On January 15, 2003, Bill Gates—billionaire and philanthropist at war with malaria—turned his keyboard into a flamethrower and directed all his fury at his own employees at Microsoft. Technically, Gates was no longer CEO, but he still held the position of chairman, and no one in Redmond wanted to receive a critical email from him. What happened? Friend Bill tried to download a copy of Movie Maker and buy one of the digital packs… but he personally experienced the nightmare that was Microsoft's official website at the time.
Bill Gates. If you search for him, you'll see that he's recommended five books for this season and has a certain obsession with a portal called Dollar Street. But what brings us here today is an email he sent to the controversial Jim Allchin, Chris Jones, Bharat Shah, Joe Peterson, Will Poole, Brian Valentine, and Anoop Gupta, under the subject line "Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame." That alone doesn't tell us much, but the rest… is pure gold. Below we share a humble translation, with occasional adjustments and replacements due to typos and other inconsistencies in the original. My opinion is that Bill was quite angry when he wrote this…
The email that infuriated Redmond
I'm very disappointed in how Windows usability has been going backwards, and the program management groups are not addressing usability issues.
Let me share 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 section, so I went there.
The first five times I used the site timed out while trying to load the download page. After an eight-second delay, I managed to get it to appear.
The site is very slow and unusable.
It didn't appear in the Top 5 (of results), so I expanded the other 45.
Those 45 names are totally confusing. The names make things like "C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures" seem clear.
They aren't filtered by system type, and many other things are strange.
I tried searching for (multi)Media. Still no Moviemaker. I typed 'moviemaker.' Nothing. I typed 'movie maker.' Nothing.
I gave up and emailed Amir saying: 'Where is the Moviemaker download? Does it even exist?'
They told me that using the download page to download something was not 'something they had anticipated.'
Then they told me to go to the search button on the main page and type 'movie maker' (not moviemaker!).
I tried to do that. The site was pathetically slow, but after six seconds it appeared.
I thought I'd now see a button to go to the download.
In fact, it's like a puzzle you have to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do some incantations.
This seems completely odd to me. Why do I have to go elsewhere and do a search to download Moviemaker?
I went to Windows Update. Windows Update decided I need to download a bunch of controls. Not just once, but multiple times where I see strange dialog boxes.
Doesn't Windows Update know some 'key' to talk to Windows?
I did the search. It took a long time, and it warned me that it was critical for me to download 17 megabytes.
This is after they told me we were going to do delta (partial) patches, but instead, just to get 6 things that are labeled as SCARIEST as possible, I had to download 17 megabytes.
So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an installation. This took six minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything during that time.
What the hell is going on during those six minutes? It's crazy. This is after the download finished.
And then it told me to restart the machine. Why should I do that? I restart every night, why do I have to restart at 'that' moment?
I restarted because it INSISTED. Of course, that meant discarding all my Outlook state.
Everything started working again and I went back to Windows Update. I forgot why I was at Windows Update, when all I wanted was to download Moviemaker.
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'm using Windows XP.
What does 'I have to click' on that folder mean? I get another bunch of confusing stuff, but at least one of them is Moviemaker.
I start the download. The download is fast but the installation takes several minutes. Amazingly slow this thing is.
At some point it tells me I have to download Windows Media Series 9.
I decide to do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like Open or Save. No guidance in the instructions on which to choose. I have no idea which to choose.
The download is fast... and the installation of this thing takes seven minutes.
So now I think I'm going to have Moviemaker. I go to my Add or Remove Programs section to make sure it's there.
It's not there.
What's there? The following junk is there: Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive Test Package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot Test Package, Microsoft Autoupdate Testpackage1, Microsoft Autoupdate Testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Testpackage3.
Did someone decide to ruin the only part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is no longer usable. The program listing was a sensible place, but now it's full of crap.
But that's just the beginning of the crap. Then I have things listed like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why do patches appear listed here? Some of the patches just say things like Q810655, instead of saying 'see Q329048 for more information.'
An absolute disaster.
Moviemaker is not there, at all.
I give up with Moviemaker and decide to buy the Digital Plus pack.
It tells me I have to enter information about myself.
I enter it all, it decides I wrote something wrong, and I have to try again. Of course, it erased most of what I wrote.
I try to write the correct information five times, and it just keeps erasing everything so I have to write it again.
After more than an hour of madness, of turning my program list into trash, of being scared, and of seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible site... I still haven't run Moviemaker, nor do I have the Plus pack.
The lack of attention to usability represented in these experiences drives me crazy. I thought we had hit a low point with My 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 actually manage to use this, I'm sure I'll have more feedback.
