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Bill Gates says having Ctrl Alt Del command in Windows computers was a mistake

Bill Gates further blamed the IBM developers for what he thought was a mistake

September 22, 2017 / 11:17 IST
No. 2: Bill Gates | Country: US | Total net worth $89.4B | Industry: Technology (Image: Reuters)

Bill Gates has confessed that he regrets installation of the Ctrl+Alt+Delete command on Windows computers. The Microsoft founder said that he would have replaced it with a single button option if he could go back.

Gates made the comment at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum on Wednesday. When asked by David Rubenstein, co-founder and CEO of the Carlyle Group about the popular three finger command, Gates confessed that he would have changed it if it was possible.

"I am not sure you can go back and change the small things in your life without putting the other things at risk…sure, if I could make one small edit I would make that a single key operation," Gates said, further adding that “a lot of machines nowadays do have that (single button) as a more obvious function."

Bill Gates further blamed the IBM developers for what he thought was a mistake. “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. We programmed at a low level, it was a mistake,” he said.

The Ctrl+Alt+Delete command is used to lock or log into a Personal Computer. It is widely accepted that the popular command option was developed by David Bradley of IBM. The command was in fact not originally meant for end users but ended up becoming an integral part of the day to day operations.

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first published: Sep 22, 2017 11:15 am

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