“Welcome to the ‘Mojave Experiment,'” states Microsoft’s Windows Vista rehab site.
Microsoft asks, “What do people think of Windows Vista when they don’t know it’s Windows Vista?”
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft has defeated their effort immediately simply because they have chosen the very least tech knowledgeable people to try to fool. People who can’t even recognize WIndows Vista. You won’t find a Mac OS X user in the bunch. That would defeat the purpose, because Mac OS X users are among the most tech knowledgeable people on the planet. Mac users have made conscious technology choice and are therefore better informed. We didn’t write that last sentence; Paul Thurrott of Windows Vista Secrets, Windows IT Pro Magazine, Windows Weekly, SuperSite for Windows, etc. did.
Microsoft’s Windows Vista rehab site continues, “We disguised Windows Vista codename ‘Mojave,’ the ‘next Microsoft OS,’ so regular people who’ve never used Windows Vista could see what it can do – and decide for themselves.”
Finally, Microsoft’s Windows Vista rehab site demands, “Now decide for yourself.”
The site houses a bunch of videos, which, in typical Microsoft fashion, feature ass-backwards operation: The “Play” triangle pauses each video and the “Pause” button plays them. As MacDailyNews Reader “Wingsy” wrote us, it’s “exactly opposite” of how every other video device on the planet works. “I guess it comes from thinking that ‘Start’ means Shut Down.”
Microsoft’s Adobe Flash — not Microsoft Silverlight-based — Windows Vista rehab site is here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers too numerous to mention for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: It’s sad, and telling, that Microsoft has stooped to using the least tech knowledgeable people, Windows XP and earlier users, to fool. This is like taking people who’ve lived all their lives in tar paper shacks to a trailer park filled with double-wides and asking them “Gee, isn’t this great?” Without, of course, ever showing them, or even mentioning, the beautiful mansions on the other side of town. Where the Mac users live.
And, by the way, these tech illiterates were shown a “demo” of Vista. Not let loose with the thing, not allowed to touch things on their own or, God forbid, try to install it and use it on their own PC. “Mojave Experiment?” “Rigged Experiment” is more like it.
So, Microsoft is going to try a $500 million ad campaign designed to convince to their long-suffering XP and earlier sufferers who’ve never used Mac OS X* (or else they’d be totally unimpressed with Vista disguised as “Mojave”) that even though 10,000 reviewers ran Windows Vista through extensive reviews and found it generally to be a derivative, bloated, hardware-taxing, incompatible, falsely-advertised, overpriced pile of crap that they were wrong. Everybody was wrong: the majority of corporate IT people who will not upgrade to Windows Vista, the Windows-centric and Windows-dependent reviewers, the Windows “power users,” everybody. Because Microsoft thinks they’re smarter than you and smarter than everybody. And you and everyone else made exactly the wrong choice by buying those iPods and now those iPhones and for even thinking about – much less actually – dumping Microsoft’s magnificent Windows for Macs in droves.
Bottom line: Microsoft is planning on spending $500 million to tell each person on the planet 50 times per week, “You’re just an ignorant fool and you’re stupid for not liking Windows Vista.”
Just try to keep them out of the Apple Stores, Microsoft, or your ruse is doomed.
* Microsoft’s Windows Vista rehab site does state that 22% of those duped were “Apple OS” users at one time or another, we assume – which, we guess, means: Apple DOS users back in the 1980s! Nice try, Microsoft, you weasels.
MacDailyNews’ Recommended Reading: Wil Shipley’s (Delicious Monster) excellent essay: “The Mojave Experiment:” Bad Science, Bad Marketing
Actually, ‘Mojave’ as a name is a hell of a lot better than the bland ‘vista’ moniker. However, a namechange won’t save Windows from its crippling stupidity.
I must say how wonderfully profligate MS has become. For half a billion dollars, surely – surely – they could poured it into making Windows something Apple could compete against.
OS X almost has it too easy. Put both OSes together and there’s absolutely no contest whatsoever.
I’m waiting for the next press release saying they’re committing a BILLION dollars into promoting Vista the week they replace it with XP SP4, er, Windows Vienna, 7, whatever…
At the end of the day, if MS is so desperate to rid itself of cash, they could give it back to the shareholders!
you can’t polish a turd.
you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
Well I have to admit… They are good ads.
Now, before you ream me, I’m not saying Vista is good.. I’m saying the ADS are good and they likely will strike a chord with the Joe six packs of America.
it’s like putting lipstick on a pig. Funny, the audience they’re aiming for probably find pigs wearing lipstick attractive.
Andy,
That would be a neat test. Have a Vista PC and a Mac side by side and have those same people try various actions on one and then the other.
