SuperSite Blog

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Since Microsoft cast this marketing push as an "Experiment" -- i.e., science -- I would like to hereby publicly challenge Microsoft to answer the following questions:

• The Mojave Experiment involved 120 people. But the Web site shows 55 people saying nice things about Vista. What did the other 65 people think?

• Most or all Mojave Experiment videos posted to date feature an expert or marketing person showing neato features to someone. If Vista is so great, why didn't you let people touch the computers?

• When people were initially asked their opinion of Vista, was it clear yet that Microsoft was doing the focus groups? How about when asked the second time? (I've personally developed and conducted many focus groups, and once you tell who is sponsoring it, everybody gets very complimentary about that company's products.)

• Did the Mac, Linux, Windows XP and Windows 2000 users run out and buy Vista? If so, what do they think now? How about some follow-up?

• Will you make all video footage available (not just the favorable bits), at least to the press? How about just me? <<

www.internetnews.com/.../Whats+Wrong+With+Microsofts+Mojave+Experiment.htm

Woohoo, now in Silverlight! Just like the Olympics and the DNC convention, gallery1.demconvention.com.

Whats so special about Silverlight?

NBC Viewers Not So Into Silverlight

<<Even with the ongoing interest in all things Olympics and the prevalence of photo finishes in this year’s events, it looks like viewers weren’t so interested in downloading the Silverlight player or watching Olympics clips on NBCOlympics.com.

$5.75 million is only 1.1 percent of this year's online video ad spending projection of $505 million in the U.S.  NBC had proprietary access to online footage in the states, but it looks like consumers weren’t buying it.  >>

blog.wired.com/.../nbc-viewers-not.html

Ocean:

Take a look at the DNC convention site (gallery1.demconvention.com) and tell me if that isn't the best streaming video experience you've ever seen. (I'm apolitical here and only talking about the technology, not the content of the site itself)

Also, Silverlight is about enabling cross-platform .NET development and applications. It is somewhat analogous to Flash except that the language support for developers is far superior. Once the tools support becomes a little more stable you will start seeing Silverlight everywhere on the web.

I'm watching the Mojave site that's non-silverlight.  Looks fine.

MS is buying its way into the market -->  It's not winning on any merits of its own.

>>Microsoft has been jealous of Adobe’s Flash, a multimedia technology that Microsoft so desperately coveted that it tried to buy its then-owner, Macromedia, without much success. Instead, Adobe bought Macromedia in 2005 for $3.4 billion. Flash’s growing popularity as a core technology for online video, and Adobe’s efforts to extend it to the web applications market, hasn’t gone unnoticed by Microsoft.

The barons of Redmond countered with Silverlight technology last year. They have upped the stakes by buying their way into the market — a time-tested strategy for the software giant.

First it signed up MLB to get some mainstream usage. Then came NBC’s Olympics coverage online that led to a boost in the number of people using Silverlight to watch video. Today, the company announced that it’s going to invest in American Fork, Utah-based Move Networks, adding an undisclosed amount of funding to the startup’s $46 million Series C round.

It will be money well spent: Move’s customers include large TV companies such as FOX, CBS and ABC. They use Move’s technology to deliver higher-quality video to web watchers. <<

gigaom.com/.../microsoft-vs-adobe-the-rivalry-heats-up

I read somewhere that a rumor is going around that Adobe is working with a major Linux vendor to port all of its apps to Linux.  This is to counter the Silverlight onslaught by MS.

A good distro of Linux say Ubuntu only needs native apps to really take off.  If Adobe went that route I could easily see some it starting a trend.

Probably will never happen, but if it did, dam MS would worry big time.

Lindy -->  news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10020587-16.html

Frankly, I think the idea is a non-starter.

Back on-topic about Vista:

PC Makers Offer Enhancements For Speed, Ease

New Features Aim to Address  Users' Frustration With Vista; Battling Other 'Bloatware'

>>Much of what makes a personal computer isn't the box, but the way it works when it's booted up.

But the experience has become tarnished recently by the release of Microsoft Corp.'s Vista operating system…

Now, some PC makers are trying to improve that experience by adding their own proprietary software to their machines. In some cases, they're creating new user interfaces intended to make Vista faster and easier to use…

<<

online.wsj.com/.../SB121970813304271145.html

Pingback from  Unexpected  &raquo; Blog Archive   &raquo; Mojave Continues

Post already trolled/spamed by Ocean.

Paul, its seriously time to pull the plug on this guy.

His only mission is to leech off your site to create a sub blog and to throw threads completely off topic.

Just for the record: I wouldn't miss Ocean either. Not the slightest bit...

"Since Microsoft cast this marketing push as an "Experiment" -- i.e., science -- I would like to hereby publicly challenge Microsoft to answer the following questions ..."

Ummm, a scientific experiment involves "science".

So I watched through most of this follow-on site's demos to see what these duped participants were being shown.  For starters, the site is an ugly mess compared to elegant and interesting site that initially launched.  Cut-outs of the presenters heads over a laptop?  Seriously?  I guess it's keeping with the general fisher price aesthetic that Windows continues to employ.

I don't know whether this marketing campaign has been successful or not.  I could be.  The fact that there was no TV advertising support for it means that it likely missed many of the ignorant users who would fall victim to it's abuse of scientific method to provide cover and add legitimacy.  Placing ads for the mojave experiment all over the tech web was a poor choice.  I've seen the mojave ad placement hundreds of times.  People like me traveling around techie websites aren't ignorant enough to see this thing and buy it's premise.  Bad media buy, if you ask me.

Now... these "demos" that were given in this "experiment" are very interesting.  They are essentially two salespeople walking through a pure marketing demo.

"Look at how you can use search to find you files and applications! Look at how you can "flip" through your windows to find the one you want"

"Look, there's a backup center!  And shadow copy keeps the versions!" no mension of whether backup can be scheduled or automated (can it?)

"Look at how sweet media center is!"

"Look at these cool gadgets"

I absolutely guarantee that if you took these same 120 people and instead of showing them Vista, showed them Leopard and called it Microsoft Mojave... they would have had the same or better reactions.  You certainly could have given the same demos.  Literally, the same demos.  If I had the time, I could cut a screen capture of leopard (or tiger for much of it) and map the same actions demo'd to their explanations.

