Microsoft's Mojave experiment backfiring?

[Hurmoth]

Is Microsoft's Mojave Vista experiment backfiring with users?

Is a new marketing campaign what Vista really needs? The first stages of it -- already under way with the Mojave Experiment -- are certainly drawing attention to Vista. But in ignoring Vista's problems, could the campaign also be backfiring?

In Mojave, Microsoft fooled some end users into thinking they were looking at a new OS, when, in fact, they were viewing Vista. Participants in the test -- consisting of Windows, Mac and Linux users who hadn't tried Vista -- supposedly liked what they saw, and were shocked to learn the video demo was actually of Vista.

"Oh, cool!" exclaimed one consumer, upon learning the true identity of the OS. "Oh, my goodness!" said another. "I think I'd like to have this, actually," according to a third.

After rolling some Mojave videos for financial analysts last week, Microsoft posted them on a Web site this Tuesday for all to view. Ostensibly, Microsoft will be repurposing the clips in other marketing vehicles, although the specifics of that still remain unknown.

Already, the company is putting advertisements across the Internet linking to the Mojave Experiment site. The ads ask: "So what do people think of Windows Vista when they don't know it's Windows Vista?"

Based on the video snippets Microsoft chose for the site, Mojave seems to succeeded -- temporarily, at least -- in improving the previously negative perceptions of Vista among at least some of the consumers duped into taking a gander at the operating system.

But users aware enough of to view the experiment videos make up a generally tech-savvy crowd -- and both end users and professional commentators are raising questions online around the Mojave Experiment and the attitudes from Microsoft it seems to represent.

Many are questioning Microsoft's selection of non-technically inclined users for Mojave - and they're wondering why the particpants weren't allowed to play around with Vista, instead of just viewing canned demos.

"These tech illiterates were shown a 'demo' of Vista. Not let loose with the thing...(or God forbid, [to] try to install it and use it on their own PC). 'Mojave Experiment?' 'Rigged Experiment,'" noted internetworld 7, a BetaNews reader.

"This was part of a new Microsoft marketing drive codenamed 'FTP,' which I'm guessing means 'Fool The People' (or possibly something less polite)," commented psycros, another BetaNews reader.

"Basically, Microsoft rounds up a bunch of users who are so out of the loop they don't know Vista when they see it, and gives them ten minutes with a demo of Vista - not free reign, mind you, but clearly something controlled and monitored. It's a safe bet that not a single one of these victims had actually used this OS before receiving their ten minutes of MS window dressing. And this is supposed to change the minds of anyone who actually experienced the ultrafail that is Vista? Wow."

On BetaNews and elsewhere around the Web, observers have brought up other concerns. Why, for example, does Microsoft only show reactions from 55 people, out of the much larger pool of focus group participants?

Why, exactly, were participants so resistant to Vista prior to the demos? A lot of them say that they've "heard bad things about Vista," or words to that effect. One says simply, "It crashes," without any elaboration. But what else, exactly, might they have heard?

Did any of them ever hear that during Vista's earlier days it was hard to get a printer -- or any other peripheral, for that matter -- that worked well with the OS? Or that if you wanted Vista to work with your existing software applications, you'd probably need to hunt around on the Web for a workaround? Have they heard that Vista's User Access Control (UAC) feature is still frustrating, unless you turn it off?

"UAC's interface is annoying. It dims your screen and halts everything and only allows you click on that thing. Yes, it's great security wise, but I have tons of work going on, and basically I have to halt all work to go ahead and figure out what program is wanting me to accept again. (I mean I could just go ahead and click ACCEPT without reading what program is running, but that'd lose the point of UAC,)" pointed out BetaNews reader bsf.

Commenters asked whether Microsoft told Mojave participants during the focus group session that Vista comes in a confusing array of different editions -- and that a lot of its features -- including some of the new security capabilities -- aren't available in all of the editions.

How about hardware support for Vista? Some focus group members commented during the sessions that Vista seemed "faster" or "easier" than they'd expected. But did the focus group leaders tell them that, in order to run Vista smoothly, they'll probably need to buy new PCs outfitted with a lot more RAM?

By glossing over real concerns of Vista users and reviewers, which led to the negative perception of the OS in the first place, Microsoft may be doing itself a disservice. Instead of responding to legitimate problems, the Redmond company is essentially telling the world that complaints about Vista have no merit.

Microsoft says it wants to improve user perceptions of Vista. But many are left wondering how watching a 10-minute demo can really get across what using Vista is actually like. Shouldn't Microsoft have let these individuals try Vista for a week and then gauge their impressions, as opposed to fooling them with Vista's eye-candy under the guise of something new?

