The Mojave Experiment

How much “hear say” influences people in their opinion has become painfully, or is it embarrassingly, clear during the Mojave Experiment. Vista was shown as the “next OS”,  codenamed “Mojave” to people who have never used Vista before. Afterwards they were asked to voice their opinion on it. The responses when they were told it was actually Windows Vista were priceless.

See for yourself on www.mojaveexperiment.com. A nice video wall has been put with responses:

Mojave 

Experiment user breakdown:
84% XP users
22% Apple OS users
14% Other Windows (Pre-XP) users
1% Linux users

More about the Mojave Experiment can be found at the Windows Vista Blog.

Comments

  • ian-live

    That’s fantastic – click the ‘find out more’ link after a video and it sends you to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/possibilities/products/default.aspx which… can’t be found.
    Oh dear.

  • ScottIsAFool

    @ian-live that link works for me… probably a slight mishap :)

  • G-Z

    Perhaps it’s just me, but the participants who are shown do not appear very credible. Of course my impression could be the result of some cultural difference in the way people interact, communicate and express themselves. It is also perhaps just a matter of language. But I’m Swiss and if you would do such an experiment in my country, with a random sample of people, you would never get such reactions. Maybe the Swiss are just more reserved and the German language (also the variety that is spoken in Switzerland) is less emotional. Or we are just more conservative and much less interested in new technology. I am not really familiar with American culture so I’d be interested in your impression…

    In any case this campaign does not really convince me. It just shows that there are people with unfunded opinions about Vista but it doesn’t respond to the common criticism at all. Would these people be less impressed by a guided demonstration of Mac OS X or a Linux distribution? Why should I use Vista and not a competitor? Would they be also excited if they had to install Vista on the machines they’re running at home? Why do they always show functionality I can also achieve with XP and some additional tools (instant search, photo gallery and so on)?