Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker

Jan 15, 2023

Welcome to Internal Tech Emails: internal tech industry emails that surface in public records. 🔍 If you haven’t signed up, join 50,000+ others and get the newsletter:

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones; Bharat Shah; Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta
Subject: 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 Moviemake and buy the Digital Plus pack r 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 I can in on and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in moviemaker. 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. Now 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 WindowsXP. 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 tryping 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.

From: Will Poole
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 1:27 PM
To: Amir Majidimehr; Chris Jones
Cc: Dave Fester; Rick Thompson
Subject: FW: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

Guess we should start working on a list of things that need to be fixed w/ the web sites, WU, and with windows, and identify owners. Bill's frustration is not unreasonable.

From: Amir Majidimehr
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 3:55 PM
To: Mike Beckerman; Tim Lebel; Dave Fester
Subject: FW: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

Can you guys coordinate between you on how to deal with this situation on our bits? Bill's situation is worse than my personal experience but still, this aspect of the system needs to be looked at carefully and become a sign off item for each release.

Please let me know which one of you going to be BOL for this moving forward.

Amir

From: Dave Fester
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 3:58 PM
To: Amir Majidimehr; Mike Beckerman; Tim Lebel
Subject: RE: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I replied as well. I am owning the website issues, but Mike should own the others.

From: Mike Beckerman
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 4:28 PM
To: Dave Fester; Amir Majidimehr; Tim Lebel
Subject: RE: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I'm thinking about this and am discussing with my team.

I don't know what it means to "own website issues", nor am I yet sure the best way to handle the complex mess of coordinating between product teams, WU, and MS.COM. Dave, would you please forward the other reply you mentioned?

I expect to send more on this thread in a day or two.

From: Dave Fester
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 4:31 PM
To: Mike Beckerman; Amir Majidimehr; Tim Lebel
Subject: RE: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am working with MS.com to directly address the download/discoverability of our bits (both MP9S and MM2)

From: Mike Beckerman
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 4:39 PM
To: John Martin; lan Mercer; Michael Halcoussis; Linda Averett
Cc: Chadd Knowlton; Ming-Chieh Lee
Subject: FW: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

More.

From: Mike Beckerman
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 7:36 AM
To: Mike Beckerman; John Martin; lan Mercer; Michael Halcoussis; Linda Averett
Cc: Chadd Knowlton; Ming-Chieh Lee
Subject: RE: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

haven't heard anything from any of you on this.

My take is that this web-experience mess spans many groups and deliverables (like Plus), that we need one person/team to own the overall picture, driving it, tracking the experience, etc., and that WMPG isn't really the right place. I'm thinking Dave's team. What do you think?

From: John Martin
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 11:52 AM
To: Mike Beckerman; Ian Mercer; Michael Halcoussis; Linda Averett
Cc: Chadd Knowlton; Ming-Chieh Lee
Subject: RE: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I have always been concerned about this and feel that this has a lot of engineering implications. I also feel that the reason is it such a mess is because marketing teams own release to web in this company. Frankly, we should be up in arms about this and want to program manager and develop whatever code we need to to ensure that every customer that even thinks they want to download our bits can do so in as easy and painless a way as possible. Downloading is the first step to setup and we should think of them equally or as one experience. But, if you want nothing revolutionary and want to band-aid (which is fine and understandable) then I agree with your plan to give it to Dave.

John

From: Ian Mercer
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 5:02 PM
To: John Martin; Mike Beckerman; Michael Halcoussis; Linda Averett
Cc: Chadd Knowlton; Ming-Chieh Lee; Allan Poore
Subject: RE: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I don't think you can abdicate this entirely to marketing. If WU is the preferred way to deliver bits to end users we all need to drive WU to deliver what we need, both individually and as a collective request from DMD.

One of the biggest issues today is that WU provides no way to promote a download to an end-user. We want to promote MM2 and WMP9S to end-users as something new and cool that they can get for Windows. Three lines of text describing it buried under "Windows XP" in a page that the user has to purposefully go find just isn't good enough. Why can't the WU client-side piece proactively display a bubble "Look! Cool, new features for Windows XP" and the option to display a much richer "advertisement" for the feature if the user wants to read more?

Other issues -
    MUI - I guess this is getting fixed now but it's always been an issue for us
    Link to download through WU - why can't we send a user right in to WU to get MM2 without them having to wade through the whole site?
    Critical updates that aren't really critical - if you machine is behind a firewall many just aren't critical
    Too many fixes bombarding users all the time - I routinely ignore them now and perhaps update once a month as otherwise I'd be rebooting all the time
    WU's inflexible release schedule. If there is a major tradeshow at which we want to announce we need flexibility in timing the release

-Ian

From: Mike Beckerman
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 5:09 PM
To: lan Mercer; John Martin; Michael Halcoussis; Linda Averett
Cc: Chadd Knowlten; Ming-Chieh Lee; Allan Poore
Subject: RE: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

So, I take from this that we have lots of opinions and input. However, no one appears to be saying that we, WMPG, are chartered and/or should own this. So my feedback on the thread would then be that Dave should take ownership for driving groups around today's inconsistencies, and that we should send this mail to Bharat (owns WU) as well and ask who in his team can take requirements from DMD.

Any disagreement on this?

[This document is from Comes v. Microsoft (2007).]

Original tweet

Previously: Bill Gates: "The quality is giving us a bad name" (October 19, 2000)

Previously: Bill Gates on iTunes Music Store (April 30, 2003)

Previously: Bill Gates on the iPod (November 2, 2003)

If you upgrade to a paid subscription, you’ll receive access to the full archive of internal tech emails, with 250+ documents from Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Tesla, and more. You’ll also support our work: every year, we track hundreds of court cases and review more than 10,000 filings to bring you @TechEmails.