I am really enjoying these Bill Gates memos. He is actually spot on with his evaluation of the subscription. Unfortunately, his call for a "windows download service" is just another knee jerk reaction from msft as they got beat in yet another crucial consumer sector.

I wonder if the way he phrased it -- the idea of a "windows download service" -- indicates he was thinking about what it would do for Microsoft (especially versus Apple) rather than what it could do for potential customers. I can sympathize as I certainly find it baffling to empathize with average users, especially the ones with warped mental models who think Yahoo or Google is the Internet.

Anyway, Bill Gates knows Apple has better design (as indicated in this memo) and that Steve Jobs has better taste than he does (he's said publicly he'd give a lot to have it).

We should think of the average joe's mental model as being warped, but be honest about why it's warped. Those who have engineered the UIs haven't given Joe Average the right feedback and information to form the correct models.

The Inmates are Running the Asylum

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=04cFCVXC_AUC&...

With no itunes store for windows at the time --> it was Windows customers missing out on the service, not "All customers". (Everyone knows Linux users aren't "customers" - :P) With that kind of context, "windows download service" makes sense.

From the article: "Five years later, the iTunes Store has sold five billion songs, and Microsoft still doesn’t have an answer."

Not quite accurate, the Zune and it's "marketplace" were launched November 19, 2006. It's an answer, not a great one but an answer none the less.

The Zune marketplace wasn't even Microsoft's first entry. They started with PlaysForSure as a way to elbow in on a market despite not having a player (not to mention a music store).

The Zune isn't an answer to anything but "What would an iPod look like 8 years ago, if the morons who designed your crappy washer and dryer from 1986 worked on it?"

Is this supposed to refute me or prove my point? Because of the taste of Zune fans, I can't be sure.

The best thing I can say about zuneoriginals.net might be lipstick on a pig. If you caught me on a generous day.

We've all been blaming Bill Gates for ages (yes, he's not perfect)but, now, I'm starting to think that culprit is someone else at Microsoft.

Or Microsoft itself. It's probably a collection of small mistakes and bigger ones that agglutinate together in a couple HUGE ones.

How very convenient it would be if all huge failures could be attributed to a single person!

I don't know. Who is "We all?" I think people who know have been saying Bill Gates is smart for ages. I really do truly hate Microsoft, from the bottom of my heart, because how bad and ugly most of their stuff is weighs deeply on my sensitive aesthetic sense. Just knowing I have to share a planet and 99.9% of my genome with people who are happy with that crap causes me deep existential anxiety. So there aren't many people who hate Microsoft more then me. But, I always thought Bill Gates was really smart. As much as I hate Microsoft, that kind of evil is a smart evil.

The problem is, first of all, that all this evaluation doesn't mean shit if you don't fire the people responsible for your crap sucking, and second of all, that no one is really responsible for things not sucking. The problem with MS is the MBA's, and that anyone with a strong enough vision to make stuff not suck will have to bump heads with very powerful institutional forces that pull MS towards suckage.

The problem isn't quite someone at microsoft as the fact there is no one there with power AND taste who can make a big difference. (there are maybe a few at low levels, there are some of microsoft things that don't suck, and that even evidence taste, but it's the rare exception not the rule.)

I gotta add something to this. Bill Gates is also not evil. I reread this and it sounds like I think he's evil. No. Not at all. The system is evil, but not Gates himself. He's doing a lot of awesome work right now. The world needs him.

But microsoft does mostly evil and is mostly the suck.

I find it ironic and quite unlikely that these memos show up in PDF format. I'm pretty sure Gates uses Office. I don't really know how to judge whether these are legitimate memos or not. I also can't imagine Microsoft sitting there while confidential memos are released in their backyard. That doesn't sound like M$.

Either way the memo is interesting and Gates is surprisingly insightful. It's easy for us looking back with 20/20 hindsight and say "Of course!" ... but in 2003 it wasn't so obvious.

This is probably from discovery from a legal case. In those situations, paper is usually shuffled around and then scanned into PDFs. Sending the original electronic form would make it easier for opposing counsel to work.

insightful? yes. surprising that he's insightful? no.

It's surprising to me that he's insightful when it comes to music. An area that M$ has struggled. I agree it's not surprising that he is insightful in general.

Thanks for linking to a quote instead of the whole memo.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/PDF/Gates/gatesmail15.p...

I'd rather see a daring fireball link with some commentary then a direct link to a pdf

Gruber found it. He doesn't deserve to be disintermediated.

Besides, I think his commentary is often spot on.

According to guidelines for this site, you can get rid of the "preface" before the link.

On one hand, I'd rather read Gruber then the seattle PI.

On the other hand, I read his blog daily.

I get the feeling this rash of Bill Gates memos allows Gates to place all blame for MSFT failings on others; meanwhile Gates takes his money and goes to work on charitable projects.

I don't think that many would argue that Bill Gates is clueless or lacks insight into technology. Just that they disagree with the way his company applied his insights and attempted to turn them into reality.