Almost all of us have used Microsoft products or services at some point in our lives. Those of you who are a few years old, about twenty years ago It has been known to cause users headaches. Many of their solutions were not fully polished and the user experience was hampered.

It would be reasonable to assume that Redmond employees are unaware of the many issues affecting their customers. However, as our colleagues at Genbeta have pointed out, a series of emails that have surfaced in some of the antitrust lawsuits the company has faced in recent years reveal Bill Gates’ role in this whole thing.

Windows usability disappointed

On January 15, 2003, Jim Allchin, vice president of Microsoft’s Platforms Division, received an email in his inbox with the title: “The systematic decay Availability of Windows.” The message was sent by none other than Bill Gates (CEO Steve Ballmer), who was the company’s co-founder and then-president.

Gates had decided to try two of the recently updated products, but his experience had turned chaotic. “Let me tell you about my experience yesterday,” said the head of the software giant, detailing the steps he followed to download Movie Maker and Microsoft Plus Digital Edition.

“I decided to download Moviemaker and buy the Digital Plus package so I went to Microsoft.com. There is a download area so I went there”.

Years later, the billionaire, who will resign from the presidency of Microsoft and devote himself entirely to philanthropy, explained how he got access to the download page. after a few tries. He elaborated, “The first five times I’ve used the page, it timed out,” and as if that wasn’t enough, he added: “This website is so slow it’s unusable.”

Microsoft.com download page in January 2003

Gates, who wanted to download Movie Maker, continued to click on the “next 45” downloads when he couldn’t find what he was looking for in the section showing the five most popular downloads at the moment. To illustrate this point, we turned to the Internet Archive and took a screenshot of what this page looked like in January 2003.

“These 45 names are totally confusing. They make things like ‘C:\Documents and Settings\info\My Documents\My Images’ look clear. Moreover, they are not filtered by system. [operativo] Where am I now?” He added that he tried to find the program from the search box, but in vain.

“I wrote filmmaker. Nothing (…) So I gave up and sent an email to Amir Majidimehr. [responsable de la División de Medios Digitales de la compañía] and I said: ‘where is this movie maker download? Is there?’. They then told me that using the download page to download something was not something they saw coming. They told me to go to the search button on the homepage and type ‘movie maker’ (not ‘moviemaker’!)”.

The Microsoft president was convinced that the program was collectively called “Moviemaker”. As they stated it expected to find the download button while typing but it didn’t.

Movie Maker on Windows XP

“[Me encontré con algo que es] It’s like a puzzle you have to solve. He told me to go to Windows Update and do a lot of magic.”
“This struck me as completely strange. Why do I have to go elsewhere and scan to download Moviemaker?

Gates followed the prompts, went to Windows Update and found the news he needed to do. 17 MB item download which he describes as “labeled in the most HORRIBLE way possible”. The system prompted him to reboot, as Windows users are used to, something he questioned and only did because he “insisted on me doing this”.

“So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called Windows XP. Why do I have to do that? Windows Update knows I have Windows XP. A lot of confusing things come up, but one of them is Moviemaker. . So I’m downloading. The download is fast, but the installation takes a few minutes. It’s unbelievable how slow it is.”

In the midst of the frustrating process of downloading the video editor, Gates received a notification that he had to download it as well. Windows Media Series 9. After doing that, she went to Add/Remove Programs to see if the program she was looking for was installed, but found a number of programs she didn’t know exactly for what they were needed.

”Did someone decide to trash the only usable partition of Windows? The file system is no longer usable. Registration is not available. This list of programs used to be a healthy place, but now everything is turned upside down. But this shit is just the beginning. The list includes things like ‘Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information’. What is ‘Q329048’? […] What a mess. And Moviemaker still doesn’t show up anywhere. That’s why I decided to give up on Moviemaker and download the Digital Plus package.”

The Microsoft Plus Digital Edition download experience was also not entirely satisfactory. In fact, after completion form with personal information (It was one of Microsoft’s first attempts to sell software directly online), the website stated that it had mistyped something and also failed to meet its second goal of the day.

“So, after over an hour of craziness and doing my PUP list and getting scared and seeing Microsoft.com is a crappy website… I didn’t run Moviemaker and I don’t have a Plus package,” the post concluded. He is the president of Microsoft, who experienced firsthand the experience that many users had at the time.

Images: MEDEF | Microsoft | Web Archive Capture

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