“Bill Gates’ first day at work in the newly created role of technology adviser got off to a rocky start yesterday as the Microsoft founder struggled for hours to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade,” Andy Borowitz writes for The New Yorker.
“After failing to install the upgrade by lunchtime, Mr. Gates summoned the new Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella, who attempted to help him with the installation, but with no success,” Borowitz writes. “While the two men worked behind closed doors, one source described the situation as ‘tense.'”
Borowitz writes, “A Microsoft spokesman said only that Mr. Gates’ first day in his new job had been ‘a learning experience…'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end. – Sid Caesar
See: Microsoft CEO Ballmer spends two days unsuccessfully trying to clean Windows PC malware – June 5, 2006
Related articles:
Microsoft names Satya Nadella as CEO; Ballmer’s and Nadella’s letters to employees – February 4, 2014
Satya Nadella? Seriously, Microsoft? – January 31, 2014
LOL! That’s too perfect.
Ah. Satire. Nevermind.
🙁
Not Really…
Satya-re ?
Surely, Microsoft can afford to give Bill Gates a new PC with the update pre-installed by the IT staff. Or have things gotten THAT bad a Microsoft.
Probably a plan by Satya Nadella to keep Gates out of the “office.”
Sarcasm.
Yes, my post WAS sarcasm. 😉
The second day will be consumed with attempted virus and malware removal
That is pathetic. Ha!
Dog food…, eat your own BG.
And that [waste] time is only a third of the time he will spend “designing” the next generation of “products”. Good start I guess.
Get a Mac boys!! So you can at lead see what’s good to have on your “pipeline”.
Lol classic!!!
The shape of things to come from Microsoft.
Love it 🙂
MDN: You do know that Andy’s column is “tongue in cheek” ? Anyway he’s funny…see prior columns…
It’s a mystery, but the fact the MacDailyNews categorized this under “humor” seems to be a clue. 😉
Oh, the irony.
Bill: “I’m a PC..”
Satya: “I’m a PC.”
Well, that explains everything.
The fix is to get it PREinstalled!
But you can’t buy a MB Air with Win 8.1 preinstalled.
Whether this is comedy or reality – Apple is and has been missing an opportunity to bury MSoft because Apple is following a policy of tweaking its products – both the soft and hard ones – instead of innovating. I know, the new Mac Pro is an exception but what the hell have they been waiting on with the roll out of this thing? If it had been done in a timely manner, Apple would have taken over the corporate and government markets by now and Bill Gates wouldn’t have to figure out how to install the latest OS on PCs because they would have become antiques by now. But, no. Apple has done basically nothing to seize an opportunity that has now been lost. Flame on with your usual defense of the defenseless but we all know this is exactly what has happened in the Tim Cook era.
Wait, you mean the opportunity is lost because Bill Gates is back working at Microsloth 1 day a week? Methinks you give Bill too much credit. Microsloth will not be able to do again what they did in the 90’s. Apple has way too much momentum and it’s a completely different world.
I realize you’re not looking for intelligent discourse, you’re only looking for an opportunity to bash Tim Cook, but I felt that I had to respond to your idiocy.
Jay is right on.
Apple *should* be trouncing M$ with a devastating iWork release that makes Office look like Clippy.
Ok, so this is relatively new ground for them, fine. How about in the creative field? Apple *should* be wiping the floor with Adobe with a kick-butt Aperture X that makes use of the new Mac Pro’s capabilities, adds some expanded brush tools and generally makes the purchase of Photoshop and Lightroom redundant.
As for W8.1…. Mavericks *should* have been a ground-breaking release. New name new direction. A good time to FTFF and release a Contacts/Calendar/Mail app that finally gets rid of the ridiculous toing and froing I do all day between the three. What better opportunity to give windblows sufferers a compelling reason to switch.?
With flippin $150b in the bank why the heck not???
Invite some -real- office people and some -real- creative pros to Cupertino, ask them what they need and get going.!.!
