vnunet.com comment: Bill Gates powers down

Bill Gates officially stepped down from Microsoft last week

Like it or loath it Microsoft has been pivotal in computing history, and it will be generations before the company becomes a footnote in history.

Its course has been inextricably linked to the rise of the computing industry and it is fair to say that Microsoft has done more than any other corporate to promote the computer.

On a personal level I have been using computers with Microsoft code for over 25 years and have watched the company grow and change, sharing its triumphs and tragedies.

So as Bill Gates steps down it is time for me to take a personal reflection on the good and bad things for which Gates and Microsoft are responsible.

GOOD

1. Providing a unified computing environment
We would not have the computing industry we have today without Microsoft. Having a single operating system dominating the personal computer market has meant that scores of software developers had a consistent set of standards to work with and a mass market in which to sell their products.

This has led to much dislike of Gates by some, but without it we'd have a hodgepodge of competing operating systems with small but distinct ghettos of software developers and users.

This would have made learning to use a computer much tougher and would definitely have harmed the take-up of PCs around the world.

You could argue, and you'd be correct, that DOS (and later Windows) is not the most technically adept of operating systems.

Indeed much of Microsoft's business plan is based not around providing the best software but providing code that is good enough.

There have been better operating systems, OS/2 and BeOS spring to mind instantly, but none has been as successful.

But the effect of this unified environment was not only good for the software industry but for hardware as well.

The continually falling price of PCs is down to the manufacturing process becoming commoditised thanks to the single set of hardware specifications that Microsoft built.

Now any factory worker or home enthusiast with a few days' training can put together a PC, and the result is cheaper computers.

Compare this with Apple's approach of keeping the entire process in-house and you'll see the difference.

Apple kit is expensive and, while it works beautifully, you can't expect someone on a low income to spend money for food on a computer just because Steve Jobs thinks his vision is better.

Gates has often been accused of wanting to control all of the software in the word but Jobs wants to control all the software and all the hardware, and in an open market that dog just won't hunt.

2. The Office suite
Microsoft Office suites changed the way business applications were sold and initially dramatically reduced their cost, making the adoption of the computer as an everyday tool for work much more widespread.

Prior to this, individual companies dominated in certain spheres. WordPerfect was the de facto standard for word processing, Lotus was supreme in the spreadsheet market.

And while these were in many cases best of breed they were bedevilled with compatibility problems and expensive to buy individually.

By bundling together a bunch of 'good enough' applications at a low cost, businesses (especially small ones) could have guaranteed compatibility among a wide range of useful business tools.

It also added Outlook, which opened out email services to many who couldn't afford them in the past.

Yes, this came at the price of squeezing out better products, and was certainly one of the first cases of Microsoft using its near monopoly position to push out more advanced competition.

But the benefits for business were immense and it pushed compatibility standardisation across the whole industry, albeit very much in Microsoft's favour.

3. Monthly patch releases
The monthly patch release cycle wasn't a Microsoft innovation per se but the company did much to standardise the practice and in doing so made life a lot simpler for systems administrators around the world.

There are still too many software companies who think it acceptable to parachute in software patches with little or no warning, making the life of the administrator a misery.

Imagine you've just installed a 50-system network upgrade and are looking forward to a few weeks of free time to catch up on paperwork, sleep and maybe your relationship when all of a sudden a critical patch lands on your inbox.

Even worse are those companies that just don't bother to release patches until they have to.

Some of the vulnerabilities these patches fix have been hanging around for years, quite literally, and with the volume of valuable data these applications handle that's a security nightmare waiting to happen.

By adhering to a monthly patch cycle Microsoft built up the expectation among customers that this was the way things should be and forced other software companies to offer similar good practice.

OK, it wasn't all roses. Microsoft's short lived and largely PR driven decision to move to weekly patch cycles was a pain in the backside, not least for journalists who had to think up new ways of writing the headline 'Microsoft patches X flaws' every week.

Thankfully it was quickly dropped but the idea of regular patch cycles remained firmly embedded as the way these things should be done.

4. Windows NT 4
I know I'm going to get stick for this from some quarters, but Windows NT 4 was a stonkingly good bit of code and came at just the right time.

At the start of the 1990s the Unix wars were in full flow and if you wanted to get into systems administration you either had to become an expert in many subtly different systems or tie your colours to the mast of a single flavour and lose your job if you picked the wrong one and it failed to take off.

Then in 1993 Windows NT came out. While I would personally allege that many of its best features were stolen from IBM during the Windows/OS/2 deal, the end result was classic Microsoft: 'good enough to do the job' without blowing your socks off with high-end features.

