Bill Gates admits Control-Alt-Delete was a mistake, blames IBM
By Gadiola Emanuel - 5:09:00 AM
Microsoft co-founder
Bill Gates has finally admitted that forcing users to press the
Control-Alt-Delete key combination to log into a PC was a mistake. In an
interview at a Harvard fundraising campaign, Gates discusses his early
days building Microsoft and the all-important Control-Alt-Delete
decision. If you've used an old version of the software or use Windows
at work then you will have experienced the odd requirement. Gates
expains the key combination is designed to prevent other apps from
faking the login prompt and stealing a password.
"It was a mistake," Gates
admits to an audience left laughing at his honesty. "We could have had a
single button, but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't wanna
give us our single button." David Bradley, an engineer who worked on
the original IBM PC, invented the combination which was originally
designed to reboot a PC. "I may have invented it, but Bill made it
famous," Bradley said in an interview previously,
leaving Bill Gates looking rather awkward. To this day the combination
still exists in Windows 8, allowing users to lock a machine or access
the task manager. While Windows 8 defaults to a new login screen, it's
still possible to use the traditional Control-Alt-Delete requirement and
a number of businesses running on Windows XP and Windows 7 will still
use it every day.
Gates has admitted other mistakes too
Control-Alt-Delete isn't the only recent mistake admission by Bill Gates. Earlier this year the Microsoft chairman admitted
that the software maker didn't nail the mobile market when it had the
opportunity. "We didn't miss cellphones, but the way that we went about
it didn't allow us to get the leadership," said Gates at the time,
before admitting the strategy was "clearly a mistake." Current CEO Steve
Ballmer, who plans to retire shortly, has also been admitting his mistakes recently.
"I regret there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused
on what we had to do around Windows [Vista] that we weren't able to
redeploy talent to the new device called the phone," explained Ballmer
at a recent Microsoft financial analysts meeting. Microsoft is now
searching for a new CEO who can help with the company's fresh devices
and services plan to regain some mobile market share and move away from
its PC and Control-Alt-Delete legacies.
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