If all of the Windows security is turned on, I’m sure it would be an enlightening experience for them. Internet Explorer against Safari, Media Player against iTunes.
Then show them all of the great extras that come with a Mac, such as iLife. Wouldn’t be much of a contest.
MikeK,
“… the Joe six packs …”
As in abs or beer? Slightly different demographics.
That’d be beer. As in most of middle America. As in who these ads are targeted towards.
I watched a few of those, but they were so overlapping and there was no real substance.
Actually *show* the people using the OS, don’t just have them talk about it.
The responses were not very convincing, simply because the people seemed sooooo convinced.
Just wait until they actually try and install it at home. Most of them would struggle to get the stupid box open. It’s fine to show them something on the latest super expensive computer, but as soon as they try put it on their home desktops and laptops they’ll be wishing they weren’t so stupid!
You can have those users Windoze, we don’t want them!
MikeK,
Middle America? Hey, I think that’s me! Mussst resissst!
Apple needs to sponsor a NASCAR team.
1 nice all black race car with the pristine logo on the hood.
How bout the guy who WASN’T convinced??!! he’s there if you look hard enough…
…and to try and make you feel like he discovered something good about the system, they take a possibly real challenging question – how come its so fast?? …as in every other version I’ve used is as slow as a pig and therefore you must have rigged this experiment etc and try to spin it as a good thing…
check it out – the guy really looks supiciously at them when they reveal its vista… and how do we know it was vista they were using??? do they ever show them actually using it??
dodgy man…
So….Mojave includes a Windows employee who will handle the computer for me and do things easily..and as one of the persons says……”that seems easy”…
I totally agree !!!! It COULD even be easier than my current setup: Myself and Leopard….
I used to see videos of gorillas that ate a bunch of bananas. Their systems couldn’t process so much sugar at once, so they’d get drunk and stagger around. On one hand, you would think how unfortunate it was that the gorilla had lost its bearings. On the other hand, you would laugh at the video and the drunken gorillas.
Microsoft is the drunken gorilla. Did they ever want to make the best OS ever? Doesn’t look like it.
It’s also the placebo effect: If you tell people they are evaluating a super-secret, future thing, they expect more. Just like how telling patients they are taking a $2.50 pain pill is more effective than if they think they are taking a 10¢ pill.
Let them try OS X and Vista side-by-side for a few hours. “Do you want Brand A or Brand B?”
“I’ll take the non-shitty one over there” (pointing to the Mac).
“Apple needs to sponsor a NASCAR team.”
Not Apple’s target market dude. If Apple did, I’d throw my damn Powerbook out the window.
Hahaha!! LOL!!! How do we know that they didn’t show these people Mac OS X??
When MS first announced they were going to spend $500M to counter Apple’s ads, I knew toilets were about to plug up in Redmond with all those wads of cash being thrown in the bowls.
But first the old ship and flat earth print ad and now the Mojave taste test, this is even more lame then I could have ever imagined.
Apple should buy ad space and time and give it to MS so they have an even bigger ad campaign and further demonstrate their brilliance.
I’ve been waiting to see Microsoft’s ad campaign before I formed an opinion on their efforts. It’s still too soon to make a final judgment, but I think they are making a mistake.
I remember that when Vista came out people were very impressed with many of it’s features and talked about it’s impressive eye candy. So I’m not surprised that a short demo of Vista met with a favorable response.
The question is, will this ad campaign help Microsoft? It’s designed to make people re-consider Vista and buy it. But Vista did not get it’s bad reputation in a vacuum. Vista isn’t just perceived as a bad product – it IS a bad product. The more Microsoft pushes to change the perception of Vista, the more those who dislike Vista will be motivated to point out Vistas defects.
I’ll wait and see. But I’m thinking that Microsoft is making a 500 million dollar mistake.
One of my best friends in on the site. They edited the ever-lovin’ krap out of his actual impressions. He says they did a little picture stitching demo and the app had a bug in it! Big ugly black lighting bolt ruining the photo, They said “it does that sometimes”. He saw right away that it was not a mac and, well whoo else? (Sorry but unbutu is not out doing multi-million dollar 3 camera product testing.)
Greg..
They don’t really have a choice do they? They can keep using XP.. which they wil do.. or upgrade to Vista, which they will have to do eventually.
Mac OS won’t run on standard PCs.. and a Mac would cost them about 600 bucks at least.
Linux is simply not a feasible OS in the real world for client side usage.
MS has no competition.
Now. If MS is losing (and they are) customers to the Mac, it means people are wiling to spend all the money on the HARDWARE, just to move, which is amazing.
