Bill Gates admits Control-Alt-Delete was a mistake, blames IBM
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
explains 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
No comments:
Post a Comment