“Microsoft [recently] captured people who were told they were getting sneak peak at some future version of Windows named ‘Mojave.’ Instead, they were shown a repackaged Vista,” John C. Dvorak writes for MarketWatch.
“The idea, from Microsoft’s perspective, was to find individuals who had a negative viewpoint on Vista and wow them with the next-generation OS to see what they thought. See the Mojave Experiment site,” Dvorak writes. “The company’s goal was to prove that users’ initial opinion was wrong and that they probably had never seen Vista before — which seems to be the case in most instances.”
Dvorak writes, “This stunt has now been analyzed to death by the tech press [but] all the analysis and corporate posturing miss the key point: Microsoft has to ask itself why it needs to do something like this in the first place.“
Dvorak writes, “Ironically, the comments made in the Mojave video do nothing more than confirm the problem. As things sit now, Vista is no more than a pathetic embodiment of the sad-sack character portrayed by Hodgman in the Apple ads as far as the public is concerned.”
“The likelihood of the mostly humorless Microsoft approach to advertising somehow matching Apple’s in effectiveness is nil. In this race for mindshare, Microsoft is the tortoise and Apple is the hare,” Dvorak writes. “But unlike in the fable where the hare dawdled, Apple left the starting line two years early and has been going full tilt ever since. The tortoise is apparently brain-damaged and doing nothing.”
Full article – gulp, recommended – here.
Amazingly, this one from Dvorak is a good read and right on point, too. The bloated gas bag must be taking his meds this week.
We’ve already done our take regarding this on Tuesday: Microsoft launches ‘Mojave Experiment’ Windows Vista rehab site.
Yes, we hate it when John agrees with us.
One of those rare moments from Dvorak, or maybe Microsoft forgot to mail the check?
Can you believe his last statement!!!
But unlike in the fable where the hare dawdled, Apple left the starting line two years early and has been going full tilt ever since. The tortoise is apparently brain-damaged and doing nothing
The last line, I daresay, summs up MS absolutely spot on…
“The tortoise is apparently brain-damaged and doing nothing.”
I think everyone is getting is frustrated with M$’s performance. Remember, there are a lot of people that have hung their hats on being M$ pundits, experts, and IT professionals. It must suck to go to work everyday knowing that your world revolves around crappy software from a company that cares nothing about making a quality product. I mean every time one of these MSCE’s is haggling over virus software with a vendor don’t you he/she knows that with a real OS the anti-virus budget could a be a salary bonus?
Just my $0.02
somewhere… Pigs are flying
I think John needs to learn how to use big words like “embodiment” correctly.
Before you flame me, notice he wrote that Vista embodies Hodgman’s character. That’s the reverse of the definition of embodiment. Was he making a literary joke? Doubtful.
Professionals are supposed to know how to use their tools!
News Flash, Dvorak has found a drug combo that works!
“The bloated gas bag….” Hahahaha… yeah!
Dvorak is a page-hit whore. This time he’s attacking micros#%t. He’s still a whore. This time his attack is justified. And he’s still a whore. Etc.
I think Apple needs to do put those same folk in front of OSX.
And, interview them on their views of Microsoft’s deception.
Very funny article from an unlikely source.
“Vista is no more than a pathetic embodiment of the sad-sack character portrayed by Hodgman in the Apple ads as far as the public is concerned.”
Not bad Dvorak.
Please don’t package me with a guy that should and doesn’t take med’s!
I’m better than that.
Dvorak states the obvious, Microsoft has an image problem.
But Dvoark fudges reality after that, intimating that it’s still only the public’s perception of Vista that’s the problem, and that Vista really is a good operating system, if only Microsoft had marketed Vista properly.
And that’s where Dvorak is, as usual, wrong.
@ trex67
“Ditto” I could not have said it better
Even a broken clock is right twice a day…
“News Flash, Dvorak has found a drug combo that works!”
Now if that dumbass Rush Limbaugh could find a drug combo that actaully worked, perhaps he too would stop all the crap coming out of his mouth…
(yeah, yeah, I know – no direct relatiom to the post…)
The ‘Mojave Experiment’ reminds me of the ‘Milgram Experiment’. Check it out and you will see what I mean…
Microsoft is not like a brain-damaged rabbit.
It’s like a paraplegic, brain-damaged rabbit.
Folger’s Crystals.
> Yes, we hate it when John agrees with us.
I think John actually agrees with you most of the time. He just enjoys playing the “tech curmudgeon” role too much to admit it.
