sits down at a computer, installs an update (the day XP was released, the update to MM was made available), installs MM, and knows that they should be able to find it in Add/Remove programs, but cannot, then that is a problem. A problem that BG points out that a new user could encounter.
And bringing up Apple is actually a good point - because from a new Apple user's standpoint, the UI of OS X is a gastly mess of inconsistencies. Maximize will sometimes maximize, sometimes it makes the window a little bit bigger. You can manually resize the window, but that takes about 5 mouse clicks because the only resize handle is at the bottom right (move the window to the top left, move down to the bottom right, resize, hope your mouse is not over the dock, and so on). There are buttons scattered about in finder. The only way to figure out what they do is to click it (and pray it does not do something bad to your new mac). Labels should be turned on to help the new user, but you need to be advanced to know how to turn them on, and by then you don't need the labels. Of course, some apps have tool tips on buttons, some do not - adding to the confusion. Click the red circle on the top left of the window will cause some apps to close, some apps it will hide the window, and for some apps it will just close the active window but leave others that belong to the same app there. The only way to tell is to look for the little circle under the app - something I just discovered after a few weeks use. I store all my music on a network share, Windows lets you reference them in place, while iTunes on Mac makes you copy everything locally, filling up my Mac Mini's HDD. Interestingly, iTunes Windows allows you to reference the files over the network. Different fonts are used in different places. Some keystrokes (like tab) work in some applications, but not all.
Overall, there are some things that I think OS X does right, but there is a lot of bad in there. And if SJ personally had his hands in everything, does not make him greater in my eyes.
@nohone
Am I really supposed to read all that?
Oh, and let me add one other complaint. This morning I needed to scan a few documents. Since my printer/scanner was connected to my Mini, I started Image Capture, put my document in the scanner, it did a quick preview scan but then the scan button was disabled. I needed to search the web to find out what to do next because there was no save button. I finally found out what to do - I needed to select the portion of the image to scan, then scan again - when it eventually froze and I needed to reboot my Mini.
In Windows, I started Windows Fax and Scan, pressed New Scan, and the document was scanned and saved automatically. Much, much easier.
Isn't part of the reason the MacOS is so "polished" because they don't have to design something that works on pretty much unlimited combination of hardware from dozens of different hardware vendors?
Let's say MS could design a mobile OS that just had to work on one specific device. It would probably be pretty damn solid. Maybe not.. I dunno.
@applefanboy
First of all, MMS could be easily implemented on the iPhone. They choose not too. It wouldn't be the first time Jobs has decided that a technology was now obsolete and would not be included in Apple's products (i.e., floppies, and now starts on optical disks). Email is how you can share pictures, it is far more flexible and cross-platform compatible.
As for WMA compatibility on all of their iPods, I mean, are you kidding? Why would Apple support on a proprietary
Then you say, "You come across a company like Apple and you think, hey, maybe this comapny is different. Maybe they care more about the consumer than the money they can get out of the consumer. But its never true."
What does that even mean? It has no connection to your previous points. If anything, the points you make argue that Apple is losing sales and money to people who would have otherwise bought Apple products with those features. It's not like Apple has a monopoly on the media player market. There are many other products, most with more features and format support, than the iPod. If you'd like that, then purchase that product. Capitalism works that way.
...something got cut off...
As for WMA compatibility on all of their iPods, I mean, are you kidding? Why would Apple support a proprietary audio format from their competitor? They support industry standard AAC, mp3, wav, as well as a couple of their own, Apple Lossless and AIFF. I mean, Microsoft doesn't even support the PlaysForSure format it created on the Zune.
nohone: "Maximize will sometimes maximize, sometimes it makes the window a little bit bigger."
You misunderstand what this function does in OS X. What it does is expand the window to encompass everything inside it. To a Windows user this might seem confusing (probably because it actually makes sense), but to somebody not familiar with any kind of computer it will instantly make sense. You have 4 things in a folder, you click that button and the window changes so it's just the right size to show those 4 things. Not hard to figure out.
