Enterprise applications Toolkit
Story: Gates looks back on 30 years at Microsoft
Gates and his PC
Here's something that shines a light on Gates's thoughts on usuability, at least--an internal company email he sent complaining about his experiences trying to download Moviemaker. The full text has been posted by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, but here's a taster. To set the scene, Gates has been trying (and failing) to download the software via the Microsoft.com Downloads page, and has turned in frustration to company staffers working on it:
"So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.
They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).
I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.
I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.
In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.
This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?"
I couldn't have written a better rant myself.
Full Talkback thread