Even the rats are looking to get off the MS boat.
I guess I’m not that much of a fanboi as I thought because I disagree with most sentiments here.
I enjoy listening to John C. Dvorak on various podcasts (Cranky Geeks, TWIT). He does criticize Apple but he criticizes other companies as well. Most of his criticisms are not unfounded. I would suggest listening to him (or actually reading what he writes) but that might set the more rabid fanbois on me.
That is all.
Et tu, Dvorak?
Vista is a magnificent accomplishment in OS technology. It is easily leaps and bounds ahead of MAC’s 30-year old Unix (P)OS. If you ask me, MAC has a lot of catching up to do.
As far as the ‘Mojave’ campaign goes, I think it’s fantastic. Microsoft is doing something you MAC lemmings don’t understand which is taking the high road. Microsoft doesn’t have to trash MAC to build itself up, unlike you know who in Cupertino. The security, stability and first-rate user experience in Vista speaks for itself. Go to the Mojave Experiment site and see for yourselves, MAC dorks.
Your potential. Our passion.™
P.S. You can play games on Windows.
John has in the past said some pretty stupid things, no doubt he will in the future too but I do strongly agree with him on this one. Vista isn’t a total disaster but Microsoft broke a lot of promises, failed to deliver on so many levels and Vista does have some genuine problems too.
I’ve just sat infront of Windows Explorer and tried to get from ‘Pictures’ to ‘Videos’ and I couldn’t do it, I had to close it out and open Explorer again. I could have done that in seconds in the Finder. I always want to use Expose too, I have the side buttons of my mouse to do ‘All Windows’ and as I type this I just went to press them as I changed tracks in iTunes. IE 7 has a terrible layout but then Firefox is so good I’ve not need to use it. And don’t get me started on the Vista Control Panel, it must have 50 million options but you wouldn’t know it because they are so well hidden, only a problem if you actually want to change any of your settings!
Zune Wang:
Like Brett Farve, you apparently don’t know when to quit when you’re ahead.
Like Green Bay, I’ll take up an offering to pay you not to post any more?
Deal?
Your loss, Our gain™
That’s it! I’m gonna watch Cranky Geeks!
@ Me In LA
Who’s Brett Farve? Are you talking about Brett Favre who plays American Football? That’s the game where all those girly men wear pads and helmets so they don’t get hurt when they actually play the game for the few seconds between breaks to figure out what to do next, timeouts, commercials and replays. What a bunch of Nancy-Boys.
Your potential. Our passion.™
trex67 said it best.
I bet he did this negative piece to try and convince readers that he is objective in his analysis. That “gas bag” line is a winner i must say but he is still a hit-whore.
Only fags use the word “fanboi”
dev singh. Mr. Limbaugh celebrated 20 years of broadcasting today. The libs are trying to shut down both him and other conservative talk radio people by bringing back the old “Fairness (Hahahahahaha) Doctrine”. Nancy ‘Botox’ Pelosi and her ilk are trying their best to silence any opposition to their left wing socialist agenda. Air Amerika failed to get any listeners, even though Soros threw money at it. If O- Bummer fakes his way into office we’ll all be paying more for less. Did you inflate your tires today to prevent drilling for more oil?
Oh, BTW, Dvorak is off his meds.
The fact that even Dvorak is bashing the Redmond Relapse Rednecks is just more of a sign of how M$ is in the toilet spiral and the 7 year in development Longhorn(Vista) may just be their quicksand. Zune is a failure, Office is bloatware and can only get more rarely-used features stapled onto it at a hefty upgrade price tag, their surface technology just got wrapped around the projector instead of on top of it, the X-box barely has its head above water, and they couldn’t even convince a toilet-spiraling portal hub like Yahoo to drown with them. Bill was smart to see the future and get out and let Ballmer take the brunt of the fall. Just like Dell, they had their few years of glory.
“But unlike in the fable where the hare dawdled, Apple left the starting line two years early and has been going full tilt ever since. The tortoise is apparently brain-damaged and doing nothing.”
That is actually quite funny.
So what if he’s a hit whore?
Wouldn’t you try controversial topics to get hits, MDN?
Oh, wait.
You already do.
Dvorak writes, “This stunt has now been analyzed to death by the tech press [but] all the analysis and corporate posturing miss the key point: Microsoft has to ask itself why it needs to do something like this in the first place.”
This is the crux of the issue.
