Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame
August 3, 2011 10:53 AM   Subscribe

In 2003, believing that windows usability had reached a new low, Bill Gates sent an email (PDF link with replies, start at the bottom and read up)

Seattle PI pubished the text in 2008 to celebrate Bill Gate's farewell from Microsoft. More recently this email emerged on Hacker News and generated some debate.
posted by Ad hominem (58 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: seen it. -- cortex



 
That PDF froze my browser.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:56 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


I stopped using Windows in January of 2004. Coincidence?
Well, yes, but it was a good call.
posted by entropicamericana at 11:00 AM on August 3, 2011


w-g p: I read the (not 100% accurately captured) OCR document on Scribd, and that worked for me.


I like that Bill used "flame" in the subject (Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame), as compared to complaint, comment, or suggestion. It sounds so much geekier, in an internet forum type of way.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:01 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


So old. So very old.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:02 AM on August 3, 2011 [5 favorites]


That was definitely good for a laugh. It seemed like pretty much a standard user issue email yet instead of being directed through low level frontline employees it was being sent from the Chairman to various product heads.

I wonder if he's still frustrated with useability in Windows.
posted by vuron at 11:02 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


I like that Bill used "flame" in the subject....

except that for all that he was oddly calm... I kept on expecting him to request a list of people to fire.

It seemed like pretty much a standard user issue email yet instead of being directed through low level frontline employees it was being sent from the Chairman to various product heads.

Without the swearing.
posted by ennui.bz at 11:04 AM on August 3, 2011


I'm not sure I'd say usability was Windows' biggest problem. Especially since "usability" is usually a code word for "make the thing that 80% of the people want to do the only visible/possible option ever". This is the sense in which OSX is "usable" and it makes it unusable to me.

Windows has stability problems. Windows has power problems (i.e. it comes with basically nothing out of the box). Windows has freedom problems. Windows has compatibility (with standards and with previous versions of itself) problems.
posted by DU at 11:06 AM on August 3, 2011 [5 favorites]


From: Dave Fester
I replied as well. I am owning the website issues, but Mike should own the others


That kind of nonsense annoys me. How about 'Yes that part is down to me & my team, that other thing is down to Mike and his team'.
posted by selton at 11:06 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


I don’t know what it means to "own website issues"

So~ I take from this that we have lots of opinions and input However, no one appearstn be saying that we,
WMPG, are chartered andlor should own this


Remind me never to work with Mike Beckerman
posted by Hoopo at 11:07 AM on August 3, 2011 [4 favorites]


"I don't know what it means to own website issues."

Ah, the beginning of a 6 month Microsoft Meeting Cycle™ to determine

1. what owning website issues means, followed by a
2. 6 month cycle (and subsequent 3 month ancillary cycle) to determine who, in fact, does own the website issue re: BillG's email.
3. This may be followed by another brief "Who is responsible for retrieving BillG's original email, when delegated please send it to me" and period of self reflection, documented and emailed to all department heads for approval.
posted by four panels at 11:10 AM on August 3, 2011 [2 favorites]


That kind of nonsense annoys me. How about 'Yes that part is down to me & my team, that other thing is down to Mike and his team'.

Jargon is infectious. Once you know what it means, you start using it.
posted by smackfu at 11:11 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


selton: "That kind of nonsense annoys me."

That's like the least euphemistic sentence of the whole thread. In fact, in my opinion, "I own this" is a bit clearer than "is down to me".
posted by Plutor at 11:12 AM on August 3, 2011 [15 favorites]


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

There are many good bits, but that one is gold.
posted by Drastic at 11:12 AM on August 3, 2011 [11 favorites]


Join us over here in the land of Linux Bill. Things are brighter on this side of the paywall.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 11:17 AM on August 3, 2011


Once you know what it means, you start using it.

Words are so crazy that way.
posted by aught at 11:17 AM on August 3, 2011 [4 favorites]


The whole thing reads as a little disingenuous. I mean Gates is writing like an uninformed user:

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.


Bill Gates knows bloody well what is going on during those 6 minutes. The guy is famous for his technical involvement in Microsoft products. He knows how Windows works as well as anyone working for him.

It's more than a little bit belittling to receive an e-mail from a guy as smart as Bill Gates which reads like something an ignorant angry consumer would write. I mean there's being blunt and then there's being a dick about it.
posted by three blind mice at 11:17 AM on August 3, 2011


Your customers are ignorant angry consumers, not technical developers.
posted by smackfu at 11:21 AM on August 3, 2011 [3 favorites]


I'm still impressed that he remembered so many details about his very long and crappy experience.
posted by ignignokt at 11:21 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


It's more than a little bit belittling to receive an e-mail from a guy as smart as Bill Gates which reads like something an ignorant angry consumer would write. I mean there's being blunt and then there's being a dick about it.