Of course, this still does nothing to address the actual real problems that users have had or counter what all of these people have heard from users in the real world.  The real experiment would have been to give these people a "mojave" laptop for a month to take home.  Or hell, let them use it for at least an hour.

This was only marginally different than sitting these people in from of a marketing video or Microsoft.com.

And the subtext remains a problem.  Vista is great and it's the users who are stupid for not knowing it's great.  That's a terrible message.  It's telling them "you know your IT buddy who said Vista sucks?  Yeah, he's a moron".

Vista doesn't suck, but this campaign sure does.

ps: Flip 3D is the worst travesty of interface design in recent times.  Expose it is not.

@Paul

Let me get this straight.  People are supposed to ignore the tens of professional reviews calling Vista a failure and a fumbled release, but BELIEVE (hook line and sinker) a few highly trained Microsoft reps giving helpless civilians a 10 minute face-to-face infomercial?  C'mon!  How obvious can you be!  

Walt and the rest were wrong, but this low-level Rico Suave working for Microsoft has somehow gotten to the truth.  AMAZING!

The problems Vista has are not problems that you can demonstrate in a 10 min. demonstration.  The problems occur when you try and connect incompatible 3rd party apps, when you try and install software, when you try and install it on your 2 year old top of the line machine, or even when you go to buy the thing and have to decide from 5 different freaking options.

This is a glossed over, polished turd.  I sincerely hope you aren't going to sit there and try and tell us how this ad campaign gets "to the truth" and dispels the myth that Vista sucks.  Perhaps Vista doesn't suck, I'm willing to entertain the possibility, but THIS AD CAMPAIGN sure doesn't prove it!

"Of course, this still does nothing to address the actual real problems that users have had or counter what all of these people have heard from users in the real world.  The real experiment would have been to give these people a "mojave" laptop for a month to take home."

Or a year. Or even two years. Who defines what a real experiment is? The thing people don't realize is that this is a marketing experiment, not a scientific study that will be published in a journal. Most people got the premise of the whole 'experiment' wrong. This wasn't to prove to people that they were having no problems. This was to prove that people who hadn't used Vista ever and relied on the opinions of Walt and co. would actually like Vista when they saw it. There's a huge difference. I agree that placing the ads on tech sites is not the correct approach.

"Or hell, let them use it for at least an hour."

That they probably should have done. Did the people only see demos or did they actually use the computers, while the marketing guys were guiding them?

John, two things.  First, as a campaign, we can see that this is not part of the primary campaign that they are working on, and probably (if I was to guess) was hatched before the main thrust of the big advertising campaign was decided on.

Secondly, I think you are looking at this through geek colored glasses.  If you ask regular people, they may know that they don't like Vista, but they don't know why per se.  This is just meant to bridge the gap telling regular people that have never even used Vista before that, hey, it's not as bad as you think.  Since this is not part of the big campaign, I don't think that we need to nitpick this too much, since as you said, it hasn't even got any TV coverage.

Conversely, you could say that since this is an experiment, it may be used as a way to gather data and hone the message before rolling it in to the big campaign.  I don't know, but either way this is damage control.  It's not meant to convert the die hard geeks, but it is meant to give a second thought to the average person that may have heard from their third cousin or Justin Long that Vista is no good.

"Most people got the premise of the whole 'experiment' wrong. This wasn't to prove to people that they were having no problems. This was to prove that people who hadn't used Vista ever and relied on the opinions of Walt and co. would actually like Vista when they saw it. There's a huge difference."

I agree, and it is exactly what I was conveying as well.

Fivepoint, I assume you've tried what you have said here?  Actually installed Vista, or even used it for any period of time?

@ johnpapola

"I absolutely guarantee that if you took these same 120 people and instead of showing them Vista, showed them Leopard and called it Microsoft Mojave... they would have had the same or better reactions.  You certainly could have given the same demos.  Literally, the same demos.  If I had the time, I could cut a screen capture of leopard (or tiger for much of it) and map the same actions demo'd to their explanations."

You mean take them to the Apple store?

And if Apple did this something tells me you would have no issue with it. Oh yeah, they dont, they tell you in ads that the competition sucks, while telling you nothing about themselves, then you go to their company store where they give you a demo on machines optimized to run OSX best.

NAH! Nothing wrong with that!!

@fivepoint

"Let me get this straight.  People are supposed to ignore the tens of professional reviews calling Vista a failure and a fumbled release, but BELIEVE (hook line and sinker) a few highly trained Microsoft reps giving helpless civilians a 10 minute face-to-face infomercial?  C'mon!  How obvious can you be!  "

The tens? What about the ones that say otherwise? I suppose you believe that 100% of the reviews of Vista were horrible? You just accepted the negative ones and totally blinded yourself to positive reviews in order to form a conclusion that you wanted.

And I find it amazing when these people bought "hook line and sinker" the FUD about MS, I didnt hear anyone calling them "helpless civilians". They were just  "informed" users that "got" how bad Windows was.

Now, because they were actually shown the actual OS, not the FUD reviews, now they are all idiots, preyed on by the EVILE "M$"

@shark47

The experiment is defined by whatever can give Vista bashers the results they wanted.

It's amazing that they are so polluted with this desire to see Vista as negative, they are completely unable to fathom that their conclusions may be wrong.

I agree with Dipsh. This is a demo for average Joe, not you uber-geeks.  You cannot take up a lot of time of these people, unless you pay them, so you can only show the ten minutes free of financial imcentives. It is a demo of Vista feature and ease of use, and that's honestly what they claim to show. Sales effectiveness is unknown, but playing this at retail stores may help. although consumers probably already have their mind made up between choosing a Mac or PC before they get to the store probably due to price considerations and prior experience [an XP user is most likely going to buy a new Vista PC], so it's Vista Home no matter what any way, and the 'Experiment' viewing is not helpful. Let's face it, they can't get XP at these retail stores, and many don't sell Macs either.

So how many of these users went out and bought Vista and or use it regularly now? What are their continuing thoughts about it?

If this is for 'average Joe' , why is it playing on tech blogs and not on television?

I didn't know 'Average Joe' read Ars Technica.  

