http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

7/29/2008 1:35:50 PM

meh

7/29/2008 1:39:01 PM

Hate to ruin your fun, but this isn't the new OS. It's just MS "disguising" Vista and allowing people that had negative preconceived notions of Vista to try out their "new" OS. They tell the people it's Vista after they rave about it.

I'd rather see people do this:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/206019/

Besides, how fair is a test where MS is in complete control of the hardware and everything else. How satisfied with Vista would these people be if they were just given a copy of Vista and allowed to run it on their own hardware?

7/29/2008 1:43:18 PM

You missed the point, a lot of these were people who would have NEVER used Vista, solely because they had "heard" it was so awful. Also, I'm keenly aware of what the site is

7/29/2008 1:46:10 PM

I get the point, just saying the thread title is a bit deceiving. I was actually a bit interested in hearing something about a new OS from MS. I've already seen this.

And again, how much of an evaluation could they give when the hardware and the apps were all MS controlled variables in the experiment? I guess the experiment was aimed primarily at the "only do e-mail" or "only know how to do e-mail" crowd.

I would have just looked at the system resources on the side of the box

\/ \/ which is why I led off with "hate to ruin your fun"

[Edited on July 29, 2008 at 1:54 PM. Reason : -]

7/29/2008 1:49:36 PM

i've used vista, and it runs great on a top of the line computer. runs like crap on everything else.

7/29/2008 1:50:59 PM

Quote :

"I get the point, just saying the thread title is a bit deceiving."

that was his intention.

7/29/2008 1:52:43 PM

I like vista.
Its slow at times but the calculator gadget makes it all worth while

7/29/2008 1:53:34 PM

don't forget teh killer clock widget

7/29/2008 2:05:57 PM

Quote :

"Besides, how fair is a test where MS is in complete control of the hardware and everything else. "

Well, considering their main "competitor" does exactly this, I'd say it's pretty fair, actually.

7/29/2008 2:40:14 PM

this was all over the news yesterday

if you watch the video it's clear they just took the most ignorant, most opinionated people and made a video about it.... also a "preview" of an OS is not the same as actually using it on a daily basis.

let the people USE it for 30-days, then redo the video.

just a promotional stunt.

i can't tell if Noen has actually fallen for all this evangelistic-type brainwashing, or if he just keeps posting crap like this so microsoft won't ban thewolfweb.com at work.

do i think Vista is a great OS? sure. but did they explain the cost involved with upgrading to Vista? did they ask if people thought it was WORTH that much to upgrade? i think that's where most people are at now. while some are convinced Vista is better, they just don't see the value from the cost of upgrading... when XP does everything they do now just fine.

[Edited on July 29, 2008 at 2:59 PM. Reason : .]

7/29/2008 2:52:06 PM

I'm sure there's a lot of things wrong with using that website as "proof" Vista hasn't earned it's reputation.

But it's a great move on MS's part to try and help correct the very negative perception people who whore themselves out to online reviews without using a product might have.

I wonder though where they got the people from. It may have just been the very low saturation of colors on the site, but they all look like they were picked up off the streets.

^^ Huh? You can't go out a by a PC configured by MS with Windows. You have to depend on your OEM to do a good job with the install.

7/29/2008 5:45:15 PM

well that could be true, they did say 140 participants
http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/facts/

7/29/2008 6:12:21 PM

Quote :

"if you watch the video it's clear they just took the most ignorant, most opinionated people and made a video about it.... also a "preview" of an OS is not the same as actually using it on a daily basis. let the people USE it for 30-days, then redo the video. just a promotional stunt. i can't tell if Noen has actually fallen for all this evangelistic-type brainwashing, or if he just keeps posting crap like this so microsoft won't ban thewolfweb.com at work."

You missed my point ENTIRELY. The whole point of my posting this is that "the most ignorant, most opinionated people and made a video about it" represent the GENERAL PUBLIC. That such a large percentage of people hate Vista without having a clue about it.

Please show me where I evangelize at all, this was posted in sarcasm just as the entire project appears to be a sarcastic retort to the "Vista sucks" mindset in pop culture. I thought this was well executed and entertaining. It doesn't say anything (to me) about whether Vista actually IS good or not, just that people's perceptions have very little to do with reality.

7/29/2008 6:54:13 PM

Is that page done with silverlight?

