Bill Gates confessed that he regrets the "control-alt-delete" function on computers, but blames the mandatory combination of keys on IBM.
During a talk at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York, Microsoft's co-founder made the comments while sharing the stage with other powerful business leaders, including Dangote Industries chief executive Aliko Dangote, PepsiCo chairman Indra Nooyi, and Softbank Group chairman Masayoshi Son.
After moderator David Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group suggested that control-alt-delete was Gates idea, bringing laughter from the audience, Gates emerged with his own explanation pinning it on the keyboard maker IBM.
"Clearly, the people involved, they should have put another key on in order to make that work," Gates said, noting that at the time it was the only way to get a guaranteed interrupt generated on the IBM keyboard, ZDNet.com said.
"I'm not sure you can go back and change small things in your life without putting the other things at risk. Sure, if I can make one small edit, I'd make that a single key operation," Gates added.
During a Harvard University question-and-answer in 2013, Gates addressed a similar question, USA Today said.
"We could have had a single button," Gates said. "The guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't want to give us our single button... It was a mistake."
Gates and Paul Allen developed a version of the popular computer language BASIC program for the Altair computer while students at Harvard and started Microsoft in 1975, Entrepreneur magazine said.
Gates and Allen went on to write software for other computer start-ups including Commodore, Apple, and Tandy Corp.
Microsoft, though, transformed itself when it struck a deal to license its MS-DOS operating system to IBM for its new computer in the early 1980s, where it became the standard operating system for the computer industry.
Bloomberg's Global Business Forum on Wednesday brought together some of the world's most significant world leaders and international chief executive officers to address and work to solve the most pressing economic issues today, stated the business media company.
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