Important question from the top:

>>• When people were initially asked their opinion of Vista, was it clear yet that Microsoft was doing the focus groups? How about when asked the second time? (I've personally developed and conducted many focus groups, and once you tell who is sponsoring it, everybody gets very complimentary about that company's products.)

<<

www.internetnews.com/.../Whats+Wrong+With+Microsofts+Mojave+Experiment.htm

This review was positive:

>>Windows Vista is beautiful. Microsoft has never taken elegance so seriously before. Discreet eye candy is partly responsible. Windows and menus cast subtle shadows. A new typeface gives the whole affair a fresh, modern feeling. Subtle animations liven up the proceedings.

If the description so far makes Vista sound a lot like the Macintosh, well, you’re right. You get the feeling that Microsoft’s managers put Mac OS X on an easel and told the programmers, “Copy that.”

--

Vista is infinitely more pleasant to use than its predecessors. There’s more logic to its folder structure and naming scheme. Things are easier to find. Fewer steps are required to perform common tasks, especially when it comes to networking.<<

David Pogue

>>Windows isn’t going anywhere, the landscape won’t be changing anytime soon, and the corporate world will still buy it 500 copies at a time.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what you (or tech reviewers) think of Windows Vista; sooner or later, it’s what most people will have on their PCs. In that light, it’s fortunate that Vista is better looking, better designed and better insulated against the annoyances of the Internet. At the very least, it’s well equipped to pull the world’s PCs along for the next five years — or whenever the next version of Windows drops down the chimney.<<

The end of the Pogue review.  

How can anyone call that negative???

"Fivepoint, I assume you've tried what you have said here?  Actually installed Vista, or even used it for any period of time?"

Naah. I'm sure he knows some admin who has struggled with it.

"If this is for 'average Joe' , why is it playing on tech blogs and not on television?

I didn't know 'Average Joe' read Ars Technica.  "

Finally a good point from you, Ocean! That wasn't so tough, was it?

Ocean, did you post that this was a focus group? People typically get paid for that activity, but does not mean that's it's not a legit response, but my prior post stated the assumption of unpaid volunteers.

Yes, but as the commenter noted...people are more favorable when they know they are critiquing the payer.

From the blog linked from Paul's post, I think this describes the motivation and why even a 5-10 minute demo is worth something:

"At the same time, we recognize that noise in the market created by a vocal minority can discourage regular people from trying the product for themselves. We're confident these people would find a lot to like about Windows Vista if they spent even 5-10 minutes taking a closer look. We wanted to confirm that hypothesis and see what happens when people get a second chance to make a first impression."

That's all this is.

Also of note, this kind of thing is done all the time.  I've been to many car events where they have the competition in a battle.  You get what amounts to just a couple of minutes to take the car around a small course.  Of course this isolated test does not a car evaluation make, but it allows people that were naysayers a second look at your product compared in a favorable environment.  Look for information about the Taste of Lexus event.  Many of these people are not necessarily fans of your brand but are coming for the food and freebies.  Any kind of positive impression you can leave on them, no matter how scant or even short lived is the idea of these events and something like the Mojave Experiment.

Wow, Ocean, you really are going wild in this thread.  I mean, like, Mike Galos wild.  ;)

@Master

"You mean take them to the Apple store?

And if Apple did this something tells me you would have no issue with it."

When you go to an Apple store, there's no false pretense of careful objectivity and methodology in the manner that the Mojave experiment implies.  There's not false pretense when you're at an Apple store with Apple salesman... and they actually let you tinker with the machines for hours.  So... what exactly IS wrong with that?  You're right.  Nothing.

The demos given in the M.E. are no better than marketing presentations and the reactions of the participants are polluted by many of the issues already raised.

#1.  People in a focus group will tend to praise a product if they know they're speaking with people from the company.

#2.  The very idea of getting some special sneak peak at a new thing that nobody has ever seen, compounded with #1 makes for even more exaggerated positive feedback.

#3.  Vista's issues are entirely related to how well it functions in the real world, not whether the intention of features is good or not.  This "experiment" completely avoids the real issues.

Good science in an experiment of this kind would have really worked to eliminate these biases.  I'm not saying they had to.  I'm not saying this is "wrong" or "evil".  It may even be effective in getting the most ignorant people with an anti-vista bias to take a second look.  

But if you have even half a brain, this feel like a cheap marketing ploy.  And that's not good.  It's a hook to get people to be a voyeur to other people watching the same marketing demos that you apparently didn't see or weren't impressed with if you saw them.  

Even worse though, is that the very construct of it actually reinforces the common perception that Vista sucks.  If you're smart enough to dismiss the blatant marketing.... the only valuable focus group take-away from The Mojave Experiment is this:

"Most people really do seem to think that Vista sucks and being told it sucks by the tech people they trust in their lives."

Again, it could be that average person ignored all these problems with the campaign and just took away "hmmm... maybe I should take another look".  If so, great.  But the biggest question I have for Microsoft is why open up the dialog with this?  Why acknowledge that people think there's problems and then not address them honestly, instead using some cheap gimmick?  And why, if Vista is so successful (how could it not be?  It's the only successor in a monopoly) why open yourself up to reinforcing the bad misconceptions?  

Worst of all, why make the reasonably intelligent and intuitive people (I hope that's most of us) feel like you're using cheap gags to get your message to the dumbest among us?  That's not great for the brand and doesn't show confidence in your product.

As for Apple not saying anything about their products in their ads... what are you and the rest of the mac-attack squad talking about with this?  Each ad sets up a problem with the PC and says how the Mac addresses that problem. Some are pure attack ("Yoga"), most are equal part attack and promotion of a benefit. Some are pure feature benefit ("Time Machine"). Many are touting of the growth in sales, or the good reviews.  I guess you guys want Apple to demo Expose is the same way that all the vista ads had people mouthing "wow" at flip 3D.  Yeah.  Great.  

I think they're smart to stick with a campaign that is funny, impactful and forcing their competitor to go on defense.  After over decade of Apple being called "beleagered" and having your local dork claim "nobody but graphics people use macs"  Apple has momentum and advertising that's keeping it going.  When you're competitors have a 95% share... you can't ignore them. If 10% of Windows users have a horrible experience, which would still mean that 90% are happy, that 10% is the group Apple should be trying to speak to.  And they are.  I'm not sure why this is so hard for you guys to understand.

