It’s as if, when you went to look at a Mac in any store, there was a “Genius” sitting over your shoulder telling you what to do all the time. Given that kind of control, you could make anything look good.

I only see one problem with this comparison. Yes, the demonstration is probably comparable in length to the amount of time spend on a computer in the apple store, HOWEVER, Apple has tight control over the hardware AND software they sell. In other words, the computer you tried out in the apple store is IDENTICAL to the one they would buy.

In the case of this experiment, the testers did not install vista on the users’ computers, but instead demoed it on a single computer that happened to have all working drivers for vista. The chances that the person being given the demo would actually end up buying vista and an identical computer to the one they were given the demo on is almost zero. It is far more likely that they will buy vista, and try to run it on a completely different machine. Since most of the issues people have with vista (and all of the problems i had with it when i tried it) are compatibility issues, this demo is VERY different than trying out a computer at the apple store for a few minutes.

I have been using a Mac for the last 6 months and I love it. The difference I see is the OS navigation, with Expose, Spaces, Quicksilver and the Automator apps switching between tasks and customizing behavior is almost perfectly seamless. Don’t get me wrong I know Mac says “it just works” but OS X has its problems too, however working in OS X is much nicer than Windows has ever been.

That’s what it remind me of, those ads for that horrible instant coffee. If you have to use this kind of strategy to get people to say nice things about your product, you really need to wonder if maybe it’s not the people that are the problem… it’s the product…

Disclaimer: I used Vista for 30 minutes, then gratefully upgraded my new work laptop to XP.

To all this people who are saying crap like oh, it’s not very scientific, they didn’t use it long enough. Oh, grow up. How much do you think people get to use the Mac at an apple store before buying it.

To the guy above with the engadget comment. The author got called out and basically ripped a new one on that post with some 250 responses by the way. Not because of what MS had done, but because he posted a douchebag article putting down the experiment when they clearly said nothing about Apple’s ads, which are even less scientific and more FUD than this. He even tried to make up for it, by posting an “update”, that was pretty much thrown in the garbage too.

1. Install Vista
2. Get peripherals—cameras, printers, scanners—working
3. Get on a network, wireless or otherwise
4. Reinstall or upgrade any applications
5. Use a “Vista Ready” computer

I’m sure they had a great experience. Now back to the real world

Guess what it works for business and it works for home, I use it with Adobe Premiere, Crysis, COD4, Dreamweaver, etc…no problems at all.

Go check out Engadget’s story on this, and the avalanche of comments suddenly singing the praises of the study and Vista. It seems obvious that spamming the comment boxes, DIGG, and other online news stories with enthusiastic supporters is the second part of the Mojave PR push. Well played, Microsoft, well played.

Sure, maybe the first month I used it, not everything I had previously worked for Vista…but that was like a few months after it came out…it’s been almost 2 years now people! Once you unlock the admin controls and don’t get those annoying “Are you sure?” messages, it’s just like any other OS.

I think Microsoft’s Mojave experiment is kind of cool. “how hard is it to trick 120 people who haven’t even seen Vista before?” – Not very….but it does show that all 120 of them follow the in-crowd and don’t have opinions of their own.