7/29/2008 7:35:05 PM

^^well then you missed my point entirely as well, in fact you even quoted it...

let them use it. otherwise you're just showing them what you want them to believe.

and for evangelizing, i think posting a promotional video on TWW about the company you work for pretty much free advertising... and it's not just about posting it, it's the thread title, and just a URL, you didn't even go in to discussing it until someone called it out for what it was.

[Edited on July 29, 2008 at 7:58 PM. Reason : ,]

7/29/2008 7:56:04 PM

staged

7/29/2008 8:11:25 PM

in on page one.

7/29/2008 8:20:38 PM

Quote :

"Well, considering their main "competitor" does exactly this, I'd say it's pretty fair, actually."

which isn't quite the same because their main competitor packages it all together including the computer. You don't have to go through the trouble of building a machine with those exact specs that the 'demo' machine had. Plus it is designed from start to finish to run on their own hardware.

7/29/2008 8:33:46 PM

Quote :

"let them use it. otherwise you're just showing them what you want them to believe."

the problem is that for most people, change is bad, even if the status quo is not necessarily the best way to do it.

If you put a person down in front of a demo computer and show them all the cool stuff you can do with it, then yes, they will be impressed.
But if a person has been using Windows 2000 for 8 years, then buys a new computer with this "Vista thing" on it and tries to do actual work with it with no guidance or training, no matter how good it may or may not be, the person's initial reaction will likely be "this doesn't work like my old computer does. it's confusing and I like the old way better"

7/29/2008 8:59:26 PM

Quote :

"Is that page done with silverlight?"

Yep

Quote :

"let them use it. otherwise you're just showing them what you want them to believe."

I can pull up 100+ studies internally that have done that in many different forms. That is called research, and it would be ridiculously stupid for MS or any company to make public that kind of data, regardless of outcome.

This is strictly a matter of PR and perception. You still don't get it.

Quote :

"and for evangelizing, i think posting a promotional video on TWW about the company you work for pretty much free advertising... and it's not just about posting it, it's the thread title, and just a URL, you didn't even go in to discussing it until someone called it out for what it was."

I would have posted it regardless. Correlation does not imply causation. Though it appears you have problems with that in a general sense. I must be Evangelizing for Apple too since I've been posting about how I love my new iPhone and am working on an Application for it

7/29/2008 9:03:24 PM

^ that seems a bit quicker and snappier than the same kind of stuff does with flash. That could just be because of how sick I am of overly slow and messy flash based sites.

7/29/2008 9:44:11 PM

Prospero is taking this way too seriously.

7/29/2008 9:48:20 PM

^^Welcome to the joy and curse of Silverlight. It CAN be freaking amazing, both in development and performance. But I think I'm still a year or 5 away from understanding the architecture to build things properly

7/29/2008 11:10:57 PM

I thought the Mojave series was a brilliant look at the "problems" with Vista. I was telling my wife about this tonight and she said that two of her co-workers (big academia/research types who always scoffed at Vista) just mentioned yesterday that they actually started using Vista and think it is the best they have used, even better than their Macs. It really is amazing how powerful social trends/attitudes are and how hard it is to overcome.

7/29/2008 11:33:09 PM

lmfao

we can always count on tech talk to take a thread too seriously.

always.

7/29/2008 11:42:28 PM

seriously

^^those are the experiences that need to be on video, people's experience with Vista

i mean there's two things going on here. i'll take it straight from the website.

a) public opinion, how do they get it? it's based on other people's experience. they don't have any experience using it themselves.

b) you show them a "presentation" on this new OS, you show them all the cool features and it works perfectly because it's in a controlled situation.

my point is, you can't just show them a presentation, film their reaction and then make a direct comparison to their "albeit" preconceived opinions based on people's experiences.

that's like showing a video of how awesome Apple's MobileMe is during a staged PR event and then hearing from other people's experience about it's 70+ bugs.

and the thing about your Microsoft evangelism was a joke, to not get Microsoft to ban tdub.. haha... ok that wasn't funny obviously. i do find it funny how much more you stick up for Microsoft though. more-so than you used to.

it's marketing, it's PR, i get it, but i just don't think the comparison is a fair one.

[Edited on July 30, 2008 at 12:24 AM. Reason : .]

[Edited on July 30, 2008 at 12:25 AM. Reason : .]

7/30/2008 12:13:54 AM

it was fun watching the engadget comment section implode after their story on it

7/30/2008 12:16:14 AM

I don't really care for Vista.

I attempted to upgrade a decent machine to it. Pentium D 2.8GHz, 2GG RAM, Raptor HDD and a nice video card, and it ran like complete shit. And I had to buy a new printer because Vista drivers didn't exist for my HP deskjet...not even a beta version. And the OS had been out for 6-8 months by that point.