FYII, these people running XP, probably think that they can run Vista on their machines at home.
That would be incorrect.
They’ll have to upgrade anyway, so getting a Mac isn’t such a crazy idea.
Or they’ll get a new PC and say “Does this have Mojave? Great!” Guess what, you have no choice.
@dijonaise,
How much did they pay your buddy to be in that “experiment”??
MS should update their slogan
Your Passion. We’d have to trick you to use our crap™
I used to be unknowledgeable and even lived in a trailer. But then I invested in the Apple iTele lifestyle and teleported my way out of it. I even teleported into the Mojave Desert once, didn’t like it.
Why live in the desert when you can live anywhere with your personal Apple teleportation system.
First up, I’m a Mac fanboy.
But, there are some things that Apple is almost Microsoft-like in just not getting it.
Just look at MS Outlook to see where Apple just doesn’t understand business-grade apps.
e.g. In iCal, todo’s don’t sync with iPhone. Cannot make recurring todo’s. In AppleMail, non confirmation-of-receipt option in an email. It’s things like that which are needed in business that Apple just doesn’t pay attention, in spite of years and years of people asking for these features. And Apple just doesn’t get it. It’s not that Apple is not marketing to business. It is not going out of its way to make products that appeal to business.
Is it a new name for a same sh.t?
Tremendously enough, M$ proves (once again) that it prefers spending monney in promoting a product then in making it better!
Such a shame! I’m flabbergasted! 😡
@Peetz
This mail confirmation thing is absolutely useless! One perfectly knows that if there’s no MailDemon failure message, the mail HAS ARRIVED period! What else damn confirmation do you need? It’s only one more useless band-width glutton.
For other specific busyness tasks, there might be quite enough pro solutions (those who win monney with it, can buy it) around to get management perfectly done with OSX… Of course, some people are just so adicted and unready to make small changes in their lives, that they will feel too hard getting rid off windose! But this is their own responsability!
@i want my iTele
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
You’re right! Have you already been at Yoltar (5th planet of Gal-mgeesh of the GrateArch) ?
Just real cool with a slightly more nitrogenize then on earth, but these very soft tree like colorfull foams!
@ BillK
The Le Mans & Formula 1 circuits are quite different than the Nascar ‘circuit’, and subsequently draw a very different demographic of fans:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24_Hours_of_Le_Mans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_One
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASCAR
The point is, because Apple is a manufacturer of *high end* consumer electronics, they shouldn’t ever consider sponsoring a Nascar team… Le Mans, maybe… Formula 1, yes, if they ever become interested in sponsoring motor-sports.
I don’t see any of it happening because, unlike Steve Ballmer who likes to throw tons of money at useless / profitless projects, Steve Jobs prefers to strategically invest Apple’s funds into projects that will actually provide a return on the investment.
If anyone here is a Nascar fan, no offense intended.
Microsoft is now stealing from Pizza Hut. Some marketing exec must have been watch TV late one night. That annoying commercial comes on, about fooling a bunch of New York restaurant goers with the new take-out pasta menu, by serving it in a fancy restaurant.
Hey! Let’s fool a bunch of naive and novice computer users into thinking Windows Vista isn’t really Windows Vista.
@Peetz,
I’m the biggest Mac fanboy around also, but I totally agree with you that Apple does NOT understand how to make business-grade applications. There is nothing on the Mac that compares to Outlook. The pitiful & bug-ridden & feature-missing Entourage comes the closest, but Apple’s apps are a VERY far cry from the amazing Outlook. You listed just a few of the dozens of problems with Apple’s apps, but there’s so many more. Too many to list. Apple just doesn’t get it. They can make a great MP3 player & a solid operating system, but they simply don’t listen to what their business customers really want. Mail and Address Book and iCal have barely changed in 5 years, yet they need so much more.
Funny thing is, MS is stupid/weaselly enough to think that they are making progress when they see the site statistics showing loads of views from Safari OSX….
When we only went there for the laugh..
Just read your post there MacBill.. not sure I should dignify it with a response, but what the hell..
If you think that Mail, iCal and Address book are not much more elegant and useful than Outlook and its vast monstrosity of features then you are my friend, what photographers call ‘pixelpeepers’. ie you can never see the whole picture for looking at the detail.
Good luck to you and your bloat.
What annoys me most about these sort of ads is that they’re so obviously rigged. Forget the whole “experiment” part and just look at the demo videos, they selling them as real people using Vista, with their kids, watching TV etc. Anyone with half a mind knows it’s fake, knows the people have been cast – but they’re pretending to be actually using the thing and somehow getting some increased level of pleasure out of it. At least with the Mac/PC ads there is no attempt to hide the fact that it’s an ad, that they’ve been cast, that they’re playing for laughs, that they’re not meant to be a 100% accurate everyday illustration of using both systems, that they’re trying to make a larger point in a short space of time.