Cheers.

PS: Anyone else think it's funny that the two guys performing the experiment look like stunt doubles for the cast of Scrubs?  Weird, right?

Sidenote: Silverlight streaming is pretty awesome. At least on par with Quicktime h.264 streams for sure.  Now if only Windows media play had live scrubbing, it wouldn't feel like such a joke.  But no question Microsoft is trying to buy their success online in general.

>>noise in the market created by a vocal minority can discourage regular people from trying the product for themselves<<

This is a strawman.  There is no vocal minority thats unfairly criticizing Vista.  It's been critiqued on its merits.

>>no question Microsoft is trying to buy their success online in general<<

Yep.

@Ocean,

Agreed.  Though Vista doesn't suck.  It's the best Windows release to date I think.  Then again, I haven't used it for a long stretch... so maybe it's a death by a 1000 cuts.

But isn't Paul's whole thing on this site about how Vista is doing AWESOME!  Of course, given that every PC now ships with Vista... how could it not do well?  I don't even know how you benchmark the success of a Windows release.  Certainly not market penetration, since that's inevitable.

Is Mike out there?  How do you gage that a Windows release is a "success" given that it's penetration and sales are inevitable?  Honest question.

"But no question Microsoft is trying to buy their success online in general. "

That's a pretty silly statement to make, frankly. They could've released this cool technology that no one used and therefore, no one deveoped for or they could've got companies on board. I don't think MS did anything wrong and if it's a better technology, I don't think users should complain.

"PS: Anyone else think it's funny that the two guys performing the experiment look like stunt doubles for the cast of Scrubs?  Weird, right?"

You're not the first person to accuse MS of using paid actors. I'm sure if it's something against MS, however illogical it is, Ocean would've posted it somewhere. Check an article about Zune. Maybe you'll find a comment about this from Ocean there.

"When you go to an Apple store, there's no false pretense of careful objectivity and methodology in the manner that the Mojave experiment implies.  There's not false pretense when you're at an Apple store with Apple salesman... and they actually let you tinker with the machines for hours.  So... what exactly IS wrong with that?  You're right.  Nothing.

"

So, again you are making the claim that Microsoft "lied" to these people.

What is your proof? Not some implied notion that "M$ is evil" that forms the basis of way too many complaints against Microsoft.

"The demos given in the M.E. are no better than marketing presentations and the reactions of the participants are polluted by many of the issues already raised."

"#1.  People in a focus group will tend to praise a product if they know they're speaking with people from the company."

Attack the participants. They aren't being truthful because they didnt say it sucked.

"#2.  The very idea of getting some special sneak peak at a new thing that nobody has ever seen, compounded with #1 makes for even more exaggerated positive feedback."

Attack the participants. They aren't being truthful because they didnt say it sucked.

"#3.  Vista's issues are entirely related to how well it functions in the real world, not whether the intention of features is good or not.  This "experiment" completely avoids the real issues."

So since no OS is perfect, especially considering all the issues found in OSX, if a person has an OS for however long you need them to have it, they will always find something they don't like. But this is what you are relying on. Not so much they find something they may not like, is that you hope they find one of those grossly exaggerated things in Vista that just will make them see THE TRUTH!!! That vista is such a horrible POS that they will walk over burning glass to get to the Mac Store!

"Good science in an experiment of this kind would have really worked to eliminate these biases.  I'm not saying they had to.  I'm not saying this is "wrong" or "evil".  It may even be effective in getting the most ignorant people with an anti-vista bias to take a second look. "

Which is what POd 99.9% of the people that hated this whole thing. Ignorance and FUD is WHAT THEY ARE COUNTING ON. Take that away and then what do they have?

"But if you have even half a brain, this feel like a cheap marketing ploy.  And that's not good.  It's a hook to get people to be a voyeur to other people watching the same marketing demos that you apparently didn't see or weren't impressed with if you saw them. "

The results did not mirror what you want, and you fear that it will resonate.

"Even worse though, is that the very construct of it actually reinforces the common perception that Vista sucks.  If you're smart enough to dismiss the blatant marketing.... the only valuable focus group take-away from The Mojave Experiment is this:

"Most people really do seem to think that Vista sucks and being told it sucks by the tech people they trust in their lives.""

This is rich. Now we need to blindly  "trust" the tech people in their lives. Not to actually deiced for themselves, or that those tech people may be wrong. Or maybe to trust in your own judgment.

Noooooooo. You may not choose "right".

"Again, it could be that average person ignored all these problems with the campaign and just took away "hmmm... maybe I should take another look".  If so, great.  But the biggest question I have for Microsoft is why open up the dialog with this?  Why acknowledge that people think there's problems and then not address them honestly, instead using some cheap gimmick?"

Wait, so the 24/7 FUD campaign, that was addressed in a previous post on this blog, should not have been confronted? If MS said nothing, how much you want to bet that the spin would be:

"See, MS knows what we say is true. They wont even refute it!".

 "And why, if Vista is so successful (how could it not be?  It's the only successor in a monopoly) why open yourself up to reinforcing the bad misconceptions? "

By showing people how silly they are?

Dont put out the fire, you might reinforce the fire!

"Worst of all, why make the reasonably intelligent and intuitive people (I hope that's most of us) feel like you're using cheap gags to get your message to the dumbest among us?  That's not great for the brand and doesn't show confidence in your product."

Translation: The people that thought Vista was bad are now " the dumbest among us"? They were useful when we needed to convince people Vista was horrible. Now that MS wants to show them otherwise, It is perfectly acceptable to throw them under the bus and claim that their efforts to present an alternative view is a "cheap gag".

How elitist of you.

john

"How do you gage that a Windows release is a "success" given that it's penetration and sales are inevitable?  Honest question."

honest answer...

Sorry that there's no easy answer.

Barring cases which are a total failure (BoB, OS X 10.0, etc) there is no definition of "success" that will be universally accepted. The people who want to bash a product will find a way no matter how many copies are sold. The people who want to praise a product will find a way no matter how few are sold.

What you see are more like "it sold better than I expected"  or "it sold worse than I expected", both of which will be true for the same sales figures depending on preconcieved perception.