Bought a new Dell, still doesn't run that great on it. It feels like 600HP car that weighs 4 tons: Lots of potential, but way too damn fat.

I like XP.

7/30/2008 12:19:11 AM

Quote :

"[quote]Is that page done with silverlight?"

Yep[/quote]

that would explain why its so shitty.

7/30/2008 12:23:52 AM

bollocks

[Edited on July 30, 2008 at 12:44 AM. Reason : ]

7/30/2008 12:44:00 AM

I love watching people bitch about vista.

Except at work, where its spouted out by people who have never used it.

7/30/2008 1:07:22 AM

The 2 main reasons I don't use Vista on my computer is that for some strange reason, the nvidia graphics drivers will absolutely not auto-detect my CRT monitor's resolution (where as the same computer booted in to both OS X and Linux recognize it just fine). The other thing is that file accesses seem to be noticeably slower in Vista, in terms of applications launching, or a web browser reading to/writing to a file. IT's like it reads 10x more data than it needs to in order to do something.

I can see how someone would think it's better than OS X for the first week they use it, but the experience plummets after that, IMO.

7/30/2008 1:34:06 AM

i don't see why there's so much hate for vista. I love it, no real problems at all. I've run into a few small kinks (like every OS has), but nothing that wasn't easy to fix.

7/30/2008 6:48:00 AM

Quote :

"If you put a person down in front of a demo computer and show them all the cool stuff you can do with it, then yes, they will be impressed. But if a person has been using Windows 2000 for 8 years, then buys a new computer with this "Vista thing" on it and tries to do actual work with it with no guidance or training, no matter how good it may or may not be, the person's initial reaction will likely be "this doesn't work like my old computer does. it's confusing and I like the old way better""

I remember the learning curve transitioning to 95 and then XP...

The learning curve transition to Vista to get the networking stuff setup, if you didn't take advantage of the auto detect/setup features, took a significant amount of searching the help pages to properly navigate all the stupid menus...

that being said, it was probably still a much easier transition than if I were to switch to a MAC...

Vista hated my 5y/o p4 2.26GHz 1G ram computer and hardware, They didn't have the drivers for most of my older hardware... so eventually I gave up and went back to XP.

Vista came with my laptop, and I haven't had any problems with it. Overall I like the gadgets and other than it not running my old version of maple, I've enjoyed using it.

7/30/2008 7:03:46 AM

What were they even showing the people? The media center?

7/30/2008 7:52:45 AM

Quote :

"Well, considering their main "competitor" does exactly this, I'd say it's pretty fair, actually."

I can install XP on any hardware I wish.

I use Windows. I'm not switching to mac any time soon, so right now XP is Vista's main competitor - for me at least.

7/30/2008 8:15:34 AM

People (the public, non-techies) hate Vista for the same reason they hate Bill Gates - they don't know why, but that's what all the headlines say.

Think about all the hate that has been generated towards MS and Bill Gates over the past 20 years. It's widely accepted that Bill Gates is basically an evil person, but ask anyone who isn't compiling Gentoo kernals why this is, and they will have no idea. Sure, every day people run into problems running Windows, especially in the late 90s and early 00's, with Win 98, Me, and somewhat 2000, but XP should have mostly erased the problems that most people were having. Even so, does this make Bill Gates evil or the rightful subject of such hate and vitriol that he receives? No - at worst, it makes him a bad software manager.

The main somewhat legitimate reason Gate could be considered "evil" is the way MS has dealt with anti-competitive practices in the past. But again, most of the general public is unaware of things like this, and most of them wouldn't know how it affected them to begin with. People cheered and jeered at MS when the EU came down with a ruling that MS was engaging in anti-competitive practices when a court decided that it was unfair that Microsoft, horror of horrors, installed Windows Media Player on computers before vendors sold them!! OH NO, not that!! So the EU forces Microsoft to sell a version of Windows without a media player installed, and people are supposed to be happy about this? Yeah, great, some linux-head will be estatic that WMP isn't installed and he can go install an open source player (which he would have anyway), but this is supposed to benefit the average person again how? And this makes Bill Gates evil because….?

Face it - people are sheep, and they have no fucking clue how to use, much less evaluate, software or operating systems.