In turn, Mojave is drawing a great deal of skepticism across the Web. Rather than the focus centering on message of the marketing campaign, attention is on the approach behind the campaign.

[mad_onion]

this article fails nuff said

[zhangm Supervisor]

internetworld 7

They quoted an Apple fan-bot?

The thing is that the negative attitude towards Vista are just that vague. I've, in person, heard verbatim, "I heard that it crashes.", probably on multiple occasions. I have definitely heard on multiple occasions, "I'm afraid to get Vista, I've heard a lot of bad things about it." I usually try and ask for specifics, like how, but the answer that I always get is "I've just heard from people that it's bad..." And upon asking "who", they can almost never attribute it to a specific person that they know.

[7Dash8]

What a complete load of bollocks. Talk about creating a story just to get traffic. I love this bit:

"UAC's interface is annoying. It dims your screen and halts everything and only allows you click on that thing. Yes, it's great security wise, but I have tons of work going on, and basically I have to halt all work to go ahead and figure out what program is wanting me to accept again. (I mean I could just go ahead and click ACCEPT without reading what program is running, but that'd lose the point of UAC,)" pointed out BetaNews reader bsf.

Maybe "BetaNews reader bsf" is considered an authority in some circles, but to me he seems like a right nong. Either turn off UAC, or pay attention to the prompt it raises. The only time UAC raises a prompt is if you're installing or running a system intrusive piece of software, not when you're saving a word document or running a spreadsheet.

The vista bashing industry is scrambling to come up with more FUD to counter Mojave, because we all know stupidity is the hardest beast of all to kill...

[Hurmoth]

Maybe "BetaNews reader bsf" is considered an authority in some circles, but to me he seems like a right nong. Either turn off UAC, or pay attention to the prompt it raises. The only time UAC raises a prompt is if you're installing a system intrusive piece of software, not when you're saving a word document or running a spreadsheet.

The vista bashing industry is scrambling to come up with more FUD to counter Mojave, because we all know stupidity is the hardest beast of all to kill...

So it doesn't prompt you every time you try to do any system wide changes? Funny, must be broken on my system :rolleyes: The average user isn't going to read the prompts and isn't going to know how to turn it off.

[Ironman273]

I think Neowin is pretty much a tech savvy crowd and although there are some people for who Microsoft will always be the big evil the experiments tend to show the biased perception given by people (particularly non-techies) by the press and their "techie" friends. The article keep mentioning "many" people. How many? 10 people? 20? Out of how many? It seems like FUD to drive page views.

So it doesn't prompt you every time you try to do any system wide changes? Funny, must be broken on my system :rolleyes: The average user isn't going to read the prompts and isn't going to know how to turn it off.

There's not many people that are doing "system wide changes" out there. Please note I'm not saying you don't, just that the target of this test probably wouldn't. And, to be fair, system wide changes on Linux or the Mac would bring up their version of UAC.

[thealexweb]

I don't really see how an experiment like this could backfire, I'm sure Microsoft thought this through before they launched the project.

[ViperAFK]

So it doesn't prompt you every time you try to do any system wide changes? Funny, must be broken on my system :rolleyes: The average user isn't going to read the prompts and isn't going to know how to turn it off.

OSX/Linux do the same thing...

[Menge]

i have to agree with the article in the point that the campaign is stupid. a 10 minute demo of Vista isn't going to show its problems. especially a 10 minute demo made by the developer.

the problems with Vista come when you actually use it for a couple of days/weeks and need to get YOUR stuff working with it. i'm sorry but i think this campaign is a huge fail.

[7Dash8]

So it doesn't prompt you every time you try to do any system wide changes? Funny, must be broken on my system :rolleyes: The average user isn't going to read the prompts and isn't going to know how to turn it off.

I edited my post just as you quoted it, i added the words "running" as well as installing. But really, on a daily basis, what does the average user do that raises a UAC prompt? How many times are they going to install drivers or change system settings, and how exactly does this stop the idiot betanews reader in question from getting on with his regular work? Even if he's too stupid to work out how to turn off UAC (and really, you would have to be retarded not to work it out just by using the Help and Support documentation). Seems to me people are struggling to come up with excuses to hate Vista.

The reason why Vista was demonstrated to people is because you don't throw a complete newbie in front of a PC and tell them to work out the new features for themselves.

