Mojave Users Think Vista Is Sexy
The hinted at new marketing campaign Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, mentioned in his company-wide memo is beginning to pick up steam, with the official unveiling of the Mojave Experiment page. The Mojave Experiment is the marketing blitz Microsoft is banking to change the absolutely horrible perception of the current OS, Windows Vista.
As we all know (and most of us are guilty of), Vista bashing has become common place in the tech world, and that has bled over to the general public. Apple's well-done and extremely popular "Mac vs. PC" campaign has been a key driver of the public malaise toward Vista, but the initial problems Vista had did not help one bit either. Now that most of the issues have been fixed, Microsoft is trying to find a way to let the world know that Vista is actually a pretty good OS. If the attitudes of the people I'm surrounded by are any indication, that's not an easy road.
The Mojave Experiment is essentially "Stage One" of this uneasy road. The Microsoft marketing team conducted some marketing research under the premise of showing people their new OS they called Mojave. The people brought in were non-Vista users, for one reason or another. At the onset of the "survey" the MS team asked for the participants impression of Vista and why they don't use the OS. They were then showed "Mojave" and its various features and tools and then asked for their reaction. An overwhelming majority (over 90%) of participants then rated Mojave higher than Vista based on the impression they got of Mojave, with an average rating of 8.5 out of 10. Finally, it was revealed to the participants that Mojave was actually Vista. Then all sorts of fun and interesting reactions ensued (my personal favorite was then man that asked "why isn't slower?").
Many of the reactions have been captured and are on display over at the Mojave Experiment's official site. I'm going to go out on a ledge here and predict a major marketing campaign involving TV and print ads revolving around this message. As someone that has been using Vista for a year, I can't say that I'm too surprised by this. I mean, it's an OS, it has a few things about it that I don't like, but so does XP and Mac OS X, and I'm enjoying Vista on the whole (Tiny, I think, would disagree with me...).
Will this really change the PR tide against Vista? I'm going to go out on another ledge and say no. It will slow the hate down in the general public, but I think they've left the PR barrage against Vista go on too long to really stop it all together.
UPDATE: One of my favorite bloggers, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb posted an article strongly criticizing Mojave Experiment. I strongly disagreed with him, and posted so in the comments of his story. I could be horribly wrong. Or he could. It's probably in the middle somewhere. Check it out if you'd like.
Jesse James
Posted to Hot Stuff, In the News on 29 July 2008
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: Advertising, Microsoft, Mojave Experiment, Vista, Windows
3D iPhone glasses. Why?
Well, this still doesn't change the fact that even if it looks good, it's still crap under the hood. I can do more with an XP operating system than with a Vista system. Microsoft thinks its users are stupid and tries to make the software "smarter" than the user. That means taking away functionality.
I'm also one of the Vista users who has never had a problem with it. It runs fine and I've only encountered one minor bug (which is to be expected with a new OS). The only issues I've hard are compatibility problems with older programs, but again, that's just the nature of the beast when moving to a newer OS.
Lol, thanks for the kind words. All I know is "the experiment must continue!" ha!
It isn't slower because it's being run under Microsoft's conditions. It's just like when Steve Jobs demoes new tech at his keynotes: he's using either a maxed-out iMac or a maxed-out Mac Pro. It doesn't run that well on a stock Mini. I'm sure whatever setup Microsoft is presenting these people with has a lot of services disabled and runs on at least four gigs of RAM and a DX10 video card, which is exactly the problem with Vista Microsoft has done nothing to fix. It's still designed to eat silicon like it's going out of style. On top of that, presenting people with features is very different from actually living with the thing.
I think the OS is a lot more usable than its predecessors, apart from all the layers of legacy design. Microsoft did a good job copying some basic human interface concepts that have been known to Apple and Be for over a decade. Unfortunately, high-end gaming rigs and usable UIs target two very disparate demographics, as Apple can attest. So who's Vista supposed to be good for?
To address the issue of "maxed out PC" in one reply: The site lists the specs of the PC used, the only relevant spec I remember was that it ONLY had 2 gig of RAM (I thought that was pretty brave of MS since I "heard" Vista barely runs at all with so little RAM).
Personally, I think the whole "Vista sucks" issue is related to the "MicroSoft sucks" anti-fanboy crowd.
Anyone who's been around long enough to go through several OS upgrades knows there are ALWAYS "issues" involved; old software may not work, hardware requirements go up, some OEM manufacturers drag their feet upgrading hardware or drivers or never bother, etc.
You could avoid the issue somewhat by going with a proprietary hardware/software system from, say, Apple, if you don't mind the limitations of that, or any, proprietary system (don't need to go into that, right?).
So I don't have a problem whatsoever with MS trying to break the mistaken public perception that Vista must be avoided.