7/30/2008 9:32:43 AM

http://wilshipley.com/blog/2008/07/mojave-experiment-bad-science-bad.html

7/30/2008 9:55:48 AM

^that guy hit the nail on the head, imho

it has to do with how you go about it, nothing against Vista. that was my point. and when you look at how they put the "experiment" together, the results are meaningless, so go ahead, say it's only going after public perception, fine. but when you run an experiment like this without them using it, the results are meaningless.

7/30/2008 10:35:14 AM

^That guy makes so many retarded assertions, it ends up as a typical blog rant and nothing more.

He starts off with:

Quote :

"I pretty much hate Microsoft, because of their [...] shoddy products, most especially their operating systems, whose crappy user experience and programmer interfaces hold back the advance of technology. "

Now, you may hate Windows as a user, but I don't think there's any debate you could POSSIBLY win in saying that their "programmer interfaces" hold back technology advance. Windows has been THE easiest platform to develop for since the days of MSDOS. From Basic to VB, VisualC to C#, one of the HUGE reasons Microsoft is the powerhouse it is, is because they catered to developers.

"Crappy user experience"? Seriously? The only thing I can assume he means by that is UAC, which was THE big flub of Vista. Vista's UX is heads and shoulders, leaps and bounds better than XP or Win2000. And no, it's not all just Aero.

And then after this powerful opening statement he spends the entire article talking about how he uses Windows XP as if some entirely different company makes it. It's amazing to me how much people bitch and complain without any merit.

7/30/2008 12:58:32 PM

Complete fucking morons in the blogosphere hive mind like that retard are the reasons for vistas bad rep. Hes probably one of those guys that disables superfetch because OH MY FUCKING GOD ITS USING RAM HOLY FUCKING SHIT SHIT MY RAM IS IN FUCKING USE WHAT THE HELL???

7/30/2008 1:19:36 PM

^^except he doesn't talk about the operating system at all

i mean RTFP, it has nothing to do with Microsoft or Vista, it's how the survey was conducted, which neither of you are refuting.

oh right, i don't get it, it's marketing. i mean it's brilliant because those same ignorant people are going to see the website and convert to Windows Vista just because they watched a couple videos about how "great" it is on a marketing website. you're right, this one website is going to change everyone's opinion on Vista...

i like Vista. i use it at work, i use it at home, alongside XP. do i think everyone should try it? yes. do i think the general public has a negative opinion about it? yes. for no reason? no. i totally understand what they are trying to do here. in fact they should have a kiosk at every mall and show people Vista and let them use it, play around with it.

but what part is missing is why they had a negative opinion to begin with. it came from someone close to them who's actually used it and came away with a negative opinion. the only way to refute that is to have that person use it themselves... that's all i'm saying.

they should change the slogan from "see for yourself" to "use it yourself"

[Edited on July 30, 2008 at 1:52 PM. Reason : .]

7/30/2008 1:28:28 PM

fwiw, he (Wil Shipley) is the founder and lead developer Delicious Monster http://www.delicious-monster.com/
Delicious Library has become somewhat of a gold standard for how Mac applications should be written, and followers of his lead are called the "delicious generation"
I'm not saying that makes his viewpoints more or less valid, or that Delicious Library is or is not completely overrated or whatever, but he isn't just some dude with a blog complaining about Vista. He does know a thing or two about developing software and creating seamless user experiences.

Quote :

"he spends the entire article talking about how he uses Windows XP"

no he doesn't - reread the article. He is talking about the participants in the Mojave Experiment, who were all XP users who had never used Vista before


and even if you think the post just turned into a rant, the specific points he raised about how this little experiment was done are still valid
1) The Placebo Effect -

Quote :

"If we are told something is new-and-improved, we prime ourselves to believe it (c.f. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which I’ll refer to again in a bit) and make it so in our minds."

2) The Pepsi Challenge Effect -

Quote :

"My point is that the problems that Vista has become famous for are not the kinds of problems you encounter in a few minutes of playing with it in a controlled environment. Vista is known for people initially liking it, then after a while discovering it’s not working for them, and “downgrading” to XP. This study has told us exactly what we already knew: that, initially, people like Vista."

3) The Perfectly Controlled Environment Effect

Quote :

"Microsoft set up the hardware. Microsoft brought the accessories. Microsoft picked the software. Microsoft sat people down with Vista experts driving the mouse, and walked people through Vista. What an INCREDIBLE SHOCKER that in this INCREDIBLY TIGHTLY CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT Vista performed OK!"

4) The Personal Tutor Effect

Quote :

"If you sit anyone down with an expert in a particular program, and the expert walks them through the features and answers their every question, chances are good that person is going to report that she had a good experience with the program."

