Bill Gates's 2003 Rant: Downloading Movie Maker Was a Nightmare
Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker
In a 2003 email to Windows executives, Bill Gates detailed his frustrating attempt to download Movie Maker from Microsoft.com. The site timed out repeatedly, search failed to find the software, and Windows Update forced him through confusing steps, multiple reboots, and a 17MB download of unrelated patches. Gates called the experience 'an absolute mess' and said the lack of attention to usability 'blows my mind.' His email sparked an internal debate about ownership of the download experience.
The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind.
- 3eb7988a1663
My favorite bit about this is how none of the execs want to take ownership of the change, but instead trying to put someone else in the hot seat and/or start a Committee.
This feels like an email that should have been blasted to the entire company. Top-down, empower employees to think of a more unified experience. Then again, all of the external jokes about Microsoft indicate that every department is fighting for their lives against the others, so that kind of kumbaya togetherness was never going to happen.
- bluegatty
They think it's 'some issues' :) :) :)
It's a fundamental, cultural and systemic lack of concern for those issues.
An 'afterthought' that should be 'integral'.
That Gates did not realize that means it's 100% on him.
1000% actually.
He was struggling with the language of design and usability in 2003, not even realizing even the implications of what he was seeing (because it would require total rethink).
Like a cars coming out of the factory with missing parts ... blame it on the guy on the line?
No. Something is deeply wrong.
I really like Gates - but it's beyond shocking how these cultures work and how myopic they are.
I worked for a Fortune 50 - and it's pretty amazing to watch how an army of actually smart people with 'one eye' can be so competent many ways, but blind in others.
I don't like to put Jobs on a pedestal but obviously this is something he understood (even then with gaping holes).
- sajithdilshan
Read the whole thing and all I saw was zero accountability, zero ownership and zero consequences.
That’s how great products die or become a nightmare. Every team keeps on passing the ball to other team and nothing gets fixed or done or improved.
- whywhywhywhy
> I reboot every night
The fact he did is probably responsible for a lot of issues with Windows installing and problems. Normalizing a reboot as a common thing.
I also suspect the fact he keeps re-iterating that the download was fast is because the teams have been using slow internet as an excuse for code speed problems.
- johnnyApplePRNG
Read it.
Stopped halfway through thinking "Damn, this Mike Beckerman is a piece of work. Doesn't understand English grammar let alone software development."
Looked him up...
>Michael Beckerman is an American lobbyist who is vice president at TikTok.
Not surprising at all.
- Flux159
Even today Microsoft can't get their shit together on a decent user experience. Tried to use Azure since I needed to code sign a binary on Github. My two previous accounts setup on Azure errored out with obscure errors and there was no way to fix them. I had to create a new account just to sign up for Azure Artifact Signing (which is now waiting for Microsoft to approve - no updates in a week). I don't know how anyone figures any of this out without reading pages of documentation. I honestly believe that no one actually cares about their products or user experience at Microsoft.
- wqtz
I feel like if he said, I feel like firing someone immediately for this issue would have sprouted a surprising level ownership to find the people or team (or teams) to be blamed.
At the top level most people are not designed to get shit done. They are accountable for only reporting. So, even if you want to get things done finding the team or person from that point high is impossible as they are not designed for that.
But as I write this I realized that even that wouldn’t work...as they will create a committee and hire an consulting agency whose exec was in the same sorority as them. And the consulting agency will recommend teams to be laid off. And then the same exec will come in pitching the board to buy a startup which has a great team and apparently was invested by a VC who went to same class of Wharton of that exec.
- pu_pe
I often wonder how CEOs and executives fail to notice how obviously broken their products are. This e-mail thread is quite illuminating. Most "work" in there is figuring out who will be blamed for it and why it shouldn't be your team.