MS controls 90% of the market share yet people don’t know what their latest OS looks like or they think its crap or they simply don’t give a rip.
IT, in spite of their hostility to Apple, is actually helping Apple by being at best apathetic and at worst hostile to Vista.
I am the Muffin Man.
ron,
“Did you inflate your tires today to prevent drilling for more oil? “
I don’t know about ‘dev singh’, but I just go around slashing the tires on SUVs and 4x4s. I’m not sure if it stops the drilling for oil, but I sure enjoy it.
“I am the Muffin Man.”
But of course you are.
From Ron: “Mr. Limbaugh celebrated 20 years of broadcasting today. The libs are trying to shut down both him and other conservative talk radio people by bringing back the old ‘Fairness (Hahahahahaha) Doctrine’.”
Seriously? LOL. Sorry, Ron, but simmer down the paranoia already. Limbaugh ain’t even on the ol’ lib radar. He broadcasts to a small percentage of fanatics who he riles up to make himself money. That’s all he does. He has no influence on the general public (as proven by his worthless “Operation Chaos”). He is nothing more than an entertainer, and is no threat to libs. At worse, most consider him lame comedy.
“Dvorak” is the sound my cat makes when it coughs up a hairball.
ron, are you on Exxon’s payroll? Even if the offshore drilling in contention were allowed, it would take 10 years for leases to be awarded, and another 10 years before any oil is pumped. If we don’t seriously get away from oil for transportation even in the next 5 years, we are toast!
This is just another diversionary obstructionist tactic from the repugs who are responsible for all the problems we are having now. Get a brain, moran, and stop supporting the idiots who are slowly killing you.
“Microsoft [recently] captured people who were told they were getting sneak peak at some future version of Windows named ‘Mojave.’ Instead, they were shown a repackaged Vista,”
I’m pretty sure they were expecting a sneak “peek,” not “peak.” Microsoft’s Vista has no peaks, only troughs.
In terms of overall mismanagement (based on competence, not scope or scale of the problem) — who is worse: George Bush or Steve Ballmer?
Mintdog,
Now that is a real conundrum!
yes david dvorak we love you !
i mean john pogue !
i’m confused.
Who are you, and what have you done with John Dvorak?
(MDN magic word is zebra, as in did the zebra change his stripes?)
“Mr. Limbaugh celebrated 20 years of broadcasting today.”
Wow. The fanfare is overwhelming. Nobody outside of Ron even knew this. Where’s the fireworks and parades and giant-ass birthday cake donated by Exxon? Did Mr. Limbaugh pontificate how cool he is through his entire show today, or just 90% of it? Just wondering.
Back on topic, Dvorak writes, “In this race for mindshare, Microsoft is the tortoise and Apple is the hare. But unlike in the fable where the hare dawdled, Apple left the starting line two years early and has been going full tilt ever since. The tortoise is apparently brain-damaged and doing nothing.”
There’s a perfectly logical explanation. His check from Microsoft bounced. This is his payback.
Even an old, broken, analogue, Grandfather clock, like Dvorak, is right twice a day.
my guess? he isn’t having any luck baiting Mac users, so now he is baiting MS astro turfers.
and, as a sad aside to Ron…..
clearly you are one of the 12 people his listen to his hypocritical gasbagness. no one else cares.
neomonkey, ” Even if the offshore drilling in contention were allowed, it would take 10 years for leases to be awarded, and another 10 years before any oil is pumped.”
If I don’t lay the first brick, the wall won’t be built. Nothing will be pumped if we don’t start, you maroon.
You libs are a joke – “Shut down the House Nancy, we can’t afford to have a vote on drilling offshore”. The price of oil went down right after the Prez OK’d offshore drilling. Why? Because the speculators got out.
I saw on CBS evening news the other day where most of this oil is offshore of California. They said that even if we get all of this oil that at the current usage rate it will only last 16 months.
That sure will turn it all around.
In the meantime, McCain (not to be confused with McAble) is going to suspend the gas tax. Brilliant! He’s not only a hero, he’s a savior. That’s the kind of logic we need. They need to wrap that old mummy up and stuff him back in his sarcophagus.
“One of those rare moments from Dvorak, or maybe Microsoft forgot to mail the check?”
Sounds like he got Mossberg’s check by accident.
Just wait for Steve’s Mac OS X Mojave transition.
Ron: “If I don’t lay the first brick, the wall won’t be built. Nothing will be pumped if we don’t start, you maroon.”