It wasn't until Vista that the effect of the NT software really started to wane and as a result an entire generation of systems administrators could concentrate on one skills set and become expert in their jobs without worrying that their next career choice would include the phrase 'Do you want fries with that?'.

5. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
For many years Bill Gates has been the richest man on the planet, with a personal net worth that puts many countries to shame, and he's made others on his staff millionaires at the same time.

By and large the Microsoft Millionaires Club has used its wealth responsibly. You only have to look at the improvements to Seattle and its surroundings to see that money has been ploughed back into the area, largely in personal projects that have benefited the community.

Sure, there have been exceptions - Paul Allen's services to the mega-yacht industry spring to mind - but Allen has also done great things with his billions.

Compare this to the excesses of William Randolph Hearst or Charles W. Schwab and I'm prepared to forgive a man his desire to own a yellow submarine.

But in starting the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and persuading so many of the other richest folk in the world to contribute, Gates may be overseeing a global redistribution of wealth that would make Karl Marx gnash his teeth with envy.

We live in a world where the weapons budgets for a single year could guarantee every person on the planet clean drinking water, and where people die in their thousands daily from easily treatable diseases.

We still lack a malaria vaccine, something that could save millions of lives, and yet we spend less in developing such a drug than we do marketing others that give impotent men erections.

Gates has seen this and he isn't going to take it any more. The Foundation is making great strides not only in spending money to cure the symptoms, but investing in the research and development to find cures.

It is an awesome legacy and will ultimately make Gates more loved and famous than his computer career ever will.

OK, that's the good stuff and there's probably enough there to drive the Microsoft haters into a frenzy and make keyboards melt with hate-mail telling me how foolish I am and how I know nothing of the technology industry.

So let's take a look at the bad stuff we can attribute to Gates and Microsoft, and believe me this was a much easier list to generate than the first one.

BAD

1. Enforcing a unified computing environment
For all the benefits of a unified computer software environment there are some major disadvantages too.

Having a single standard used by over 90 per cent of the personal computers in the world is increasingly becoming a liability, not an advantage.

The explosion in hacking for profit has shown that letting the criminal fraternity concentrate on one operating system is netting them billions each year and that it's time for a change.

Apple enthusiasts make much of the fact that there are seldom viruses for their platforms; indeed they get very smug about the whole thing.

But the simple fact is that there's very little point in writing malware for Macs if profit is your goal. Why target five or 10 per cent of the world's computers when the rest are available?

Then add into the equation the fact that the traditional PC is getting pretty much outdated.

The beige box that sits under the desk is being replaced by laptops, handheld computers, ultra portable PCs, smartphones and netbooks, and having a unified building code for hardware is no longer the advantage it once was.

But most importantly there is the simple fact that the internet has made the benefits of a single software environment virtually meaningless.

In areas where the internet is pervasive we no longer need a single set of applications, because we can use whatever we like (within reason) from our browsers and enjoy all the benefits with few of the disadvantages.

This is something Microsoft still refuses to see and in fact probably can't admit to itself. Its Office applications are redundant in a world where Google gives them away for free.

People don't care about the increasingly esoteric reasons to buy the latest version of Office because most of us just want a word processor that spell checks. Until Microsoft recognises this fact the company will be in trouble.

2. Aggressive practices
Microsoft has enforced its near monopoly with the ruthlessness that would put the Mafia to shame.

A lot of good products and people have been left by the wayside in Gates's ruthless quest for dominance, and the effects have made his company one of the most hated in the industry.

Now you can argue that such practices are not limited to Microsoft, and you'd be right. Lotus, for example, paid millions for VisiCalc just to shut it down, and there are countless other examples.

But Microsoft's dominance probably means they've shut down more start-ups than most venture capitalists, and in ways that have bred resentment.

Be it by predatory pricing, deliberately introducing software conflicts, subverting standards or just plain copying of ideas, Microsoft has cut a swathe through the best and the brightest in the industry.

You could either join the company as an employee or vassal, or get crushed underfoot and left in the gutter. Good business practice this may be, but it leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth.

Add into that the very aggressive nature of the people themselves. Gates may look like the kind of scrawny nerd who spent his high school years getting his head flushed down the toilet, but underneath he has a mind like a scalpel and the killer instinct of a rabid mongoose.

Gates's partner in crime, as it were, is Steve Ballmer. It's easy to laugh at Ballmer's over-enthusiastic hype and bombastic cries of " Developers!" but he's also highly aggressive and much more physical than most people in his position could get away with.

This aggression has infiltrated the company and, while it's been beneficial in some ways, it has led to bad decisions, as the next point illustrates.

3. Internet Explorer
You could argue that this is just a manifestation of aggression, but Internet Explorer (IE) is more than that; it typifies most of the problems that Microsoft suffers.