This is NOT limited to just Windows. The same holds true for a lot of products with established upgrade and bundling. Look at the following and you'll see it's equally true:

--------------------

Agreed.  Though Leopard doesn't suck.  It's the best OS X release to date I think.  Then again, I haven't used it for a long stretch... so maybe it's a death by a 1000 cuts.

But isn't johnpapola's whole thing on this site about how Leopard is doing AWESOME!  Of course, given that every Mac now ships with Leopard... how could it not do well?  I don't even know how you benchmark the success of an OS X release.  Certainly not market penetration, since that's inevitable.

@shark47

They are hoping no one uses it because it was made by MS. Not that Silverlight is bad (it isnt), it's just that it didn't come for a company they "approve" of. So their attack on it, for lack of anything else, is that MS is "buying" their way in.

This was just a survey of a demo and billed as just that. Although a demo typically does not demonstrate problems, it is a selective showing of features. this is just showing people some o the capabilities, for which I would bet that they understood that it was not the entire scenario. But their comments are as such any way.

My beef is that Silverlight is a unnecessary and redundant piece of technology that requires MORE INSTALLED software to work. and its only purpose is to make things more complex (not easier) for endusers by fracturing the video streaming market.

I have flash.  It works. MS uses it.   I have Quicktime and WiMP  and VLC on the PC.  They work.  If a site doesn't want to go with one of those, they don't want my business.

No more.  

Dvorak (who I don't pay much attention to) nails this one:

>> Instead of replacing a machine every 18 months, as was the case in the late 1980s, we can keep a machine for five years or more.

--

Since the buying cycle is stretched to six years or more, you end up with an interesting phenomenon: The upgrade cycle is contaminated with machines too old to upgrade.

<<

www.pcmag.com/.../0,2817,2328808,00.asp

"My beef is that Silverlight is a unnecessary and redundant piece of technology that requires MORE INSTALLED software to work. and its only purpose is to make things more complex (not easier) for endusers by fracturing the video streaming market.

I have flash.  It works. MS uses it.   I have Quicktime and WiMP  and VLC on the PC.  They work.  If a site doesn't want to go with one of those, they don't want my business.

No more.  

"

Geeze. Well ok, Ocean!

That makes total sense...

John, you're reading too much in to what they mean by experiment.  You are thinking that a marketing exercise is somehow based upon the scientific method.  As a person that is on that side of the fence (the content production and by extension, marketing side), you know better than this.  Reread the quote I took from the blog post.  It explains what the experiment is pretty well.

Mike,

Sorry, this attempt to invert the logic fails.

"This is NOT limited to just Windows. The same holds true for a lot of products with established upgrade and bundling. Look at the following and you'll see it's equally true:

--------------------

Agreed.  Though Leopard doesn't suck.  It's the best OS X release to date I think.  Then again, I haven't used it for a long stretch... so maybe it's a death by a 1000 cuts.

But isn't johnpapola's whole thing on this site about how Leopard is doing AWESOME!  Of course, given that every Mac now ships with Leopard... how could it not do well?  I don't even know how you benchmark the success of an OS X release.  Certainly not market penetration, since that's inevitable."

This attempt to claim a symmetric situation fails. The difference, and it is absolutely crucial, is that 35% of Leopard installs are NOT being downgraded to Tiger.

chuckb84

Actually, nothing you said does anything to say they're not parallel.

What percentage of new Macs bundled with Leopard that were sold into corporations that have standardized on Tiger (or Panther) were downgraded to match the corporate standard?

Is it more than 35%? Less? Don't know? Funny, you seem to claim that you do.

Or do you really think companies with lots of Macs say, "Hey, Joe over in the art department just got a new Mac that has Leopard on it. Let's upgrade everybody over today!"

"The difference, and it is absolutely crucial, is that 35% of Leopard installs are NOT being downgraded to Tiger."

Are you sure 35% of all Vista installs are being downgraded to XP? Here's a hint - you're wrong. It's about 35% of enterprise installs based on a link that lotsa had posted earlier. This is a familiar story with enterprises and has nothing to do with Vista. They take their time to upgrade to the next version of Windows. Heck, we barely upgraded from IE6 to IE7.

BTW, there are signs that Vista's enterprise adoption is going up.

@mike

You have to think like one of them. Just slow your brain down.

The number that were downgraded is....0

Because business never resist an upgrade of an Apple OS. Who could! For the elegance and sleekness of a finely updated copy of OSX, companies gladly through caution to the wind because OSX never causes issues from one release to the next! :)

....brain now returning to normal speed.

@Sharky,

"That's a pretty silly statement to make, frankly."

It's true. They've been doing ad deals with sites like digg where they are literally paying the site to use the service.  Same thing with that Live search payback deal. It's fine.  I have no problem with it really.  And I think silverlight rocks.  They may win this because they are coming from a programing angle from the get-go instead of retrofitting an animation engine with programming.

But you can't deny that, much like Xbox, Microsoft is subsidizing their entrance into the web with their Windows and Office monopoly money.  Just a statement, not a criticism.

"You're not the first person to accuse MS of using paid actors."

I'm not accusing anyone of anything.  I just thought it was a funny likeness.  That's all.

@Master,

Wow.  Why is it that platform warriors love to say something or someone lied or is a liar.  There's a reason why real journalists are very VERY reluctant to use those terms... as am I in general.  This is about lying or bad ethics.  It's about messaging and implications.  The Mojave Experiment IS manipulative.  It's using the conceptual hook of a focus group without all of the controls of a real focus group.  And focus groups suck anyway.

"Attack the participants. They aren't being truthful because they didnt say it sucked."

What are you talking about?  Didn't you notice that I've said repeatedly that I agree that Vista is good and that it gets a bad wrap.  I'm not attacking anyone.  I'm pointing about an element that causes bias.  I just shot a weekend-long focus group thing for Spike and they were VERY careful not to let the guys know who the study was for.  It biases people's reactions.  Human beings generally aim to please and don't feel comfortable with criticism and confrontation (in person).  This mostly a good thing.  But it affects the results.  How you can twist this into me "attacking" the participants is beyond my comprehension.

"The results did not mirror what you want, and you fear that it will resonate."

