Bill Gates Admits That CTRL-Alt-Delete Was a Mistake
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...at least as a requirement to log into a PC.
Bill Gates "finally" caved to pressure and admitted that CTRL-Alt-Delete was a "mistake," which seems a little harsh for a three-key combination used by frustrated PC users for decades. "We could have had a single button, but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't wanna give us our single button," he said in an interview for a Harvard fundraising campaign. "It was a mistake," he said, an admission that has tech bloggers cheering.
To be clear, Gates is referring to CTRL-Alt-Delete for logging into Windows, not the command for restarting after the blue screen of death. Unlike a Mac, which after booting up requires a user to log-in, PC's require CTRL-Alt-Delete first, an admittedly clunky step. But, it was that kind of institutionalization that "made it famous," to borrow the words of its inventor, former IBM engineer David Bradley. Bradley came up with the combination to hasten the reboot process, in case of things like the blue screen of death. Gates, however, forced it into the front and center of our consciousness with the log-in requirement.
Read the full story at TheAtlanticWire.com.
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