On the contrary, I'd say it's a virtue of Bill's that he can step outside his knowledge of the internals and view the process from the perspective of an ignorant, angry consumer. It's hard for engineers to do this; it's a very valuable learned skill that comes with experience.
posted by fatbird at 11:22 AM on August 3, 2011 [23 favorites]


So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipate.

Heh.
Classic.
posted by Thorzdad at 11:24 AM on August 3, 2011 [2 favorites]


Bill Gates knows bloody well what is going on during those 6 minutes. The guy is famous for his technical involvement in Microsoft products. He knows how Windows works as well as anyone working for him.

At that point in time, I doubt he did. This was a few years before he stepped down. And even a developer on Windows might not know exactly what's going on in those six minutes. It's a massive codebase, and no one can know everything.
posted by ignignokt at 11:25 AM on August 3, 2011


Some engineers are born ignorant and angry, others are made.

It is a valuable skill, to be able to see things like a user. Not many developers have it, and the ones that do are worth ten of the normal kind.
posted by zippy at 11:25 AM on August 3, 2011 [2 favorites]


This would mean something if Windows didn't have the marketshare it does. It's not like Windows users are going to bail by the millions and buy a Mac (or install Linux) because a software update takes a while. Worse, fixing such a thing will likely not result in more revenue or increased marketshare so the poor developer stuck with fixing it will see nothing in return.
posted by tommasz at 11:26 AM on August 3, 2011


Once you know what it means, you start using it.

If you have no taste.
posted by Crabby Appleton at 11:26 AM on August 3, 2011


"W[indows]U[pdate] provides no way to promote a download to an end-user."

So is this e-mail thread the reason Windows Update gives me the four-hour-countdown to restart every week or so?


"Why can’t the WU client-side piece proactively display a bubble 'Look! Cool, new features for Windows XP'"

This would be great! If only there were an adorable animated mascot that could help deliver this message. Perhaps some sort of office supply...
posted by Wulfhere at 11:26 AM on August 3, 2011 [2 favorites]


That kind of nonsense annoys me. How about 'Yes that part is down to me & my team, that other thing is down to Mike and his team'.

How is "is down to" better than "own"? It's no more literal, and somewhat less comprehensible. I, for one, know what "own" means in this context, but "is down to" leaves me uncertain.
posted by baf at 11:30 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


This post is a double, I'm afraid.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:32 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


Reading this email exchange between a bunch of passive-aggressive weasels makes it seem incredible that anything positive happens at Microsoft (or any other big corporation) at all.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:34 AM on August 3, 2011 [3 favorites]


Especially since "usability" is usually a code word for "make the thing that 80% of the people want to do the only visible/possible option ever". This is the sense in which OSX is "usable" and it makes it unusable to me.

DU, can you give an example or two? Not snark. What's an option that 20% need to do at the operating system level but can't in OSX? I mean, I can open up a command line and be in a unix shell in 5 seconds and the world is my oyster, no?
posted by spitbull at 11:34 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


Well, the Bill Gates part is but I've found the internal emails from management pretty interesting too.
posted by Hoopo at 11:34 AM on August 3, 2011


I'm not sure what the problem is. Windows Moviemaker sucks pretty badly. The fact that you can't get it should certainly be considered a feature, no?
posted by eyeballkid at 11:35 AM on August 3, 2011 [2 favorites]


Viral marketing for Microserfs the movie.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:36 AM on August 3, 2011


I kind of love his dry humor. ("It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.")

I love the furious blame-shifting by his underlings even more.
posted by eugenen at 11:40 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


Why can’t the WU client-side piece proactively display a bubble "Look! Cool, new features for Windows XP" and the option to display a much richer "advertisement" for the feature if the user wants to read more?

Did this Ian guy come up with the paperclip, too?
posted by goethean at 11:40 AM on August 3, 2011


I agree with fatbird. One of the hardest parts of being an interface/usability designer/engineer is being able to approach the product naively. To forget everything you already know and try to see how it looks. The practice required to do this is like some kind of meditation. "Don't use what you know, use what you see" is harder than it sounds.

Back to the derail:

Just did a little experiment: I asked 4 different foreign born engineers with basic to advanced English what "it is down to me" and "I own it" could mean in this context. I got different responses for "is down to", ranging from "it is my fault" to "it makes me feel sad". Completely different meanings. For "I own" all the answers were the same: "it is my responsibility".

Guess what? Tasteless jargon is clearer than colloquial English. And why should foreigners matter here? Because this email is from Microsoft, which is full of foreign born employees.