Man, you are out to lunch.  Nothing discussed in the world of technology causes me "fear".  I'm just weighing in on this because I work in promotions and have something to say about this from a brand standpoint.

"This is rich. Now we need to blindly  "trust" the tech people in their lives. Not to actually deiced for themselves, or that those tech people may be wrong. Or maybe to trust in your own judgment."

What is wrong with you, man.  All I'm saying is that building a campaign that starts off with a list of horrible gripes may actually re-inforce those misconceptions.  Jesus.  Are you honestly saying that people should trust a 10 minute presentation by hired PR guns MORE than the tech people in your life who you turn to for advice?  I'm that guy for many people.  I tell them that Vista is better than XP (though I do usually say to get a mac if I think it will serve their uses).

Why would you "trust" a marketing demo on it's face?  Again, the experiment would have more merit if they gave people the laptops for a week and had them come back and report on their experience.  Then I'd say they had enough time to develop a solid judgement for themselves.  Sitting through a marketing video is not enough information to come to an educated judgement of a complex product.

"Wait, so the 24/7 FUD campaign, that was addressed in a previous post on this blog, should not have been confronted?"

Sure, but confront it with something that isn't a stupid gimmick wrapping a bunch of demos.  Do a series of testimonials from people using Vista in the real world and enjoying it.  

"By showing people how silly they are?"

Exactly.  Now you get it.  This campaign is built on showing people that they are silly.  This is not a good approach to your customers.  In other venues, Microsoft has acknowledged and apologized for some of Vista's early issues. That's a great, honest way to handle things.  This campaign of proving that people are morons isn't.  How elitist of you to think it should be.

If a campaign requires ignorance to be effective, it's not a good campaign.

Master, you're just so blinded by your own biases that you can't judge people as individuals.  Your approach to my post here is frankly off the wall.  It's a totally unhinged attack that isn't warranted by my moderate discussion of the campaign.  I'm a mac fan, therefore you project all the worst fanboy beliefs and intentions on me even when I state the opposite.  Not cool.  I'm a reasonable guy with a generally favorable opinion of Vista.  You, on the other hand, appear to be more interested in going on the attack for no good reason.  Put simply, you are acting like a bigot.

@Ocean,

"My beef is that Silverlight is a unnecessary and redundant piece of technology that requires MORE INSTALLED software to work."

What's bad about that?  This is very ideological and anti-progress.  It's called competition.  If Microsoft can build a better mousetrap than Adobe, great.  We all win.  The olympics site was pretty amazing.  The DNC site has great streaming too.

I'm no more interested in an Adobe monopoly than a Microsoft one.  I welcome Silverlight as another content platform.

@Dip,

I'm not going crazy about this thing.  I'm just openly wondering about the effectiveness of this style of campaign.  The platform zealots may want to paint me as on the attack, but I'm not.  There isn't a rule book for what works and doesn't work in advertising.  It's all an experiment.  My inclination is that this isn't  a very good approach.  As master unwittingly pointed out, this is built around proving how silly your consumers are.  That's not a good brand message.

@Mike,

I don't understand the second half of your post.  I agree that expectations are big part of the definition of success.  Microsoft can't feel great about missing their Windows Mobile target by 10%.  And yet, selling 18 million of anything seems pretty good... until you consider the size of the market and then it looks small.. until you look at the competitors and see that it's pretty decent... or not.  So yeah, it's hard.  As with all things like this, you need to establish the parameters for success in a way that makes sense.

I'm not someone going around saying "Vista is a flop".  That's just idiocy.  And anyone trying to peg me with that false charge isn't being honest.

As for your little word-replacement game, it doesn't work.  I'm not a booster for Leopard the way you are for windows.  I'm not here talking about how awesome Leopard is doing.  I mainly spend my posts refuting erroneous slams against Apple... which increasingly come from you.  You claim Microsoft is doing all the innovation in OS and Apple is doing "almost none".  Nowhere am I claiming the inverse of that.  Mike, you need to come to terms with your own hyperbole about Apple and Microsoft.  We are not similar in our approaches at all.

I don't fault Microsoft for slow Vista uptake.  Corporations move like snails no matter how good the new stuff is.  Compatibility problems also aren't a hobby horse for me.  I welcome architectural changes that may break older apps but improve the system.  Why else would I be on the mac?  Apple does that all the time.

The facts are that Leopard and the mac (since they must go together) has very high customer satisfaction.... where as Vista has an image problem.   Hence the mojave project.

Again, we are only yin and yang, Mike, in the sense that you make extremist statements about the absolute domination of Microsoft's innovation and I take a moderate, less strident view on the world.  You worked for the company you are defending so vociferously and I have never made a nickel from Apple.  We are not the opposite of each other.

"You have to think like one of them. Just slow your brain down."

Seriously, are you 13 years old?

John

Feel free to substitute somebody elses name as the equivalent of Paul. That wasn't the point.

The point is that any product that is bundled is hard to define as a success or failure. OS X even moreso than Windows since you can buy a PC without Windows or, until recently, with a non-current version of Windows relatively easily. That isn't an option with the Mac where there is no vendor offering a "no OS option" or "alternate OS option" or "back level OS option" as a retail product.

What percentage of Mac buyers boot directly into Windows? We don't know but we do know it's not zero.

What percentage of Mac buyers replace Leopard with Tiger or earlier to keep their machines configure the same? We don't know but we do know it's not zero.

What percentage of Mac buyers get Leopard with their new hardware? That we do know. It's 100%

""You have to think like one of them. Just slow your brain down."

Seriously, are you 13 years old?"

No but most extreme Apple fanatics have the mental abilities, and maturity levels, of one.

@Mike,

"The point is that any product that is bundled is hard to define as a success or failure."

I completely agree with that.  OSX as a product generally isn't discussed divorced from the mac though.  When people on this site harp on global marketshare, they are talking about the sale of computers.  These stats never include boxed operating systems.  This is part of the problem with these discussions.  Microsoft and Apple are not direct competitors, but the OS difference is the primary difference between a Mac and PC.  When compared one-to-one with computer vendors, Apple is a success in many markets.

The sheer fact that Apple promotes the ability to run Windows on modern macs should be a clue that this market share discussion in weird on it's face.  A Mac sale that ends up booting into Windows, as Paul does with his macbook, is still a Mac sale and Apple's clearly happy to make it.  

