Ctrl+Alt+Del ‘was a mistake’ admits Bill Gates, who said ‘no’ about returning as CEO

Yes, Bill Gates finally admitted that Ctrl+Alt+Del ‘was a mistake,’ but it was because the IBM design guy wouldn’t give him a single button.

At a Harvard fundraising campaign, Harvard Campaign co-chair David Rubenstein, asked Bill Gates, “Why, when I want to turn on my software and computer, do I need to have three fingers on Ctrl+Alt+Delete? What is that — where does that come from? Whose idea was that?”

Ctrl+Alt+DeleteGates began with a “complex” reply, “Basically, because when you turn your computer on, you’re gonna see some screens and eventually type your password in – you want to have something you do with the keyboard that is signaling to a very low level of the software – actually hard-coded in the hardware – that it really is bringing in the operating system you expect, instead of just a funny piece of software that puts up a screen that looks like a login screen, and then it listens to your password and then it’s able to do that.”

Then Gates finally cut to the chase and just admitted, “So we could have had a single button, but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn’t want to give us our single button and so we programed it low level that you had to — it – it’s – it was a mistake.”

Gates (again) says “no” about returning to the helm of Microsoft

Despite rumors that Gates will return to Microsoft to replace the departing Steve Ballmer, Gates told Business Insider, “No, I ran Microsoft for a period of time. And, now I’m the chairman helping out on a part-time basis.”

When asked if he was tempted to return to the path of technology in order to rid the world of Apple devices, or at least replace iPads with Microsoft’s Surface tablets, Gates stated, “Well, I’m part-time involved and Microsoft’s got a lot of stuff, the industry is doing a lot of cool things, and I keep my hand in that, but I won’t be full-time doing that.”

Meanwhile, like many others, Forbes’ Anne Marie Squeo hammered on Microsoft’s lack of a CEO succession plan. Then a piece in the New York Times suggested that Gates should follow Ballmer out the door. Robert Cyran wrote that Gates’s “many talents don’t include effectiveness as chairman. Under his leadership, Microsoft’s board left Mr. Ballmer in place too long. Now that Mr. Ballmer is to retire as chief executive within a year, Mr. Gates doesn’t have a replacement ready, an important task for any chairman.”

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