Hey everyone, Was browsing the net earlier when I came across an ad for Windows 'Mojave' with some embedded video of reactions. Gave it a click as I wanted to know more. Turns out it's an experiment that Microsoft carried out to test out people's pre concieved ideas about Vista. They told people that'd never seen or used Vista that they were about to test the new OS Windows 'Mojave', but it was actually Vista. Nearly all of them rated the OS higher than what they'd given Vista, before seeing it. Brilliant! Anyone else seen this? What are your thoughts on it? Link here: www.mojaveexperiment.com.
Vista as a standalone OS may be adequate. And that experiment is a nice piece of PR spin control for MS. BUT ... it doesn't change the fact that I am less productive (measurabley so) on vista than on previous versions because of compatibilty issues. In 1999, it was ruled that MS had a illeagal monopoly on operating systems that was harming cosumers, but no remedy was ever really found. http://money.cnn.com/1999/11/05/technology/microsoft_finding/ Microsoft has been used to having that monopoly so, it basically did whatever it wanted to do without regards for the consequences. Now, however, with Mac and various Linux versions making some level of headway, they are actually more accountable to the public than they have been in the past. But, because of their monoplistic mindset, rather than admit that they have a broken toy, they try to convnce evryone who says it's broken that they're a victim of group think. The emperor is naked ... the experiment doens't matter. I'm less productive than I was because of compatiblity issues, and I have more support issues.
Out of interest, what were your compatability issues? I've used Vista for almost a year now and not had any. I believe there were a lot when it was first released though.
I've had problems with SQL Server, Visual Studio and a lot of in-house programs that just broke without warning, including a lot that "passed" compatiblity tests. (These are "latest version of Dot Net Programs ... no really this will work with Vista we promise...)types of things, not VB6 .. though strangely a lot of the VB6 stuff is still working fine.) Little things that generate phone calls like partial window refereshes and printers that just stop working. Then you have to go and download fixes and drivers and look for solutions and get yelled at by users because of what Microsoft did, and they don't care who's fault it is, you gotta blame someone, so you blame the inhouse computer guy. There have been no measurable improvements when going to vista but there have been substantial costs in support and down time. Even if it gets fixed eventually, we'll never get the time or money back that we wasted in the first place.
I thought the Mojave thing was interesting. Definitely a PR move, but an interesting one nonetheless. Hopefully over time Vista will mature, much like XP did over time. I remember when XP first came out, Windows 98 was so well established that it was pretty much the same thing as this whole XP vs Vista right now.
I'm hoping it will drive the market to provide realistic alternatives.... Mac and various linux alternatives. I don't want MS dead (in spite of my rantings) I just want their strangle hold on the OS market broken and for them to be less able to squish competition just because they want to. (Like "security" updates to XP that break Fire Fox) Vista MAY be to Microsoft what the PS/2 (before it was a game box, it was a PC) was to IBM. IBM thought they could dictate to the market place because of their size and position and their market share in the personal computer space nearly vanished when they started pushing the PS/2. Microsoft was intstrumental in that downfall because much of OS/2 was incorporated into the various Windows products so there was competition in the marketplace and the consumers won. That's what I HOPE for anyway. IBM became a better company because of it, with better products and better customer service.
The Mojave experiment is a terrible campaign idea. They're basically saying "Windows Vista: It's not that bad!" If anything, this just shows how stupid and ignorant windows users are.
I've never heard of that. There are good things about Vista; what I don't like is that so many things are NOT compatible with it.
Vista, at first, was a nightmare... and in some cases it still is. However, I think Microsoft learned their compatibility/development issues that come from Win ME (that name still makes me cringe to this day). Hoenstly, Linux blows vista out of the water anyday, but I think vista has a shot if it can mature well.
I just think Vista's compatibility issue was blown out of proportion. I was one of the first who bought Vista when it came out (around two weeks after it was internationally released) and while it's true that Vista was disappointing (because of compatibility and more), I also gave MS time to improve it. With each improvement (via updates), and yes, there were nightmares in there too, I was thinking, "hey Vista IS improving". I was one of the people who got into XP late, (around 3 months before SP2) and I am not regretting my decision to be one of the people who got into Vista at its early stages.
Hey...some of my best friends use Windows! They aren't stupid and ignorant, they are cheap and unimaginative. Most of them just can't get a hundred extra bucks together for a Mac and think Linux is pronounced like "Lennox". You'd be disappointed too, if you tried to get your OS from a heating & cooling company Get it straight.
How do you know the cost to a business of compatibilty issues to judge what an appropriately proportional response is? For a home user, whose primary applications are games and photo albums, maybe so ... but you don't know the financial harm caused by "small problems" to business and the people who work for them.
I think its quite dependant on your version of vista - I upgraded to the 64bit version (Ive got 8gb of RAM) and since then I have had to change a lot of my apps as they were not compatible. hardware wise its not an issue, but when your favourite code editor / ftp client / tracking software / self built apps no longer work, its a real pain. Now I run vista and an xp box on my home network to do different things.
It was a really GREAT marketing idea from Microsoft =) well I will wait until Windows 8 and then test it - maybe I'am changing back from Linux (Xubuntu) to Win?
If see this experiment every day in my environment. The only people complaining about Vista are those who never used it, or those who refuse to learn the new features. Working with Vista is a lot easier then XP, but it takes some time to get used to it.
Do you honestly believe that everyone who complains against vista has never used it, or are you stating your conclusion from the experiment?
Well the site takes forever to load on my machine, which is a bad start. And now I have to clean up after watching that vomit enduing advert. I'd love to know what vista did that one guy "couldn't even dream of". The 'experiment' - and I use that word very lightly as this is about as scientific as water4gas - is totally loaded and very far removed from the real world. From what I understand they were given well rehearsed demos by Microsoft staff of the features of Vista. This is all well and good but it's obviously been done on highly spec'd machines which have been built for this purpose. It has nothing to do with intuitiveness. If they'd sent out 'review copies' to these people and asked the same question I doubt you'd get quite such excited responses. Never mind the fact that by calling it a new product you already load the question and lead people to say it's better (placebo effect anyone?). By the way this is part of a $300m marketing campaign, a terrible one if you ask me. Basically tell the customers that actually they're the ones who are wrong! I'm not really a fan of vista myself and while I wouldn't say it's that bad it certainly isn't great nor much of an improvement on XP.