These discussions of platform comparison are and will always be strained by the fact that Apple has a very different business model than everyone else in the computer industry (I guess aside from Sun).  That's only compounded by the general zealotry at play.

And regardless... why are we even talking about OSX?  I was contributing here not as a mac user/Microsoft critic, but as a professional branding guy curious about the strategy of The Mojave Project and skeptical of it's core assumptions.  Again, I think Vista has an undeserved reputation.  But I just don't understand why Microsoft lacks the confidence to let the consumers, who will end up with Vista no matter what, discover it's strengths.  Pointing them out through a montage of voices in this campaign doesn't help them, in my opinion.  And trying to prove that these people are "silly" doesn't help their brand image either.

Master, in his gross generalizations and attacks on my posts, has missed this.  Mike, I believe you're smart enough to recognize the difference between reasonable discussion and getting caught up in the silly platform debate (other discussions aside).

Still waiting on that list of post 2000 OS innovations from MS that dwarf what Apple has done in the Windows not Walls thread, btw.

I think Silverlight is a bit like Desktop Linux...a unnecessary johnny-come lately that should struggle to get any traction.  Except it won't...because MS is going to buy its way into the market.  It's a mature market, and all they're doing is making it tough on people who don't want to do anything but consume content.  Seen the complaints from the MLB users it was forced upon?  Seen the marketing piece that said that Silverlight was one of the reasons that online Olympic viewing was down?  People didn't want to or couldn't get it installed.

>>In fact, the majority of online video for the Olympics was delivered in Flash.

There’s a great blog post up by John O’Donovan, the Chief Technical Architect at the BBC about their Olympic numbers. For Beijing they streamed nearly 40 million videos with up to 5.5 million Olympic videos watched each day at an average of around 3 million. In total there were 6.5 million hours of video delivered using Flash by the BBC. What those numbers don’t include are streams from the BBC iPlayer or the mobile platforms. It’s all Flash in the browser. Compare that to 72 million videos in the states, and it shows that in a country much smaller than the US, online the Olympics was a hit.<<

www.alleyinsider.com/.../adobe-silverlight-who-flash-video-dominated-olympics-worldwide-adbe-msft-

MIke and others, my buddy bought an iMac last year, just to run Vista. He nevers runs Leopard, or almost never. He wanted the form factor and I am not sure if Dell had their all-in-one out at that time. But you can buy a Mac clone without the OS with Pystar and another company that is on the block, although they have not opened the door yet, called Open Tech. You can buy the company for $50K.

www.macworld.co.uk/.../index.cfm

Ocean, would you please stop this nonsense? Thank you!

John,

" A Mac sale that ends up booting into Windows, as Paul does with his macbook, is still a Mac sale and Apple's clearly happy to make it."

It's not even that simple. A Mac sale that ends up booting into Windows may be a Mac sale (and an OS X sale) but it is a lost platform sale which means no sale of iLife or other 1st or 3rd party Mac Apps so Apple is likely not that happy to make it. Although happier than Dell selling a Windows box.

It was nothing more than a response to the 2:32 PM message.  Check it out.

@Mike,

"A Mac sale that ends up booting into Windows may be a Mac sale (and an OS X sale) but it is a lost platform sale which means no sale of iLife or other 1st or 3rd party Mac Apps so Apple is likely not that happy to make it."

That assumes that the buyer was going to buy a Mac and run OSX and instead bought the Mac and switched to Windows.  If, on the other hand, the buyer was going to buy a Dell and would never even consider OSX... that sale is a pure net gain.  It's a sale they were not going to get with no negative platform implications.

I don't believe there are many OSX users that want to run Windows primarily but stick with Apple hardware for the superior design.  Look at Paul.  He like the macbook hardware and is a windows guy.  Paul's macbook is a 100% net win for apple.  

" I was contributing here not as a mac user/Microsoft critic, but as a professional branding guy curious about the strategy of The Mojave Project and skeptical of it's core assumptions."

I think you make an incorrect assumption about the core assumptions behind the whole experiment. (No pun intended.) I think the whole concept started from an assumption on their part that many people who hadn't personally used Vista had negative impressions of the OS based on the theory what they read on blogs or Goatberg's reviews and the idea was to test that theory. Is it a scientific study? Of course not.  Ocean linked to some article where the author interpreted the word experiment to mean science. Fair enough, but it's not Microsoft's fault that they're using it in a different sense.

The intent of the study was not to fool people, but to have them look at Vista from a different perspective. That's all I can say.

They'd fooled them to get them to look though.

Yep Mike, as you stated my buddy purchased Office 2007 for Windows for his iMac running Vista. He claims problems with Vista seeing all the networked computers, and that he sometimes needs to boot Leopard to do it, but he is more of a novice than an expert, and I had just the opposite experience until the Leopard update. Now Vista and Leopard both see everything.

My first experience with Vista was a setup of a buddy using a Dell XPS 410. Vista immediately saw the wireless network [built-in Dell wireless card] and worked in a few seconds, and has never failed since January. Then we printed from Office 2007 [student]. Yep, Vista instantly found the 3 year network HP network printer and printed. Gents, my life was just made easy and I no longer get tech service requests from him because it just works. Next he ask me to help him to make a DVD. I just had hm buy an OEM version of Nero, since that's all I know about on Windows, He was burning in twenty minutes and this guy is below novice level. I have been enjoying my tech free evenings with interrupting calls. I owe Steve Ballmer dinner. BTW, right now I'm typing on my Mac Pro Tower, so you must believe that I am sincere. NONE of you love Vista more than me!!!!:)

@Shark,

I understand what they are trying to combat.  Obviously, people have a strong negative opinion of Vista with first hand experience is a problem.  But I have strong doubts that this is the result of "goatberg" and the like.  I've come across many IT guys that don't like Vista, think it's too much of a resource hog and aren't the types to be persuaded by mainstream media reviews.  They are, however, the exact guys that probably give advice to 30+ people in their personal circle.

I'm that kind of guy to my friends and family (though on the Mac side).  People trust my advice. They act on it.  I think many people like me, but on the Windows side, have been spreading the word that Vista is a resource hogging mess and to steer clear.