If you want to be jargon free and clear, you could use "Yes, that part is my responsibility, Mike should be responsible for the other part".
posted by Ayn Rand and God at 11:40 AM on August 3, 2011 [6 favorites]


Spitbull: try piping any random file into audio output in a mac. I miss cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp
posted by Ayn Rand and God at 11:42 AM on August 3, 2011


Spitbull: try piping any random file into audio output in a mac. I miss cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp

You were talking earlier about features that are geared to the 80% crippling the experience for you. The ability to pipe random files from the command line into audio output isn't a 20% feature, it's a .02% feature.
posted by Tomorrowful at 11:45 AM on August 3, 2011 [3 favorites]


Some advice from one long term middle manager to others: DON'T TRY TO WORK SHIT OUT OVER EMAIL!!!

Email is for tasking, scheduling meeting and confirming the conversation. As the leader Gates needed to call a meeting, or direct one of his deputies to solve the problem via an email. CCing a half dozen people accomplishes nothing but venting your rage. Since Gates is a busy guy one of his people should have called a meeting. That meeting should have had a follow email to Bill with identified action items and list of decisions needed from him (e.g. Budget, resources, authority).
posted by humanfont at 11:46 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


"I'm not sure what the problem is. Windows Moviemaker sucks pretty badly. "

Live Movie Maker seems to work just fine for me. I've found it to be very simple to edit clips, add a soundtrack, transitions, credits etc... YMMV.
posted by MikeMc at 11:46 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


What, catting weird things to audio doesn't work in OS X? When did that happen? Isn't that on the secret specification list for POSIX compliance?
posted by loquacious at 11:46 AM on August 3, 2011 [2 favorites]


Was this Bill's burning platform memo? ;p
posted by infini at 11:47 AM on August 3, 2011


I love the furious blame-shifting by his underlings even more.

Enjoy your Big Gulp of schadenfreude but, you know, there's nothing quite as stressful as getting a disingenuous or, worse, actually clueless email from a company executive about some aspect of a product you're connected to that they don't really know much about but believe they have found a flaw with.
posted by aught at 11:48 AM on August 3, 2011 [2 favorites]


Way back when I used to be more of a writer, I did an interview with a guy who'd been fairly high up at Microsoft. The way he described their development process was they come up with a list of all the features they want to have in something, divvy the feature list up among the teams, then mush it all together when everyone is done. Dunno if they still do it that way, but it made everything make much more sense to me.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 11:49 AM on August 3, 2011 [2 favorites]


Live Movie Maker seems to work just fine for me.

I never used the Live version, only the one that came built into Vista. But it was always a very smooth experience. Much, much faster and more flexible than working with all incarnations except perhaps the current iMovie on my Mac -- which is still not exactly intuitive.
posted by zarq at 11:50 AM on August 3, 2011


aught: except in this case, he identified a laundry list of real flaws. the real problem wasn't that the flaws weren't real or even that this was from Gates -- it was that they had worked so hard over the years at convincing themselves that this kind of interaction sequence was perfectly fine.
posted by lodurr at 11:50 AM on August 3, 2011 [4 favorites]


It would appear that Bill Gates was actually clued in to the miserable experience of the average Windows user.
posted by KokuRyu at 11:52 AM on August 3, 2011 [3 favorites]


The way he described their development process was they come up with a list of all the features they want to have in something, divvy the feature list up among the teams, then mush it all together when everyone is done.

So it's basically like passing legislation?
posted by goethean at 11:54 AM on August 3, 2011


on the jargon derail: "Own" is sure enough middle-/upper-management jargon, but it's one of the few pieces of corporate jargon that is relatively honest and clear. For that reason, though it annoys me, I never complain about it unless it's used in a somehow passive-aggressive way. In this case, I think that's one of the few relatively clear and non-passive-aggressive parts of a really squirmy and difficult to stomach thread.

(2004 is right about when I stopped using Windows for a long time. I was going to have to switch to Vista to get anything done, what with end-of-life on Win2K, looking at hardware upgrades to make that happen, trying to go freelance at the same time, and then the Mini came out and I got a call to do a freelance job for a company that was all-Mac, and I've been doing all my paid work on Macs ever since.)
posted by lodurr at 11:54 AM on August 3, 2011


Maybe I'm betraying my age here, but I am having trouble thinking of anyone I know using the phrase "that's down to me" in conversation. It sounds on a par with someone saying "My bad" non-ironically.

Meanwhile, jargony or not, the job responsibility sense of "to own" is something I encounter every day at work. The tech-company slang that's been annoying me lately is people saying they're going to "ping" a co-worker when they mean they're going to email or telephone them.
posted by aught at 11:55 AM on August 3, 2011


Windows has freedom problems.