Oh God, this just screams parody, some one please make one! Get those guys that made the “Big Ass Table” one on this, it’s be awesome!
How Sad!!!!
Well, if it comes in brown… I’m SOLD!
Good lord are they serious with some of these videos?
It is very telling that none of these people are allowed to touch the computer and are just being shown a demo. I remember when we first started showing Maya (I was an application engineer for Alias) the response from our competitor (Softimage) was that “it demos well”. Everything demos well, that is what a demo is meant to do… sell you on something. The difference here is that once people actually get their hands on Vista they decide that, yes, Vista is actually crap all those stories were true.
And if I am not mistake the page reads that there were 140 respondents to their survey. So not being awake enough to do math help me out here. What is 22% of 140? And what Apple OS did those people use anyway because I am guessing they dragged some IIgs users in off the street.
So when does the WOW start?
Just an initial observation:
Showing people something new might help them assume that it is NOT from M$, which would further motivate them to think it’s gotta be awesome.
I can wait for the next Mac vs. PC commercial to parody this!
What I don’t understand is why MS would dump all of this money into Vista, just to replace it with Windows 7 shortly. Why not start talking and advertising Windows 7?
Typical response. They were reacting to an entirely scripted demo and this was their first reaction: “Wow, it’s a 10.”
Many of them may change their mind by the next day when they’ve had time to consider what they saw, realizing they did not have the opportunity to actually USE it.
On the surface the security features of Vista look pretty good – that is until you have to interact with them on a daily basis. Then they are just annoying as hell.
“If anyone here is a Nascar fan, no offense intended.”
dude, you typed the message. they can’t read…….
Why not just wave a pocket watch in front of the customers and hypnotize them with the following : ” I LOVE VISTA “. ?
The real true is that they are afraid to let customers try it themselves because they’ll realize how counter-intuitive Vista is.
A pig by any other name is still a pig.
WOW, I just realized this Mojave thingie is just one big advertisement. They never, ever do anything but praise Vista.
Thanks it. Just lipstick praise. WOW Costs 300 million Huh?
Just wow. As in Wow what a waste.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
Just a thought.
en
On hidden camera, these restaurant patrons don’t know that we swapped the fancy connoisseur brand coffee, with Microsoft Vista brand coffee. Do you think they can taste the difference? Let’s watch and see!!
Yaaawwwwnnnn… —– ….—– …. Oh, I’m sorry – Micro – who?
None of those people are very convincing. They are the normal Jane and Joe Walmart crowd that Microsoft caters to. None of them seem to have any real OS experience, and none of them seem to have been allowed to dig into the OS.
As a professional who has been using Windows since its inception, I would have noticed right away that I was dealing with Vista, or at least something that was not an upgrade.
Here is what they should have done: They should have had the person bring in their own PC and have them, after backing up their system, install and use “Mojave” on it. I think if they did that, the story would be a lot different.
@almux
“This mail confirmation thing is absolutely useless! One perfectly knows that if there’s no MailDemon failure message, the mail HAS ARRIVED period! What else damn confirmation do you need? It’s only one more useless band-width glutton.”
Excuse, me, a notification email is a bandwidth glutton? Gee, there I thought P2P was chomping up ISPs capacities. Thanks for educating me. NOT.
Mail servers can easily be configured not to send mailer-daemon messages when there are problems. Sometimes this is done to save a server from having to respond to millions of spams. There could also be a problem with a mailer-daemon message being sent back to you.
Deciding that a feature like message-read notification is useless is exactly the kind of stupid attitude Peetz was talking about. Apple shouldn’t ignore such things and neither should you.
M$ should have hired some better actors for the Mojave Experiment. Most of them are like really bad soap actors.
MW: likely, as in, “that was real? Not likely”.
I use VISTA on a daily basis. Contrary to popular belief, it is no worse than Windows XP, and in most ways much better.
Windows VISTA has undergone the most bizarre systematic assassination in the media I’ve seen since the old “Beleaguered Apple” days.
I can only say that most of the readers of MDN are intelligent people and you should not judge by the minority of vocal readers on this site.
Keep in mind, VISTA requires power. Don’t install VISTA on a 3 or 4 year old computer.
When you use it, you will be surprised that it’s not the be all end all of all things evil in the computer world, the way it’s been made to seem.
As much as you know the media lies about computers and technology, this is no exception. They just echo each other ad nauseam. Once the big fat ball of generally accepted opinion is rolling from one media outlet to another, all serious investigation ceases and everyone just signs on.
