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If you go check out Microsoft's page for the Mojave Experiment , you'll see a cute little black and white screen telling you that interesting stuff is to come. Kind of reminds me of the Pepsi Challenge (yes, I do remember some of that... and no, I'm not really older than dirt) where Pepsi was being completely slaughtered by Coke in public opinion and so Pepsi went around daring people to choose the better cola between them and Coke and they showed all these commercials of people saying, "Oh wow!! That's Pepsi!?! no!! Seriously!?!" and becoming newly converted Pepsi drinkers.
Microsoft is doing something similar with Windows Vista, though without the actual comparison against a competitor. The enemy of Vista right now is public opinion. There is a general feeling of discontent with Vista, whether that feeling is real or not, that appears to be rippling through the Inter-tubes. Microsoft's contention is that this negative public opinion has little to do with the Vista product itself and everything to do with Apple's onslaught of Mac vs. PC ads, blogs, periodicals, and a constant barrage of negative public sentiment.
So what's Mojave? The participants of the "study" are being told they're going to get a 10 minute live demo of the new upcoming Microsoft OS, codenamed "Mojave". What they are actually looking at is nothing more than Windows Vista. What they hope to get is the reaction like the folks from the Pepsi challenge.. "Oh my god!! That's Vista?!?!? No!!! Really?!?!? I'm SO upgrading to Vista when I get home!!"
My Inner Cynic says: Seriously, this is a big freaking scam. Microsoft is going out with a computer loaded with a 512MB high-end video card and at minimum 2GB ram on hardware that they could pre-certify as 100% compatible. They aren't going to be showing them running high-end Direct3D games that crash during pixel shading, they won't show them the UAC prompts that piss people off, and they won't show them how you can sometimes wait 45 seconds to delete a 1KB file from the Recycle Bin (I freaking LOVE that feature...)
My Inner Optimist says: This could be good for Microsoft. If you are fighting negative public opinion, you can ignore the bad stuff and keep on keeping on and hope the negative opinion fades away. If you are a politican, you can create a war in a foreign country and say, "look!! over there!!" while you botch the current state of affairs at home (OK, so that kinda belongs in the cynic category). Or your other option would be to try and create some positive public opinion, or refute the negative opinions. Microsoft's goal here is to say, "Yeah, everyone thinks Vista sucks but..check it out...they're wrong!"
This thing could go either way for Microsoft. The problem is that the public sentiment about the company as a whole has been so bad lately that most people looking at this will see it as an attempt to sweep Vista under the rug while they work on Windows 7, bandage their wounds, and stop the hemorrhaging damage Apple did with its Mac vs. PC campaign. Microsoft should NEVER have remained silent during those ads. They basically ran that one set of commercials for Vista and then stopped, which was a completely bonehead maneuver.
So stay tuned to the website tomorrow and we'll see what the results of the Mojave Experiment really turn out to be!
10 minutes ? You could barely delete a file in such a short time frame.
Anyway, the prob with Vista being mainly hardware compatibility and raw
power, just preselecting and testing the HW can make a difference. But not
a solution.
Will Shipley has posted a thoughtful - though undeniably still in his style
- comment on Mojave, and why the experiment is fundamentally flawed, see:
http://wilshipley.com/blog/2008/07/mojave-experiment-bad-science-bad.html
I actually don't think the ads are going to work. I think most people think
computers are hard, and these people seem too "ordinary" for their views to
be valid.
To me, the interesting part is the people that rant against vista, but
don't even recognize the interface.