You mean like how I can install it on practically any set of hardware? Or easily virtualize the OS? Or go home and upgrade my processor, RAM, etc at my own leisure?

Windows has compatibility (with standards and with previous versions of itself) problems.

Funny, I thought it was Windows' reliance on backwards compatibility that caused so many instability problems. I can still run Windows 7 on a P4. Granted booting might take an hour, but it still works. Now try running 10.6 on a perfectly functional power PC.
posted by jmd82 at 11:56 AM on August 3, 2011 [3 favorites]


there's nothing quite as stressful as getting a disingenuous or, worse, actually clueless email from a company executive about some aspect of a product you're connected to that they don't really know much about but believe they have found a flaw with.

Especially when it's clearly Dave's fault.
posted by Hoopo at 11:56 AM on August 3, 2011 [3 favorites]


This is one of those things that's caused by a mismatch between how people use technology and how companies are organized around ownership of features. In order to get MovieMaker running, you have to deal with features built by 4 or 5 different teams, and lots of usability problems cluster around transition points where the user switches between features owned by different teams. This happens even when individual features have good usability on their own terms.

Ownership is distributed in the organization to optimize the use of engineering resources: each team specializes in managing individual pieces. This is fundamentally contrary to the way users think about what they're doing, and it creates a fragmented experience that maps the divisions within the organization.
posted by AlsoMike at 11:57 AM on August 3, 2011 [2 favorites]


I think Windows has gotten better, but it still is a pretty hostile experience for the novice. A million things popping up at you all the time (my favorite: Windows 7 asks you to confirm that you want to put something in the Recycle Bin), no clear way to access your files directly, conflicting pre-installed anti-virus software (the OEM's fault, sure, but MSFT's security problem) ... It reinforces the idea that computers are Too Complicated For Me To Understand.
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:57 AM on August 3, 2011 [1 favorite]


The tech-company slang that's been annoying me lately is people saying they're going to "ping" a co-worker when they mean they're going to email or telephone them.

It used to bug me a lot more, until I realized that it can actually be usefully vague. If I say to a manager-type, "I'm going to email bob," half the time I hear "no, call him, it'll be faster!" or "I think he's on instant messenger right now!" or some other detail about the exact method of contact I mentioned. "I'll ping him" indicates that I'm going to get hold of Bob, through an undetermined method that doesn't matter right now, but that I'm not promising that I'll actually keep his attention for hours - just "touch base," to use another bit of slang/jargon. It's not great, but it does have its place.
posted by Tomorrowful at 11:59 AM on August 3, 2011


This would mean something if Windows didn't have the marketshare it does. It's not like Windows users are going to bail by the millions and buy a Mac (or install Linux) because a software update takes a while. Worse, fixing such a thing will likely not result in more revenue or increased marketshare so the poor developer stuck with fixing it will see nothing in return.

I think the experience with Vista shows that things like this actually do matter quite a lot, even for a company as big as Microsoft. Sure, people are not going to stop using Windows over this, but they're also not going to upgrade from their old OS/office suite/whatever, which will result in lost revenue.
posted by daniel_charms at 12:00 PM on August 3, 2011


"...there's nothing quite as stressful as getting a disingenuous or, worse, actually clueless email from a company executive about some aspect of a product you're connected to that they don't really know much about but believe they have found a flaw with."

Most products shouldn't require a secret decoder ring. If the executive (or any fellow employee for that matter) has an expectation as to how something should work then it is either a learning opportunity for you (e.g. in this scenario the workflow you've implemented is unnecessarily cumbersome) or a learning opportunity for the fellow employee (e.g. We're losing business to competitor X based on feature Y and market research shows that feature Z will allow us to leapfrog the competition.)

I'm a big advocate of hallway usability testing for just this reason.
posted by Jacob G at 12:01 PM on August 3, 2011 [2 favorites]


Jacob G: "I'm a big advocate of hallway usability testing for just this reason."

This. Hallway testing is a fantastic (and simple) usability test that isn't used nearly enough in the industry.
posted by mullingitover at 12:07 PM on August 3, 2011


I'm actually pretty impressed that Bill Gates took the time to kick the tires as a regular user and document the experience. His frustration causes a few embellishments but I think he channeled the frustration that many Windows users feel. As for the product manager's dialog, I think they acted in good faith to delineate responsibility but I suspect much more was discussed outside of the email thread. I never saw this before but it gives me a more positive impression of what was happening at Microsoft circa 2003.
posted by dgran at 12:08 PM on August 3, 2011


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