Bill Gates Confession: ALL Microsoft Products Are Disappointing*

Henry Blodget | May 28, 2008 9:31 AM

billgates.jpgBill G's defense of crappy Vista at D6 yesterday? It's not just Vista.

"There's no product we've ever shipped...that is 100% of what I've wanted."

*UPDATE: The tribe has spoken--and has concluded that I am a moron. Sorry! Believe it or not, I actually gathered that Bill G doesn't think that all of Microsoft's products stink. Next time I'll try an emoticon.

See Also:
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Why Vista Is Failing: R&D Budget Went To Springsteen Cover Band

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33 Comments

Gordon said:
"I'm dissatisfied with every record the Beatles ever fucking made. There ain't one of them I wouldn't remake... including all the Beatles records and all my individual ones......But you play me those tracks today and I want to remake every damn one of them. There's not a single one... I heard 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' on the radio last night. It's abysmal, you know. The track is just terrible. I mean, it's great, but it wasn't made right, know what I mean? But that's the artistic trip, isn't it? That's why you keep going. But to get back to your original question about the Beatles and their music, the answer is that we did some good stuff and we did some bad stuff." - John Lennon, Playboy Interview, 1980
I_am_legend said:
Great quote Gordon
fred zhang said:
by taking the words out of context, you really showed your objectivity, albeit lack of it.
I_am_legend said:
Henry I am going to side with Fred on this one, you are starting to sound really biased against MSFT. I bet Bill did not mean it the way you are presenting.
bob said:
On a practical matter, aiming for 100% and you will never ship anything. But on the other hand the pursuit for 100% makes greatness out of an ordinary bunch of people. windows3, office, XP, flight simulator, are all very good products with many bugs, but so what.
Oh come on...of course he didn't. Obviously tongue in cheek (I thought).
brian said:
it could also be used to illustrate the sacrifices that need to be made in order to bring a product to market.
Henry Spitzer said:
All quoting of John Lennon and Gates' personal lamenting aside, MSFT has never done anything really original. You'd think that MSFT is a domestic version of a manufacturing plant in China. Rip off someone else's idea or buy their company for the products, slap it with some of your packaging and sell it as the real deal. When was the last time if ever, that you heard Gates pledge a five nines level of reliability? The silence is deafening. How can anything with 35M+ lines of code be anything but bloated, buggy and unstable? Gates know that fact better than any one and that is his business crime: selling sub-standard software that is overpriced. The only way MSFT can overcome their problems is to start from scratch. Scrap Windows and task all of those tens of thousands of engineers with building something that is not another one of their rip-offs of the Mac OS.
Many Valley Folks said:
8:45 - Unlike many Valley folks, we don't have an anti-Microsoft thing.

9:31 - ALL Microsoft Products Are Disappointing
Bill and Steve spoke last night, for goodness sake. Lots of good material there...
I_am_legend said:
Hey come on Henry, this is the response you wanted. Sorta like the Family Guy episode when Peter walks into the bar full of New Yorkers and says, "Mets suck, Yankees suck, Knicks suck"
Gordon said:
shame on you henry. you say vista is "crappy" yet admittedly, you've never even used it.
Deez said:
how much did he like the Red Ring of Death MS shipped?
Todd (URL) said:
Probably how God feels about humanity...
Bruce (URL) said:
I would love to be sitting near Bill Gates when his laptop freezes up and he has to do a cold reboot.

I would pay real money just to see the look on his face. If I were Bill Gates, I would call somebody up and chew on their ass: why don't you guys take a look at this computer and tell me why it happened?

I'm guessing he doesn't even bother to make those calls anymore.

Since I'm not Bill Gates, I just went out and bought a Mac instead. Control Alt Delete is no longer my friend.
Marah Marie (URL) said:
Bruce,

Bill Gates has given recorded presentations (you can easily find the videos on the Web) where his computer bluescreened while he tried to demonstrate something. It happens. There is a saying I want to use here but it's too profane to pass muster (just that "s#$% obvoiusly happens!").

The only problem I have with this post is the title.

"ALL Microsoft Products Are Disappointing"

It's an immediate "Oh bull$%t!" moment for me, then, sure enough, here's what Bill actually said:

"There's no product we've ever shipped...that is 100% of what I've wanted."

Well, so what? There's no blog post or poem I've ever written or any other form of creative project I've ever undertaken that has worked out to 90% of what I wanted, much less 100%. Yet I went with the best that I had in me to give to people rather than hiding what I made under a rock somewhere. Maybe there's times I really suck (I'm the first to agree) but I'll try to find those areas that I suck the hardest in and fix them when I can. Microsoft does the same thing. It's a learning process, a creative process...all rolled into one thing: doing the best you can with whatever you've got.

It's the human condition that we're always our own worst critics. Bill is just expressing what is normal for many, many people to say...and he's being realistic about it, too, in admitting that MS products are obviously not perfect. Owning up to your mistakes is actually a good quality and shouldn't be mocked...or turned into sensational, inaccurate headlines...Henry.
Allen Harkleroad (URL) said:
Hey cut Microsoft some slack about their products. Office:Mac 2008 is awesome. allen
jaime said:
i know bill was smart.
a smart person see when makes wrong.
bill see a lot.
Mark said:
I've sold software and have done audio engineering for a long time. So I work a lot with computers. I don't wanna just bash Microsoft, but Henry has a point. They try to win the market with money rather than quality. Windows Vista is horrible. The Xbox 360 had hundreds upon hundreds sold that just died (red ring of death). Doesn't seem Microsoft is worried about quality as they are exclusivity.
Ruben Zevallos Jr. (URL) said:
Nothing is 100% and at software area, we cannot expect to make all features that we want in the right time. I have more than 30 years in IT area, most of time developing software and I never had the time or the money to do what I really want... imagine Microsoft?
John (URL) said:
Sad thing about Vista is, Microsoft have done it before with Windows ME. Vista is a victim of XP user comfort.
Bill G can afford to be his own critic, his life's food and lodging funding is secured already.
Juju said:
Software development is very tedious and complicated things. It is unlike the other fields business products. In my point of view, Bugs are unavoidable but as long as they are continously trying to solve the problems through the Patches. Isn't it good enough?
Lava Kafle (URL) said:
I have been playing with windows system including DOS, apple, and like since 1990s.
What i found is:
Microsoft products are crappy. They have poor quality control than us. Our Quality Assurance Systems are far better than them even though we are a small company in Nepal.
I mostly hate over smart auto actions and unknown actions that occur due to bugs in microsoft codes. Anyway Bill gates, you did a lot of things to world before retiring with tears.
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