Yeah…. so the oil companies can sell all of our oil that they pump to the world market, and have it go to places like China and Russia. Screw that. Tell me ALL the oil they drill will be put to American use, and American use only, and then we can talk.
Corporatist Republicans don’t care about America…. they just care about their wallets.
Actually, Apple left the starting line 4 or 5 years early, not 2.
A sugar pill is a sugar pill, despite how mental tricks can temporarily fool a tester. You can hypnotize someone that he is impervious to bombs and bullets too, but it’s no protection when he stands in the middle of the explosion – when his PC goes nuke – which is the kind of experiment they do in the Mojave, by the way. How appropo.
Microsoft misses the point entirely. People don’t hate Vista after using it for a short period in a controlled environment. They hate it after using it in the real world and realizing everything worked better under XP.
Besides, how can Microsoft be proud of making people feel stupid?
> I’m guessing that this Mojave stunt is part of the company’s scheme to change perceptions about Vista.
Uh no…Microsoft cannot believe it spent a mountain of money to come up with a pig, so they’re trying to find out if the pig will fly with a bit of window dressing. In other words, they’re in a state of complete denial; definitely out of touch with users, technology and reality.
This and all the comments have made my day!
No, I am the muffin man.
Ooh! I can hardly wait for Apple’s next ad – the one that makes fun of this Mojave experiment.
The silliest human has yet a chance to reach his human common sense, sometimes!
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“Ooh! I can hardly wait for Apple’s next ad – the one that makes fun of this Mojave experiment.”
An obviously sun-stoked PC is bragging to Mac about how people are loving Vista…. then it all turns out to be a mirage
“at the current usage rate it will only last 16 months.”
If the oil runs out that quickly, why are they old wells off the California coast still pumping when new wells have been banned for decades?
They will be pumping oil off the coast of California long after Dvorak starts turning into oil.
Et tu, Dvorak?
Vista is a magnificent accomplishment for Microsoft in OS technology. It is easily leaps and bounds ahead of Windows 98 and XP in your face, ask me more dumb questions, and help me copy MAC’s slick interface while with a drunken smile saying we innovate. MAC’s 30-year old Unix (P)OS, If you ask me, has a rock solid OS with many PC lemmings catching up to the concept that “Resistance is futile, must buy Mac” oh great Jobs.
As far as the ‘Mojave’ campaign goes, I think it’s fantastic example of the fear that is now running through the corporate yacht MS TITANIC. Microsoft is doing something you MAC lemmings don’t understand, sail blind at full speed, which, is taking the high road to hell. Microsoft doesn’t have to trash MAC to build itself up, unlike you in Cupertino, Steve Ballmer /Bill Gates and minions are doing a fine job of trashing its own products. The security, stability and first-rate user experience in Vista speaks for itself- a job screwed up at the get-go is a Microsoft trademark and is all first rate in their eyes. Go to the Mojave Experiment site and see for yourselves, MAC dorks, see Microsoft’s water-boarding of the tech world and see how your keen knowledge has saved you from the techno terrorism .
Your potential. Our Blunder.™
P.S. You can play games on Windows only after you clean your drive of virus’ and spyware.
MacArch,
“If the oil runs out that quickly, why are they old wells off the California coast still pumping when new wells have been banned for decades? “
Beats me, that’s just what CBS said. Would the new rigs be pumping from new oil fields or from the ones they are already using?
You know how the news media works. They never give you all the details. Maybe I’ll give Google a try and see what I can find.
MacArch,
My search efforts haven’t produced anything really relevant about how much oil there actually is. Sorry.
But here is the link to the CBS clip that I saw:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/30/eveningnews/main4309471.shtml
Al – ya beat me to it, tick tock
BC
I’ve heard that the best way to get off of heroin is to do more and more heroin. The same will probably works as well for an Oil addiction.
Is that wrong?
Overweight America,
“I’ve heard that the best way to get off of heroin is to do more and more heroin. The same will probably works as well for an Oil addiction.
Is that wrong?”
You are correct. If you take enough heroin, you end your addiction by dying.
If you use enough oil, the earth turns into a burning ember, and you end your addiction by dying. Same results.
Whenever you agree with Dvorak, you need to check yourself for a pulse and breath on a mirror to make sure you’re still alive.
He is right in this article. MS OS is terribly over bloated and the ENTIRE company needs to be overhauled. How can an organization consistently design poor products, while they have basically unlimited financial and technical resources ? Bad Management.