Mojave Looks Like a Mirage
Microsoft released dozens of videos from their Vista taste test trickery, each a mini commercial. The videos are browsable on a new microsite, The Mojave Experiment, named after the operating system Microsoft claimed to be showing their interviewees.
Most of the videos show a user skeptical of Vista, who is shown some features from Mojave, and finally told that they were using Vista all along. It’s pure beverage or household cleaner marketing, right down to the people that seem so real that they feel like actors.
For example, here’s a mother discussing parental controls:
“I’m serious, you don’t see too many programs anymore that are informative like that, it had so many things on there for like if you want to block your kid from downloading games — blood and gore — you don’t see that every day. You see it on TV, but not on the computer.”
The project is no doubt a big move for Microsoft, attempting to save Vista’s reputation. It’s also an attempt to open up and let go of a little control — or at least appear like it (see also: Microsoft joins Apache). The Mojave Experiment even includes a video of one participant calling them on their hoax:
“I don’t know. Something’s fishy about this. I get a feeling that this is Vista.”
Despite a fairly elaborate experiment, Microsoft does seem to be shooting a bit more from the hip. The domain mojaveexperiment.com was registered a little over a week ago.
This marketing campaign will only make the real skeptics all the more unsure about Redmond. Mac developer Wil Shipley quipped on Twitter: “You can’t fairly judge an OS in 10 minutes, any more than you can judge a soda in one sip.”
Whiz-bang features are nice, but they aren’t a key part of an operating system. There were no videos of connecting new devices, attempting to get on a WiFi network, or tunneling into work’s VPN. But for consumers stuck in seven-year-old-yet-reliable XP, this could be the encouragement they need to step up to Vista.
What do you think? Does the Mojave Experiment give Vista the credit it deserves, or is it only a marketing gimmick?
See also:
