As many of you know, Bill Gates retired last Friday. I know that this email is old; however, I thought it would be nice to bring it back up… So long Bill, we barley knew you (thank goodness). Original Message sent by Bill Gates on Wednesday, January 15, 2003, to Jim Allchin, i think you will like it.

Windows Usability Systematic Degradation Flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn’t in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system … and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

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?

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn’t Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

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.

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

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called Windows XP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like “Open” or “Save”. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

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.

Moviemaker is just not there at all.

So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.

I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.

I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.

I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.

So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.

The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)

When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.

With the failure of the Yahoo acquisition, Microsoft is at it again. This time they managed to biy the search engine Powerset for $100 million. I introduced Powerset several weeks ago as a possible future competitor to Google (Is Google in trouble?). With the power of Microsoft backing them, Google may very well have a run for their money. Google on the other hand scuffed the idea of semantic search, saying that there was no future for it. I still believe that a natural language semantic search is the way of the future. Only the future will tell.

This is going to be short because I could go on for a long time at how dumb this is. The RIAA is trying to charge the radio stations royalty fees for playing music from their record labels (or they will consider it pirating). The radio stations already are in money trouble, what could the RIAA be thinking? This is going to kill the already struggling radio market… end of story!

Update: more recently the RIAA tried to raise the price for playing music online. Pandora said that they could not pay the added fees and would have to close the doors. Enter the government, they extended the time for the record labels and internet radio stations to hammer out a new price, so Pandora is alive (at least for now). In addition, Apple told everyone that is the fees were to go up, they to would have to close the doors to the iTunes music store. Since then, the labels have decided not to raise the price for music downloads. WOW this is getting nuts!

Back in March, Google completed its acquisition of DoubleClick. What dose this mean for us? I do not think this is good for consumers. The holy grail of the internet age is user-targeted ads, so why would this be bad you may ask? Simple, our privacy is out the window, not only will Google see what we are searching for, and what our interests are; they will also see pages we go to outside of Google. Many web sites have advertising that is provided by DoubleClick (Banner Ad’s). Google can see what users all over the world are going to on the web, even if you do not use them to search. If you ask me this is scary and dangerous behavior for one company to be doing! Can you day monopoly!?

Update: Google has just lunched the worlds most powerful commercially owned satellite, now not only do they know what we see on the web, they can see us anywhere we go off the web!

If you are afraid of Friday the Thirteenth, you may have paraskavedekatriaphobia! Thirteen is just a number, and Friday is just a day… Get over it!