Also I'd love people who constantly complain about Vista's "problems" to actually list them. Not having a single problem with Vista, and I'm no tech genius. Certainly the problems people have with Vista would be no different than they'd have with XP for example, why is it everyone suddenly loves XP?

[Hurmoth]

This thread isn't about *nix or OS X. No need to bring those OSes up. I'm actually a fan of Vista now. I still have some issues with it, there's certain things I like about XP better, but all in all, Vista is much better than it was at RTM.

But you have to admit, that the people who took part in this experiment were or are people who live in the dark and clearly had never seen Vista before. They were shown a demo video, not actually allowed to use the OS. That's not a very good experiment.

[zhangm Supervisor]

Now that I give it some thought, in most cases, do users have to read UAC prompts? No doubt that they should, but do users of Linux and OS X always read their prompts? Do OS X users always expand the information arrow (which is withdrawn by default) to figure out what process is requesting privilege elevation?

I admit that I don't read the contents of UAC (although I think that the information these prompts present to the user can be more detailed and human-readable to those sufficiently interested). I don't read elevation prompts on Linux or OS X either. On all three platforms, I understand that an action I carried out triggered the authentication prompt, and also more importantly, why privilege elevation is requested. If a prompt just spontaneously appears without my interaction, then I know that something is amiss anyway. UAC doesn't *make* you enter admin credentials, it's there to make sure that an authorized user authorizes a system-level action. It's also there to facilitate running limited privilege accounts - a habit sorely needed in the Windows world.

[7Dash8]

Now that I give it some thought, in most cases, do users have to read UAC prompts?

In practice the thing about UAC is that if you expect a prompt when launching a program, 9 times out of 10 you won't read the prompt, and that's just fine, because 99% of the time that prompt is for the program you're launching. FOr example if you're going to install an nvidia driver, when you run the installer package you expect a UAC prompt, so you accept it.

The thing about UAC is that if you see a prompt when you're not expecting it, I'd bet dollars to donuts that you then will pay attention to the contents of the prompt and investigate further. For example if I go to open a word document and get a UAC prompt, I'm going to wonder why, because it never did that before.... and chances are that something fishy is going on.

[Ironman273]

This thread isn't about *nix or OS X. No need to bring those OSes up. I'm actually a fan of Vista now. I still have some issues with it, there's certain things I like about XP better, but all in all, Vista is much better than it was at RTM.

The only reason I bring them up is because the inclusion of UAC is actually too late. Other operating systems were doing it long ago. Those users got used to it and now feel their OS is safer because of it. All I'm saying is UAC is a pain right now because a lot of pre-Vista software was written to assume admin rights.

Also, please don't put limits on discussions. I realize you're the OP, but when you bring up a feature in an OS that can be compared to the same or similar feature in competing OSs then it's natural to make the comparison. It's not like this turned into a discussion about proper serving temperatures for soft serve ice cream.

Mmmmmm..... ice cream........

[Hurmoth]

The only reason I bring them up is because the inclusion of UAC is actually too late. Other operating systems were doing it long ago. Those users got used to it and now feel their OS is safer because of it. All I'm saying is UAC is a pain right now because a lot of pre-Vista software was written to assume admin rights.

Also, please don't put limits on discussions. I realize you're the OP, but when you bring up a feature in an OS that can be compared to the same or similar feature in competing OSs then it's natural to make the comparison. It's not like this turned into a discussion about proper serving temperatures for soft serve ice cream.

Mmmmmm..... ice cream........

Symantec pcAnywhere is a prime example of this. Every time I try running pcAnywhere, I get the UAC prompt. There's others that I get with that, like anything that tries accessing an ODBC connection (of course, when I say anything, I mean anything written pre-Vista).

[zhangm Supervisor]

In practice the thing about UAC is that if you expect a prompt when launching a program, 9 times out of 10 you won't read the prompt, and that's just fine, because 99% of the time that prompt is for the program you're launching. FOr example if you're going to install an nvidia driver, when you run the installer package you expect a UAC prompt, so you accept it.

The thing about UAC is that if you see a prompt when you're not expecting it, I'd bet dollars to donuts that you then will pay attention to the contents of the prompt and investigate further. For example if I go to open a word document and get a UAC prompt, I'm going to wonder why, because it never did that before.... and chances are that something fishy is going on.

Yes, UAC prompts provide a way for responsible, secure users to run a minimal privilege account while retaining the ability to get privileges if and when they are required. This is a late but welcome addition to Windows, and I believe it to be a very beneficial feature. UAC prompts also protect the computer from malicious people, i.e. you don't want Joe User to "hey, check out this awesome new toolbar I just installed in IE7!" after they borrow your computer for 5 minutes.