You want to talk bad UI decision, you have 4 things in a folder, you hit maximize and the window takes up your whole screen. Uh... why? And where are these "buttons scattered about"? Every time you open a window in the finder, the sidebar buttons are exactly the same. The menu items are always the same and in the same place, which can't be said for Windows. Consistency is not a strong suit in Windows.
Labels are hard to find? Right click on a folder, there are labels. Yes, the Mighty Mouse can right click. Yes, closing an open window in an app usually does not close the app. That's because it's not Windows. This way you can keep multiple windows or no windows open in an app, while leaving the app open so you don't have to quit and relaunch it. It makes more sense than being forced to quit the app just because you don't want the current window open any more.
iTunes does NOT make you copy your music over, you can put your music wherever you want and simply point iTunes to it. If you had bothered to look through the preferences - at all - you would have seen that.
Different fonts are in different places because some are system fonts and some are user fonts. This is how you can enable fonts globally or for individual users. And... what app does Tab not work in?
Your problem is very simple, and very common - You are trying to use the Mac OS as if it were Windows. The solution is also very simple - Stop doing that. The Mac OS is NOT Windows. Stop trying to do everything the hard way and start trying to do it the easy way instead
@nohone...
I don't know how you've set up your preferences in iTunes, but you can do exactly the same thing with iTunes on the Mac as on the PC. Any way you wish to reference your music is possible. iTunes will organise your music folder for you, or you can leave it switched off.
@Zak
In other words, think different - as long as it is exactly like us, and if it is not exactly like us then you are wrong.
If you could tell me how to set up iTunes so that I can reference a folder shared on my network from a Windows Server 2003 share, then I would like to hear about it, because I have looked all over and cannot find it anywhere.
nohone - No, that's not what I'm saying at all. Not even close. I'm saying OS X is different than Windows, and if you try to use OS X like Windows it's not going to work very well, and that will lead to people complaining about things much like you did without understanding why it works that way.
To answer your other question, first you need to mount the server volume that your music is stored on. In the Finder, go to the Go menu and choose Connect To Server. In the Server Address field, type :
smb://servername/volumename
The server name can also be an IP address. Once the volume is mounted on your desktop, go into iTunes. Go into Preferences and Advanced. Where it says "iTunes Music folder location", click the Change button. In the dialog box that comes up, navigate to the server volume you mounted on your desktop and select your music folder.
While you're in this preference area, look at the other options. You may not want iTunes to keep your music folder organized for you, so you can turn that off. You can also turn off the auto copy feature.
@Zak
Yep, that is easy, why did I not think of that and every new Apple user should understand it also.
In WMP I simply click Library, Add To Library, Add, and browse to \\Server\Data\Music.
In iTunes for Windows I simply select File|Add Folder To Library... and browse to the folder.
No mounting, no switching back and forth between apps, it is just there in an easy to understand way. But SJ knows what is best. Sigh.
Thanks for the help, though.
Er... what? I fail to see how doing it like I suggested is any more steps than doing it how you suggested. Look at what you wrote. Library > add to library > add.
Preferences > Change > Choose. Please tell me you don't think that's more complicated than what you described for WMP. In both cases you need to browse to the server. Seriously, what is your problem with this? And you can do File > Add to library on the Mac side, too.
I have to ask, did you even look at the Mac version of iTunes before complaining about it? If you had, you would have instantly seen these things. I'm being civil about this, but if you're going to be intentionally obtuse why should I bother?
Your complaints make no sense. There is no switching between apps in what I described, and you have to browse to the server in any conceivable scenario.
@applefan
"Am I really supposed to read all that?"
Maybe Steve Jobs could make into two words for you.
@Zak:
Yes, I did try to find how to do that mapping. The problem is, when I thought about it is that it will now try to save anything that I download through iTMS on my server - something I specifically do not want to happen (I want the server to be locked down so that family does not do things they should not be doing).
