Okay, so this is from an Apple-centric site, but that doesn't mean it's not without some truth. After all Microsoft is known for a lot of things, but rock-solid software is not one of them. If there's justice in this world, then that should be part of Gates' legacy.
Posted by Jason at June 19, 2006 08:54 PMSoftware (and especially an operating system) should be hard to use. It should be unintuitive. It should crash often. It should require numerous patches before it becomes stable, because asking all those programmers to actually debug their code before releasing it is ridiculous! After all, writing good code is just too hard! That is the true legacy of Bill Gates, getting consumers the world over accustomed to buying and using bad software.
And it really is an amazing accomplishment when you think about it. After all, when you buy a car, you expect it to work, right? You don’t buy it and then take it back to the dealership in 6 months for your ‘Ford Service Pack 3’ right? You buy a TV, DVD player, PlayStation, microwave oven or dish washer expecting it to work. You buy Windows expecting it to fail. Doesn’t that seem odd to anyone but me?