The internet caught Bill Gates by surprise. Even while most of the rest of the industry was seeing its potential Gates was still dismissing it as a fad.

Once he realised he was wrong he had to play catch up and this led to all kinds of shenanigans that still haunt the company today.

Because Microsoft came late to the internet, Netscape had already achieved top dog position. So in characteristic style Microsoft decided to cut the competition down to size.

The first step was to cut off revenue to Netscape by the simple expedient of giving its key product away for free.

Next Microsoft bundled the browser into the operating system and locked it in there tightly. While it was technically possible to remove IE it was a tough job and most consumers wouldn't have known where to start.

So consumers were faced with a choice: pay for a browser and install it (Netscape didn't give their key product away until 1998) or just use the one that was already on there. The answer was obvious.

As a result, in around five years, IE was the browser of choice for 95 per cent of the world's population. Having achieved crushing market dominance what did Microsoft do? Virtually nothing.

Development stalled completely and the company went from releasing a new version every year to a four-year gap between versions six and seven. It was a classic example of why monopolies are bad for innovation.

It was only when the plucky upstart Mozilla came to town that Microsoft actually started doing any serious browser development.

Even now Microsoft is playing catch up and many of the features it adds are inspired by the Firefox browser. Tabbed browsing is a case in point.

The browser wars have proved immensely costly to Microsoft, both in terms of reputation and financials.

The company has had to pay out millions in compensation and its conduct has seen it tied up in litigation and focused the spotlight on its business practices.

4. 'Version Three' syndrome
While Microsoft has done very well with 'good enough' code. the rest of us have had to suffer through some real turkeys.

This problem has bedevilled the company right from the get go, as anyone who used DOS 2, 4 or the dire Microsoft Bob will know. But as the company's dominance grew so these programs became much more widely used and thus much more painful.

The problem is that because of Microsoft's market position users just had to suffer through and pray the developers could pull it together next time. It led to what I call Microsoft's 'Version Three' syndrome.

Version one is a toe in the water; Microsoft puts out a product just to say it was in the market and to scare off the competition.

Version two deals with the major flaws in version one and it's not until version three that you get anything really usable.

This might sound cynical but look at the evidence. Windows 1.0 was, in my opinion, a dog of a system and its second iteration not much better.

It wasn't until Windows 3.0 that we got something that was actually possible to use without cursing the developers at Redmond. The same pattern was repeated with Windows 95, Windows 95B and Windows 98.

Similarly Windows CE, known to many simply as WinCE for the emotions it aroused, took until version three to be well designed enough to be usable and power friendly enough to be practical, and some say it's still not there yet.

5. Vista
Microsoft's Vista operating system is my last bad point to pin on Microsoft and it's one that will continue long after Bill has left the building.

It was spawned over fears that Microsoft was becoming too vulnerable to attack and was initially promised as a ground-up rewrite that would change forever the perception that Microsoft was an easy mark for hackers.

To me it is a classic example of a product that was badly managed from the start. Vista was announced in 2001 and initially expected some time around 2003/4, but continual rewrites and a rumoured complete scrapping of much of the code meant it arrived years later.

As deadlines slipped again and again, people began to panic and many of the promised features were scrapped and planned for later iterations.

At the same time the hardware required to run it became increasingly high-end, a classic developer's mistake of writing code for hardware that you want to run rather than what people have actually got.

As a result, if you want to use the full featured Vista Ultimate, you've got to have a very powerful PC indeed.

I won't touch a Vista system unless it's got 2GB of Ram, a dual-core processor and a powerful graphics card, and that's not an option for businesses that have become standardised on XP.

When it became clear that Vista wasn't going to ship before Christmas 2006, PC manufacturers started to grumble, pointing out that they were going to lose sales in the crucial run up to Christmas because of the delays.

So the 'Vista Ready' and 'Vista Capable' marketing campaigns were devised. Sadly, as the subsequent class action suit has shown, the term Vista Capable may have been stretching things slightly.

Vista has some very good points, especially for systems administrators and f or certain applications like high-end audio use.

But for the general consumer the only real difference is a snazzy new user interface and that's not enough reason to change. Hopefully things will improve with new service packs but until then I, and many others, are sticking to XP.

*********************

So there we have it. Whether the good points outweigh the bad is a question that will have IT enthusiasts arguing for many years to come but overall I can't help thinking that, for all its sins, Microsoft has been a positive force overall.

We certainly wouldn't have had an industry as popular or widespread as the one we have today if Bill had stayed at Harvard and Paul Allen had stuck to building beautiful code in some faceless corporation.

Love it or loathe it Microsoft has changed the world, and we are almost all richer for it.