Was it really that bad back in 2003?

Did it improve? Honest question as I haven't touched Windows since the late 90s because it was terrible (I went from Basic booting home computers to DOS to Unix to Linux and Mac OS X; I use mostly Linux still).

I just bought a Dell with blank-slate Windows 10 install. Windows Update came up on first boot. Most of the things billg said in this 2003 email remain true. e.g.

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

(But it was GB of stuff.)

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.

(But it was more than 10 minutes multiple times.)

Then it told me to reboot my machine.

(Probably six reboots after 5 software updates.)

… and once that was done, it started harassing me to install Windows 11. “Harassing” like full screen takeovers with buried “no thanks” buttons and secondary “ARE YOU SURE?” screens once I found and clicked the close buttons. That hasn’t stopped.

This is why I go with Fedora Silverblue for my elderly family. When they had Windows installed, most support calls was about crazy and confusing full screen pop ups and forced upgrades.

With a stable disto, everything just works and keeps up to date without bothering the user.

Why anyone uses Windows today is a mystery to me. My guess is force of habit and lock-inn effects.

Pretty much yeah, by service pack 2 they'd sorted most of it. SP3 was almost good. As far as I was concerned Windows 2000 was the superior choice till well into the XP life cycle. And XP was definitely the better choice till 7.

There isn't a dumpster rotten enough for ME, Vista, or 8.

There isn't a dumpster rotten enough for ME, Vista, or 8.

Vista was pretty good after SP2, so was Windows 8.1. In fact I find 8.1 (with StartIsBack installed) much better than the adware mess that's Windows 10.

It really was. XP gets looked back on with rose-tinted glasses but only because successive iterations of windows have been so extraordinarily bad. The Microsoft.com website was so bad it was almost comical.

To Microsoft's credit, they have made some improvements in some areas but the same old DNA is on display when you use e.g. Teams.

Microsoft is just plain bad at Product.

I always thought Gates was feared by his employees. Unless I'm missing something, all the following emails passed the buck with no one saying, "The boss is pissed and we had better fix the mess."

He's not the boss anymore at this point (2003). Ballmer took over as CEO in 2000.

I don't take the term boss literally here.

His position and influence still has enough weight to make a poor interaction with him a career limiting event.

I think that's what OP was referring to, he's still the guy that founded Microsoft. He's as figurative and influential as any boss I'd ever hope to meet.

I found it hilarious one of the execs did not know what owning a product means:

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

I didn’t interpret that sentence like you did.

I think he was wary of what it actually meant to the product. For instance, imagine we have a problem with the authentication on an internal component, and then, someone from quality control states “don’t worry, I’ll own the authentication issues”. What does that even mean? Is QA going to solve the issue? How? Are you going to oversee the way other team(s) solve the issue?

That’s how I interpreted it.

I still wish I had pirated software several times a year. Last it was Garmin stuff. I will never buy anything Garmin ever again. It was a Kafkaesque experience.

The list of banned companies is starting to get prohibitively long.

Oh yeah Garmin software was absolutely amongst the worst I have ever tried to use. Complete trash. Awful software for the simplest of tasks like loading maps onto your GPS.

Same for start menu.

First they tried tiles. Then they tried to remove it. Then they tried to add websearch.

Mine now so bad that if I hit windows key and start typing it picks up from about the 4th character types and ofc Then searches for the wrong thing. Literally unusable for the most basic of task for an OS - launching programs

If it wasn’t for a couple of windows only usage cases I’d have dumped this so fast

Join us, become one of the linux desktop people.

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

While it is amazing that windows did actually continue to go backwards in usability with Vista, Tiles, in-OS advertising, etc, windows was never great at usability in the sense of Bill's complaints here.

Microsoft at this point already had a decade-long track record of dumping alphaware on the market from Windows Me, Windows 1.x/2.x, Office packages, backoffice, Outlook, half-baked features, smorgasborg of apis on apis on apis, security and viruses everywhere (didn't start with the internet, folks).

They are an entrenched monopoly, and all that matters is the money coming in and the monopoly keeping its power. Bill is PERFECTLY aware of Microsoft's monopoly power, it was his goal since the MSDOS days.

So this entire post by BillG is just a big disingenuous lie. Bill is trying to whitewash his hands of building a terrible monopolistic handicap he has foisted on computing and the world now that he'd gone into semi-retirement as him being some white knight savior of endusers everywhere.

It is total bullshit. He knows very well why all this doesn't work and the company is functioning exactly as he designed it. He never gave a shit about quality except in the bare minimum.

So yeah, let's yuck up the one time the hundred billionaire was bored and played end user and got a little taste of his own medicine. But lets not pretend this was any real impediment, he could pay some person to do whatever he needed thousands of times over in the time it took for him to write the emails.

The point of the post is "look, I know we make shit software at Microsoft, but cmon people, THIS shitty? We need to look like we are trying a little".

Are those emails legit?