Gabe Newell Quotes

I think that Windows 8 is kind of a catastrophe for everybody in the PC space.

Windows is probably the most important product in the entire PC industry. Everything we do in terms of supporting touch, new hardware, accessibility has incredible impact.

We all love Linux, but it's also a fact that some people might not be able to migrate.

I appreciate all the devices the Windows people are coming up with, but the operating system... I just want to smash it.

Linux is its own worst enemy: it's splintered, it has different distributions, it's too complex to run for most people.

Before the commercial ventures, Linux tended to be rather hard to set up, because most of the developers were motivated mainly by their own interests.

The iPad needs to catch up with Flash before I put a hand on it.

There are lots of Linux users who don't care how the kernel works, but only want to use it. That is a tribute to how good Linux is.

Why should someone have to retrain themselves to use a new application that does the same basic thing as the old application, just because something as trivial as the operating system changed out from under them?

As somebody who participates in the overall PC ecosystem, it's totally great when faster wireless networks and standards come out or when graphics get faster. Windows 8 was like this giant sadness. It just hurts everybody in the PC business.

I remember endless Apple v. Windows debates in the early '90s when I was in college. Macs were better machines, everyone said; the whole Office thing was a huge pain. It was difficult to transfer files between operating systems, and generally speaking, if you wanted to do Office stuff, you needed a Windows machine.

A great laptop running the new kinds of user interfaces and apps that people now love on phones and tablets would be a big, exciting event that would help seal the deal. But there hasn't yet been a product that emphatically suggests the era of the traditional PC is fading.

For many years, even as users became more sophisticated, personal computers took too much effort to use without problem-solving, keeping alive the yearning for greater simplicity. Microsoft's dominant Windows platform, in particular, was a home for all manner of bugs and problems that required IT people to straighten out.

A long time ago, we had to build interfaces to connect with other companies, and I thought that was a great idea. The company had to pay a lot of money to build it and basically launched it, but our whole operating system almost broke. So, we couldn't continue it. In the end, I had to go on the train to Paris to explain that I had spent millions.

We actually believe Windows 8 is the new era for the PC plus. We believe with a single push of a button you can move seamlessly in and out of both worlds. We believe you can have touch, a pen, a mouse, and a keyboard.

I write almost entlirely on Macs, because: Windows gives me hives.

Putting Windows [3.11] on top of DOS is like putting whipped cream on a road apple [horse poop].

Microsoft's new OS, Windows 7, may finally be a worthy successor to XP, eliminating the clutter of Vista and letting users get to what they want to use without the fuss. All this, while remaining compatible with their IT departments' demands for scalability and custom implementations.

The iPhone is so easy to use and navigate - I'd be lost without it.

Apple makes great hardware. The reality is, in the OS, we see things differently.

In addition to making Android available for free, Google also lets phone makers change the code and customize it so that an Android phone made by, say, Samsung has a different user interface than an Android phone from Motorola.

If you have a billion people running a phone in every corner of their lives, and all these third-party apps and all these countries and all these languages, there are going to be issues.

The iPhone was the first phone that brought what we used to think of as 'desktop quality' software to a handheld platform: software where you just say, 'Wow, that's a great user experience,' not merely, 'Wow, that's a great user experience for a handheld.'

If any PC manufacturer has made money selling PCs retail in the last 10 years, I'd like to know who they are.

The Windows 95 launch was such an incredible experience.