This campaign's effort to dispel that is junk.  That's all.  It proves nothing.  It may be a clever little hook to get people to think who aren't very critical minded.  But if that was their only goal, it's a pretty low target.

I think some of yall really did jump the shark on this whole Mojave thing. The article by Koroush Ghazi pretty much says that Vista doesn't have the "Wow" factor but its definitely a better OS experience. Perhaps Seven will have the wow factor, who knows? But the Mojave experiment was to attack the complete lies, deception, and F.U.D. from some of the most ignorant pseudo "tech writers".

It was simply a way to say, don't believe everything you've read or heard. Word of mouth is powerful, bit its not always right. Remember Iraq's supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction? More like a weapon of mass F.U.D.! Sometimes you have to try things for yourself and make your own judgements. Its that simple. Thats all Microsoft wants people to do. Check out Vista SP1 on modern equipment. If its really not your thing, then you've got options like Leopard, Ubuntu, etc.

You can't always listen to things like that. When making computer decisions, you have to do your own research. You have to weigh all the benefits. Thats all Mojave is trying to do. Tell people to really look at Vista objectively, not based on hearsay, lies, deception and hyperbolie. Nobody is pointing a gun to your head and say buy Vista. There's plenty of alternatives. However, you really can't blame Microsoft for trying to counter pure lies. Yes. Vista has some problems, but it works for a lot of users.

Quick technical question:  Does the Mac allow you to boot to the EFI Shell?  And does it have drivers included for all of the necessary Mac hardware?  (ie. optical drive, hard drive, drive controller, etc?)

Let me rephrase my previous statement....

Can you launch x64 EFI applications from disc from within the EFI Shell on a Mac (assuming they have a bootable commandline EFI Shell at all)?

Obviously it has support for the hardware already assuming OSX enumerates hardware by the EFI.

All I'm saying is that if you can get an EFI Shell on a Mac, and it has support for launching EFI programs (.nsh files) from a disc, will a Vista SP1 DVD actually load?  Vista SP1 supports UEFI, but how much of that is different from Apple's implementation of EFI (which is based on an earlier version)?

If you can get this to work, you'd be saying hello to Vista SP1 running natively on Macs without BIOS emulation, and without the MBR emulation mode that seems to run (from what I hear, when you boot off the Vista CD, Windows Setup only sees the disk as if it only contained the "Boot Camp partition" and OS X is still there on it's regular GPT partition, hidden from view, and inaccessible from Windows Setup altogether).  If you can get Vista SP1 installed on a Mac GPT disk, OS X would become completely obsolete and unnecessary.

Hmm....

Waethorn said:

If you can get Vista SP1 installed on a Mac GPT disk, OS X would become completely obsolete and unnecessary.

My Comments:

Not necessarily. There are plenty of merits to OS-X, but I think its ironic that Leopard is supposed to be the best OS. Yet one of its touted features is using Windows Vista. Obviously, if you need Vista, its not as good as advertised.

johnpapola stated:

Then again, I haven't used it for a long stretch... so maybe it's a death by a 1000 cuts.

My Comments: Thats really ashame. How can you come on to a Windows oriented site and not recently have any recent Vista SP 1 experience? It really diminishes your arguments because you don't have the experience of today's Windows Vista. Vista runs so much better today, thanks to the better hardware and software improvements. Using Windows Readyboost has really taken me past XP level performance.

However, I do check out Macs through my friends and the stores that sell them including the local Mac Store at the Shops at Willow Bend. Also, I have friends who run OS-X on VMware and those who actually own Macs.

I think you should have a working version of Vista, which your Mac should be able to do. So you can speak from actual user experience instead of copying the Apple talking points, tech writers, and commericials.

I also visted Fry's Electronics to buy a new router and I saw approximately 50 people in line buying hardware intended for Windows Vista. The software guys were offering big sales on Vista and people were buying. Or on the hardware upgrade area, plenty of people buying for Vista PC's. This was on a Friday and that store had a good number of people in there on a business day.

This idea that the revised reviews of Vista aren't selling with the consuming public is F.U.D. Plain and simple. I think you're underestimating the intelligence and critical mindedness of Windows users. Don't believe me, go visit actual PC retailers (more than one.) and see it for yourself. I think you need to take a good hard look at the truth, that Vista isn't going away anytime soon.

@subzero:

"There are plenty of merits to OS-X, but I think its ironic that Leopard is supposed to be the best OS. Yet one of its touted features is using Windows Vista. Obviously, if you need Vista, its not as good as advertised."

...for some users.  Windows is certainly and unquestionably needed for users that rely on Windows-only or IE-only applications/websites.  My mom is a realtor and her sites only render in IE... so she uses parallels for those and the Mac OS and it's applications for literally everything else.  Almost everyone else I know on the Mac don't need Windows apps at all.

Computers are far too diverse in their use to declare one system better for all people in all situations.

"How can you come on to a Windows oriented site and not recently have any recent Vista SP 1 experience? It really diminishes your arguments because you don't have the experience of today's Windows Vista."

How?  I don't argue about the quality of Vista.  Again, I think Vista is pretty good from the little I've used it.  I challenge you to find me arguing against Vista on this site.  I come here to stay up to date on Windows, to discuss Paul's Apple commentary, and in this thread to discuss a branding and marketing campaign as a professional brand guy for Spike.  Parse my discussion here again, before trying to invalidate my points.  I make no personal claims of Vista's "success" or "failure".

"I think you should have a working version of Vista, which your Mac should be able to do."

I did install Vista on my macbook.  I installed great.  The bootcamp installer is awesome and adds nice mac-specific drivers.  So that was great.  I'll need to use it more regularly to have an informed opinion, which is unlikely since my works is all in the Mac environment.  But it's good to have on there.

"So you can speak from actual user experience instead of copying the Apple talking points, tech writers, and commericials"

What "Apple talking points" am I copying?  Again, I don't think you are reading my posts in this thread or on this site with objectivity.  Re-read them and pretend that you don't know I use and love the Mac.  I'm not Ocean or Lotsa or whatever.  I don't believe in applying generalizations to people instead of dealing with them on their direct comments (though I will admit that I have made general statements about "mac-bashers" on many occasions).

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