Microsoft’s Vista spin job
The (failed) Mojave Experiment, a screen shot
I have, mostly by default, been a Microsoft software user since 1989. Despite advances through these nearly 20 years, I’ve never quite been wowed by much of what Microsoft produces.
In contrast, Adobe’s products, particularly Photoshop and InDesign, are exceedingly useful tools with myriad creative possibilities. One can make a life time’s worth of effort simply using and learning either of these two pieces of software.
Microsoft has always been regarded as basically just being there. Needed, but not necessarily wanted or even appreciated. Microsoft’s success has been in market dominance, not necessarily superior products.
Sure Word is a fairly good package, even if it’s way too full of features 95 percent of us will never use. Excel’s not bad (but I’m still sticking with SPSS to run my stats). PowerPoint is atrocious and always has been. Its auto-functions are deplorable, counterintuitive and messy. And Internet Explorer is simply a nuisance in light of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, and now, Google’s Chrome, both of which are superior products.
Microsoft, unwittingly perhaps, opened the floodgates to software innovation elsewhere by its lack of authentic vision geared toward concern for the end user. I’m a huge advocate of Google’s fairly easy-to-use – free! — online software, particularly Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Reader and iGoogle. I’m close to doing much of my daily business all online, eliminating more and more the need for desktop-based software (admittedly, I’m typing this in Word now, however).
It’s no secret that Microsoft as a software developer is behind the curve. The reasons are many, and one blogger cleverly published insider documents that hint at Microsoft’s dysfunctional culture, tellingly illuminating how Microsoft’s success has the company in disarray.
And now Microsoft is adding salt on widespread wounds by deliberately advertising the supposed hidden virtues of its problem-plagued Vista operating system. These ads, dubbed the “Mojave Experiment,” are misleading.
This blogger explains how. Such ‘research’ would likely never pass the muster of peer-review – it’s almost insulting to even think of these ads in terms related to science — but it’s important to note Microsoft’s attempts at ‘science’ are dishonest at best.
This blogger asks several on-point questions in response to the Mojave Experiment ads:
- 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?
- How is getting people to respond to controlled demos superior to surveys of people who actually use Vista?
The ultimate irony is that when I went to the Mojave Experiment Web site to review it for this post, I got a message that the site couldn’t be view in my browser: Google Chrome.
Did I download the new Microsoft software to gain access or click through to the “non-Silverlight” version after the annoying pop-up?
Hell no.