The only reason I bring them up is because the inclusion of UAC is actually too late. Other operating systems were doing it long ago. Those users got used to it and now feel their OS is safer because of it. All I'm saying is UAC is a pain right now because a lot of pre-Vista software was written to assume admin rights.

It's not too late, it's simply later than *nix and OS X implementation. There are results - companies know that they can choose to develop for Vista and later versions of Windows, or die off in the next few years, and this can only come as a win for the consumer, and the computing world at large. Windows used to become that virus-laden bad apple on the network, and these new security developments may herald the end to that.

[Hurmoth]

Now that I give it some thought, in most cases, do users have to read UAC prompts? No doubt that they should, but do users of Linux and OS X always read their prompts? Do OS X users always expand the information arrow (which is withdrawn by default) to figure out what process is requesting privilege elevation?

In OS X, I've only gotten the prompt when I install something (so I already know what it is being installed) and when I update the OS. Other than that, I've never seen it.

In Vista you get it a lot more than that. Like when accessing Computer Manager; you shouldn't need it just to access Computer Manager.

[Slimy]

You can argue that Apple's Get a Mac ads are also backfiring, as any geek will tell you that they're full of falsehoods, but hey, that's marketing nowadays. At least Microsoft doesn't **** on Apple in this experiment. This isn't even the marketing campaign they're planning: that's when we'll really see if Microsoft can make good advertising.

[tsupersonic]

Well, the idea of the Mojave experiment sounded real clever at first. I don't experience any of those problems the article mentions (back when I used Vista), and I know many of you don't either. This article is the same as any other vista bashing article, spreading the same fud over again. You could argue every point on the article. IMO, the author did a very poor job.

[Cormier6083]

You can argue that Apple's Get a Mac ads are also backfiring, as any geek will tell you that they're full of falsehoods, but hey, that's marketing nowadays. At least Microsoft doesn't **** on Apple in this experiment. This isn't even the marketing campaign they're planning: that's when we'll really see if Microsoft can make good advertising.

Yes, geeks, but not the average consumer. Mojave is a group of people saying how great they think it is. Get a Mac is a set of commercials with actors, which seems to have an opposite effect than Mojave. Mojave is being forceful, not informative.

[Ironman273]

It's not too late, it's simply later than *nix and OS X implementation. There are results - companies know that they can choose to develop for Vista and later versions of Windows, or die off in the next few years, and this can only come as a win for the consumer, and the computing world at large. Windows used to become that virus-laden bad apple on the network, and these new security developments may herald the end to that.

You're right, it's never too late. I remember when Windows 95 came out and there were a bunch of programs out there that had the Windows 3.11 UI that was horrible in 95. It took some time but everyone changed, just like everyone will change now also. I just find the complaints against Vista's UAC (which is a great idea) akin to complaining that 95 didn't look good because 3.11 programs were butchering the UI.

[UAC]

"UAC's interface is annoying. It dims your screen and halts everything and only allows you click on that thing. Yes, it's great security wise, but I have tons of work going on, and basically I have to halt all work to go ahead and figure out what program is wanting me to accept again. (I mean I could just go ahead and click ACCEPT without reading what program is running, but that'd lose the point of UAC,)" pointed out BetaNews reader bsf.

:no:

UAC prompts do NOT "steal focus" from the user's task. If the operating system cannot determine that the prompt was generated from the foreground window the current user is using, we will alert the user with a highlighted operation in the taskbar that an application is requesting elevated privileges. The user can select to elevate at his or her convenience and not be disrupted by an unplanned application elevation.

http://blogs.msdn.com/uac/pages/744459.aspx

Edited August 1, 2008 by UAC

[Glowstick]

It was a canned test. You can't really expect the results to be honest. If you show unaware people just the chocolate side of things, no surprise they will leave positive feedback. Let them deal with it on their own, frustration will arise. Seen it often enough. And we're talking about the generic dumbass user here, so don't even start with things like "Have him turn UAC off" and **** like that.

[abcdefg]

Yes, geeks, but not the average consumer. Mojave is a group of people saying how great they think it is. Get a Mac is a set of commercials with actors, which seems to have an opposite effect than Mojave. Mojave is being forceful, not informative.

Oh dear Jesus, are you suggesting that those Mojave-people are real and not actors? I can put people in front of Spectrum and get them to say how it is seven times better than Vi$ta.

:x

[afusion]

OSX/Linux do the same thing...

Exactly but people still complain..