But the problem is in your description. Mount a server? Try telling that to my mother. She has problems finding the power button on a computer, try describing to her how to mount a remote drive. And before you say Mac handles power better - it does not. I had to switch to a wired mouse because I would click the Apple icon in the menu bar, click sleep, it would sleep and immediately wake up because if you touch the mouse, it would wake back up. Wired mouse does not seem to have a problem with it. And it would not sleep on its own, either. But I guess that I am thinking too Windows centric, and just let it stay powered on all the time.
And what you wrote hilights the whole problem. Mac users say it is so easy, you don't need somebody to help (ignore the "Genius Bar"). If you can't figure it out, you did not try to figure it out and they look down their nose at you, or call you stupid - which is funny because that is what the Mac user says about OS X, you can be stupid and it still works flawlessly. What Bill is saying here is that, if you don't know what you are doing, it does not work well, fix it! And that is the difference between Windows users and Apple/Unix/Linux users. To Windows users (and like Clak's "Letters to Microsoft"), if it is a problem, then it should be fixed. For the other OS users, you are just too stupid to be blessed with our OS, and deserve derision if you cannot find out how to make something work - just as you displayed in your comment.
BTW: When I said label, I did not mean the label when you right click on a folder, I mean the one under the icons in Finder. I will say that was a bit of user error, though, as tooltips take a lot longer to appear on OS X than they do for Windows, and I was just impatient.
Nohone - Again, your arguments make no sense and are extremely lopsided.
'Mount a server? Try telling that to my mother."
How does your mother get to the server using Windows? You have to access the server one way or another, I'm not sure why you're having a comprehension issue with this. Does your mother know how to map a drive so it always shows up? Because that's considerably harder to do than to simply mount a drive in OS X. In OS X it's fairly obvious - it's called "Connect to Server". Is that not clear enough?
"And what you wrote hilights the whole problem."
Your entire argument, that whole paragraph, is fallacious. You're using the old "mac zealot" strawman to make your argument, despite the fact that I haven't actually done any of the things you're accusing me of doing - I have only tried to help you by telling you exactly what you need to do to accomplish what you wanted to do. Then you respond like this.
The problem here is you. Not the Mac, not the OS, not "Mac users". First you complain that you can't do something, I tell you exactly how to do it then you complain that it's too hard. Then you complain that Mac users are arrogant. So why are you even having this conversation? If all you wanted was to know how to do it, you could have said "thanks" and left it at that.
You are very ignorant of the Mac OS and how it works, which is why I broke my instructions down into every individual step for you. I could have just said "Mount your server, then tell iTunes to use your music folder". You wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on with your "it's too complicated" argument then, would you?
And you keep harping about how difficult it is to mount a server in OS X without acknowledging that you have to do the same thing in Windows if you want to connect to a server. In fact if you want the server available all the time you have to map the drive which is an ADDITIONAL step. And beyond all that, is it really that hard to figure out that you use the "connect to server" command to connect to a server? Is this really your main sticking point?
You are displaying a fair amount of arrogance on your own by not conceding that the Mac OS works differently than Windows does. You believe that the Windows way is the ONLY way, and you are annoyed when the Mac OS doesn't do things exactly like Windows does. You even complain when I give you a solution that you thought wasn't possible - because that solution requires doing things that you're unfamiliar with. Not difficult things, just different. The simple fact is that Macs are better on networks than Windows boxes are. They're based on Unix and are compatible with almost everything.
Didn't it ever occur to you that by entering a smb:// address that the Mac was speaking to Windows natively? You think Windows is capable of doing the reverse? Hell no. The fact is I just showed you that your Mac can co-exist on your Windows network flawlessly, and you threw it in my face. Why? Who knows, maybe you're just trying to find reasons to hate the Mac, and you resent me for taking one of those reasons away.
If you decide to come to your senses and you want to discuss what else the Mac can do on your network with your Windows server, I'd be happy to help. If you're going to continue to be stubborn and arrogant about it, I won't bother to waste more of my time on you.
this is by far the funniest thing in the world. who would've ever expected to see bill gates flaming windows?