Quote :

"Windows has been THE easiest platform to develop for since the days of MSDOS. From Basic to VB, VisualC to C#, one of the HUGE reasons Microsoft is the powerhouse it is, is because they catered to developers."

Now personally, I have never done platform development for Windows or Mac, and what you say may be true, that MS has historically been the easiest platform to develop for.
Regardless of how things were 25, 10 or even 5 years ago, though, from reading articles like the following, it seems like the tide may be turning for what platform is easiest/best to develop for
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/what-microsoft-could-learn-from-apple.ars
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/microsoft-learn-from-apple-II.ars
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/microsoft-learn-from-apple-III.ars

7/30/2008 1:44:50 PM

Guys, it's an ad. Come the fuck on.

7/30/2008 1:53:58 PM

you know what gets me really riled up? everytime i see a subway commercial. you know why? because the sandwiches never look the same as they do in the ad.

7/30/2008 1:56:59 PM

Quote :

"Now, you may hate Windows as a user, but I don't think there's any debate you could POSSIBLY win in saying that their "programmer interfaces" hold back technology advance. Windows has been THE easiest platform to develop for since the days of MSDOS. From Basic to VB, VisualC to C#, one of the HUGE reasons Microsoft is the powerhouse it is, is because they catered to developers."

I've never programmed for Windows (but I have been dabbling in OS X development-- so I have a point of reference), but this guy seems to think that Windows' development environment has a lot of legacy cruft that leads to many hassles: http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/what-microsoft-could-learn-from-apple.ars

That's part 1 of a 3 part series.

7/30/2008 2:02:03 PM

err, just curious..... did it take you 17 minutes to come up with that response, or do you just not read the previous posts?

7/30/2008 2:06:49 PM

^^^Exactly. Microsoft seems to be fighting fire with fire here, and it works.

It doesn't matter what the slogan is, it wouldn't matter if they had sent machines home with 140 people for a month, people would claim the research invalid and biased and tainted.

Look at cellular providers. Both Verizon and AT&T claim to have the best coverage. Both use tons of research to back their positions. Which one actually does? Who knows.

Quote :

"Regardless of how things were 25, 10 or even 5 years ago, though, from reading articles like the following, it seems like the tide may be turning for what platform is easiest/best to develop for"

Apple's xCode IDE is BAD ASS. There is absolutely no denying that. Their frameworks are BAD ASS. Their tools are BAD ASS. As a hobbyist, their shit is AMAZING.

They have no external ALM model, no Source Control offering, no traceability, no management workflow, and no architectural tooling. They have no testing environment, no code analysis tools, and very very basic refactoring capabilities.

Internally I'm sure xCode is an amazing environment, because I 100% guarantee they have internal solutions to all of those gaps. But for the average developer, it means going out and finding drop-in solutions for each of those, to be able to work in a business environment. And for anyone who is in software development, the kiss of death is trying to mash together multiple offerings from multiple vendors into a single work environment.

^^

See, the legacy argument is only valid for people who have been developing for a number of years on the platform. Heck yes it's hard to learn new API's. Heck yes it's hard to transition to new frameworks.

I love that his article ignores three HUGE areas of debate.

He drones on and on about how awful it was that MS forced .NET on the world. But he never mentions the entire Mac developer industry that got shut down when OSX was announced. Moving from VisualC++ and VB to .NET's C# and VB is one thing, moving from PPC closed platform coding to an entirely different language, framwork, system, architecture and tooling is something completely different. Yet he made no mention of this at all.

Second, he goes on and on about the visual inconsistency of Windows applications as if it's an inherently bad thing for different applications that do different things to, well, look different. I agree it's nice that Apple has styling consistency. The headaches come in when you WANT to do something different. It's a royal pain in the ass to NOT use the default interfaces/controls and containers in OSX development. Each side is a different school of thought, both have their tradeoffs.

And third, and probably most important to me. He spoke a lot about the inflexible nature of Windows UI development. How hard it is to connect bits together, how he still had to fall back to Win32 message handling, etc.

Apparently he missed the boat on WPF, Expressions, and Silverlight. Because that trifecta addresses damn near every complaint he had. The tools aren't perfect (I actually hate them personally), but the functionality they enable for developers is amazing.

[Edited on July 30, 2008 at 2:24 PM. Reason : .]

7/30/2008 2:09:42 PM

AT&T's claim is based on worldwide GSM coverage...well, thats what the disclaimer on the tv states

7/30/2008 2:18:31 PM