Would I trade Mac OS X for VISTA, no. Mac OS X is my primary computing platform. Is Mac OS X better than Vista? Overall, I’d say yes, but it doesn’t mean VISTA is all wrong.
Above all else, remember that STUPIDITY IS VIRAL, and the vast majority of people are easily infected.
NASCAR: The fact is that Apple HAS SPONSORED a NASCAR auto. I’ve seen it myself.
Look closely and you’ll see it in the Pixar movie “Cars”. As I recall, it’s a white car with a black Apple logo on the hood.
theloniousMac,
“I can only say that most of the readers of MDN are intelligent people …”
How long you been comin’ here Mac?
“VISTA requires power.”
And that is one of the main issues. I’m running Leopard on a four year old 1.2 GHz iBook and it just works. I have a fairly powerful homebuilt gaming PC that MS says will only accept the stripped down Vista Home version.
I’m sure the service pack helps and Vista will improve with time, but the underlying structure is crap. Windows 7 just promises more, piled on the same crap.
I agree that the ‘mass’ media are a bunch of ignorant puppets, but the tech people are not. If you had been reading the scathing reports by magazines like PC Mag, PC World, Maximum PC, etc. you would see that this wasn’t simply made up.
I’m glad it works for you, and maybe someday I’ll install it.
Hell, probably someday I will HAVE to install it.
Not long ago, Apple’s “Switcher” ads showed ordinary folks saying, “Mac is working great for me. I’m so glad I switched.”
MS has ordinary folks responding to a presentation from an MS company rep, “I liked what you showed me.”
One of those approaches is a little lame.
———————
The MS Mojave Experiment expresses characteristic Microsoftian condescension this way: “See, you shouldn’t believe all that negative stuff you’ve been hearing from people you know and sources you trust. We’ve showed you some great stuff, didn’t we?”
Goodness, even the word “experiment” is bogus. This is not science, it is a set of responses from people who have said what the demonstrator/facilitator clearly wants and expects.
———————
“Decide for yourself.” At what cost?
No one in any of these mojave videos is actually using Vista, they’re just watching a carefully staged demo of Vista and then reacting to the demo.
I have a 4+ year old G4 running leopard and it is running like a champ. My sister in law has a 1 – 2 year old HP notebook running vista. The vista OS is DOG Slow – I brought up windows exploder and it took about 2 minutes to come up and an additional minute to actually show the directory structure. When I clicked on the file it took about 30 seconds to actually select the file. Vista is a terd. At the same time its a God send. If MS continues to make crap like Vista apple will continue to creep up in market share…Long live Vista – and Vista’s children…
Coming soon to a bookstore near you — “The Mojave Experiment” — a recently unearthed and unpublished thriller by Robert Ludlum, author of “The Bourne Identity.”
Coming soon to an Apple store near you: Mac OS X Mojave.
As long as they pretend it’s the next version of Mac OS X, fanboys will line up around the block for it.
And those fanboys will find a bunch of wonderful enhancements, just what they’re expecting from the next Mac OS X version: A robust transaction tracked file system, true multi-core support, support for GPU computing, built in Windows compatibility, the list just goes on.
Apple sponsoring a racing outfit – are you completely mad!!!
Apple and Hi-Octane car racing, that would be an appalling idea.
However >>> An Apple liveried V8 Supercar running and winning at the greatest … and most ball breaking race track in the world – MT PANORAMA, BATHURST, Australia would be kinda kooky.
See – Hell Corner, Mountain Straight, Conrod Straight, Griffin’s Bend, the Cutting, the Dipper, the Esses, Forrest’s Elbow – with grades of up to 1 in 6.13 in this evocative video sets up the track from various drivers perspective.
This video shows the reality, Greg Murphy sets a lap time during qualifying in 2003 which still has not been beaten.
2 hot laps with Mark Skaife. –
A one lap race at Mount Panorama, Bathurst between a 1979 Holden A9X Torana, a 2004 standard street Holden VZ SS Commodore & a 2004 Holden VZ Commodore V8 Supercar. –
This very short clip clearly illustrates how the track DROPS through the Esses, the Dipper, a sharp left hand corner is the fourth in the sequence.
BUT the funny thing in this clip is the monumental blunder by the commentator, thinking of a word that rhymes with SHUNT-
, none of this relevant to Apple, I just like Aussie V8’s and Bathurst.
“A one lap race at Mount Panorama, Bathurst between a 1979 Holden A9X Torana, a 2004 standard street Holden VZ SS Commodore & a 2004 Holden VZ Commodore V8 Supercar. -“
What, no Nissan Skyline?