johnhendron.net: hendron’s digest - a weblog

You, as a techie, might have heard of Microsoft’s so-called Mojave Experiment, a new marketing campaign devised to increase adoption of Vista by Windows users.

Okay, so I watched some of the videos. For the record, I’m in no mood nor frame of mind to purchase Vista, so I watched these simply for curiosity.

One person seems amazed that you can search via some “fast search” technology. The example is pathetic: “You can type C.A.L.C. for calculator, and look, it launches… no need to know where it is on the computer.”

This is akin to going to the command line (in UNIX, not DOS) and typing:

open Calculator.app

after switching to the /Applications directory (again, my frame of reference is Mac OS X). I mean, the whole point of the GUI is to know where things are by representing them through icons.

While I use Quicksilver on the Mac this way, and I know others have used Spotlight to launch apps on the Mac, the very suggestion that this is an improvement by using this particular example is… lame. In other words, a better example would have been to find a misplaced file.

In quite a few examples, people tell us they had “no idea Vista could do this, or that.” What does this prove to us, now? Microsoft really missed the boat in communicating why folks should upgrade. Or was it just all that interference of bad press because no one could use their printers and other peripherals?

I mean, do new features matter when basic ones no longer work?

And lastly, this is marketing here, so, we cannot read too deeply into any of the “reactions” or “conversions” made on “hidden cameras.” But the suggestion is a powerful one. “Look ma, this Vista rocks. People can’t believe how fast and powerful it is.” Many of the videos still don’t do a good job at articulating “improvements.” All I heard were references to the look and the speed.

First, speed is unfair. Microsoft was likely using new hardware.

Second, by looks alone, yes, Vista is a triumph over XP, I agree. But a proper “experiment” would pit these folks with Vista, on their own machines, for a period of time. Some real… “usability” testing, if you would.

My guess is, folks would grow tired of the new look in the face of a poor user experience, just like the bloggers and reviewers did when they had their shot at communicating what was right and wrong with Vista.

As John Gruber points out, I bet the campaign will be successful. Maybe we’ll see some copy-cats comparing the Microsoft products with… Linux and/or Mac OS X.