> I'm still kind of surprised it took him that long to learn that software quality had fallen off that far
Isn't that to some extent (or perhaps exactly) what is going on today? All employees at MS are using the polished Enterprise edition without all the cruft and without many of the annoyances. I bet most of them have never tried to use, eg, the home edition. Few of them has probably ever tried to pick a new PC from a retail store full of trialware and "optimizations" made by the retail store.
The point is that most MS employees don't get to see the edition of Windows that we, normal consumers, do.
Isn't that to some extent (or perhaps exactly) what is going on today? All employees at MS are using the polished Enterprise edition without all the cruft and without many of the annoyances. I bet most of them have never tried to use, eg, the home edition. Few of them has probably ever tried to pick a new PC from a retail store full of trialware and "optimizations" made by the retail store.
The point is that most MS employees don't get to see the edition of Windows that we, normal consumers, do.