Absolutely priceless, MUST read: Bill Gates trying to download MS software

[DenisRS]

"Movie Maker" back in January 2003 and how his subordinates were trying to find out who is responsible for the experience:

(Should be read from the bottom of the document, initial electronic mail by William Gates is the last; replies are earlier, higher in the PDF document.)

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf

This internal electronic mail correspondence was released during one of many courts that "Microsoft" faced in the recent years.

Article about this is here:
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp

 

[DenisRS]

Some other "Microsoft" high bosses replies are interesting, too. One of them admitted that he avoids such plague as "Windows Update".

In this, the system is not improved much, since we have "WU" listed among "The 10 most annoying programs on the Internet" by "CNet/ZDNet":

#3: Windows Update

Your machine will reset in four minutes. Your machine will not shut down until these five updates are installed. You must restart your machine now. You will install Microsoft Genuine Advantage. Please wait while these updates are installed. Please shut down all applications before applying this update. Pop! New updates are ready to be installed. And now that we’ve stopped you doing whatever it was you were doing (like we care), shall we go ahead and install them now, or would you rather be interrupted yet again later?


We’ve been kind and not talked about Vista.

 

[DenisRS]

When we were concluding our interview last week, I showed Gates a printout of the e-mail and asked if he ever got Movie Maker to work. Gates noted that Microsoft plans to include Movie Maker as part of Windows Live, so people will get the program when they download that online package. The company isn't confirming that officially yet, but's not a complete surprise.

5 years passed and 2003' plan to make "Movie Maker" download more automatic/bundled/streamlined are still not fulfilled. Not that "Movie Maker" is as good as "iMovie" from Apple, but still.

 

[DenisRS]

Has anything gotten better? Well, Movie Maker download comes up as the number 2 choice when doing a search on their site. Of course, they still have 90,100 other results. Apparently, if they can't amaze you with quality they'll overwhelm you with quantity.

Why result #2? Why 90,100 other results?

Tried to go to www.microsoft.com, and the first thing I saw was a bold pop-up window which pushed download of "Adobe Flash/Shockwave"'s competitor "Silverlight" right in my face. Typical "Microsoft"; "Apple" is anyhow saint or perfect, but there is no way that the company would ever treat visitors like that.

Found out that after the search "Microsoft" offers instructions about how make a movie in "Movie Maker" -- obviously without people even downloaded the application itself yet. And this is with the fact that any site code can understand which version of OS visitor's computer runs, and see that my "Windows XP" version never supposed to include "Movie Maker". Did not I tell you that "Microsoft" offers me (that #1 result) instruction for "Windows Vista"?

And if anyone thinks that after five years one can download and install "Movie Maker", then sorry. The page that was #2 result and was called "Download Movie Maker" actually offers "Windows Update" hell as the only option to actually download the application, alongside with tons of endless-reboot "critical updates".

:doh:

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