Microsoft Vs. The World

To many, the idea of Microsoft's leading a simplicity crusade is akin to Saddam Hussein's heading a disarmament committee. This is a company that asks you to turn off your computer by pushing a button labeled START. Every new version of its software products is bigger and more complicated. ""The productivity of these products is nowhere nearly good enough to overcome some of the liabilities,'' says Netscape's Barksdale.

Microsoft executives dispute such gibes. Windows wasn't the first graphical interface, but it was certainly an improvement over its creaky, creepy predecessor, DOS. There are 28 usability labs at Microsoft set up to test products before they're shipped. The help lines log every caller's complaint, and elaborate processes kick in afterward to eliminate the most-reported bugs. Ultimately, however, Microsoft execs concede that the programs they've created are too hard for Mom and Dad. Jim Allchin, the exec most dedicated to the so-called ""Simplicity Jihad,'' admits that as jihads go, ""We're just at the starting gate.''

The Microsoft solution to making computers easier to use is, as it turns out, complex. Microsoft has spent hundreds of millions of dollars gathering some world-class computer scientists for its new research division, devoted largely to technologies that will be part of the easier-to-use computer of the future. These include whizzy computer graphics so that you'll see things more clearly, voice-recognition software and natural-language understanding so that the computer can listen to you, voice synthesis so that the computer can talk back to you, artificial-intelligence programs that make smart guesses about what you really want to do on the machine and visual processing so that the computer can see you.

Start with the speech technologies. ""If you could basically talk to your computer and say the information you wanted and it understood where to go get it, that would be a lot simpler than clicking around like a madman,'' says Gates. Microsoft's speech guru Xuedong Huang says that a ""conversational interface'' will make computing dramatically easier early next century.

Microsoft doesn't just want to make your computer a good listener, but also a good watcher. Twenty-first century versions of Windows will use built-in cameras to literally keep an eye on you. Your computer will take note if you're staring at it with a puzzled face, and it may even read your lips. The researchers understand that some people may blanch at the idea of a computer eye watching their every move, but believe that ultimately it will be as unexceptional as a mouse. ""At first people didn't like the telephone,'' says Microsoft's Matthew Turk.

Some critics think the whole approach is a bad idea. ""The simplicity we really need has zero to do with speech recognition or cameras,'' says David Gelernter, author of ""Machine Beauty.'' ""That's the tail-fin solution--we don't need gadgets, we need ideas.''