Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)
- ID
- 22204
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 07 Sep 2026, 11:27 PM
- Fetched
- 10 Sep 2026, 12:03 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://www.techemails.com/p/bill-gates-tries-to-install-movie-maker
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 3.5
- Created
- 10 Sep 2026, 1:10 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coders
What happened
A 2003 internal Microsoft email from Bill Gates to Jim Allchin documents Gates's frustrated attempt to download Movie Maker, encountering site timeouts, confusing download names, no system filtering, multiple redirects to Windows Update, 17MB of unexpected downloads, a 6-minute install that froze his machine, and a forced reboot. Gates calls Windows usability 'systematic degradation' and says the experience was 'so slow it is unusable.'
Why it matters
The email is a concrete reminder that even the most powerful user in a company cannot bypass bad UX. For builders shipping installers, download flows, or update pipelines, the specific failure chain here—timeout on the landing page, unfiltered results, search not matching 'moviemaker' vs 'movie maker', redirecting to a separate update system, opaque 6-minute install, unnecessary reboot—is a checklist of things to verify in your own onboarding. There is no Malaysia-specific or AI-specific relevance.
Discussion angle
Use this as a quick icebreaker: map Gates's 2003 pain points onto a modern SaaS signup or CLI install flow and ask which of these mistakes still exist in tools the audience uses today.