Micros**t is weak. Time to get the knives out.
Just wait. It is going to happen before too long !
Agreed. Apple should pull out the long knives and go for jugular.
Spend idle cash to outdo Adobe and MS Office.
What are they waiting for?
Agreed!
Apple has been standing by watching the door open wide for a new leader in the PC Market. Unfortunately, instead of advancing during this time, Apple has released several messed up programs such as iWork, iMovie, iOS 7 and Compressor. Whatever happened to quality control testing and checking on the needs of the market?
Quality products lead to higher stock prices.
This guy must be writing satire. I mean come on. Someone like Bill Gates has to install his own software at Microsoft? That’s the work of minions in the IT dept. This story must be completely made up.
As easy as 1-23…
It said “New Yorker” on the masthead – ah, sure this was not the Onion? If it is true (and from experience I know it can take a good part of a day to install anything related to MS) and it somehow leaked out, he deserves the experience. Maybe he now would like to apologize to all of the people who have had to put up with POS MS software for all these years.
Just checked the calendar. Nope, it’s not April.
I know exactly what went wrong. They installed the wrong version of Windows 8.0. And then 8.1 wouldn’t show up in the Microsoft App Store. They should have installed the retail version, but instead installed the Volume License version, and of course it doesn’t tell you what’s wrong, just that you have to contact your “Administrator” to install Windows 8.1. Then they said, “What? I am the CEO, I need no stinking administrators!”
If that wasn’t the problem, then Bills computer was still running Windows XP. They tried installing Windows 8.1. It said he couldn’t keep his apps and settings. Crap…. so they realized they had to install Vista, Then Win 7, then Win 8.0, then Win 8.1 So of course it takes all day.. They won’t be done with this until tomorrow.
Maybe they were holding it wrong. 😉
Check out the pic of Gates on the New Yorker site. His face looks like a poorly maintained gravel road. Even Jobs looked better at the end of his life.
That was not called for – for either person.
But holidays in the sun are bad for you and spending years flying around Africa are bound to take their toll
I want to know where this guy goes for a haircut so that I can avoid it.
For his whole life, he has never been able to get a decent haircut.
Please understand that this is a humor column – my biggest laugh of the day.
Step 1: plug in.
Step 2: install software, restart.
Step 2: install software, restart.
Step 2: install software, restart.
Step 2: install software, restart.
…
There is no step 3!
From the background way way back in the building someone cries out “Get a Mac”!
(The referenced commercial is #23 in this playlist.)
Haha. Wasn’t there an Apple commercial in the late 80s or early 90s where 5 guys were standing around a printer trying to figure out why it wouldn’t print? If there wasn’t, there should have been. At a very large conglomerate back the where I worked, I had a Mac IICi and a LaserWriter. Virtually everyone else had XTs or ATs and dot matrix printers that most of the time wouldn’t print. What you saw want even close to what got printed, if you ever got it to print. It might have been the DOS era. But every day if you looked around the office of around 90 people, at any time there were at least 10% of them standing around printers producing absolutely nothing.
Yeah, I should have mentioned that ad. I think the ad was about someone trying to do a presentation on a laptop connected to a projector. Couldn’t get it to work and then somewhere in the background someone yells out “Get a Mac” LOL
This is the captain, is there a genius on the plane?
Someone in the back with a blue shirt pops up, “I’m a genius!”
WOW! So Microsoft IS truly innovating. It used to take MS CEO’s three days to install their Windows Upgrade!
Unsure if this is real or an Onion spoof?
This all for show!
It’s to show people how they will start to re engineer the company from “sales bozo” guy to “steve jobs engineer” guy. Everyone seems to be falling for it.
When upgrading Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 most of the time the upgrade corrupts the user profile. Windows 8 is the most non-intuitive interface I’ve EVER seen.
Switched to the MDN page from the Onion page, so for a second I thought the headline of this article was an Onion story.
Moral of the story, if you need help with an upgrade . . . don’t ask a CEO. 😉