Wil Shipley on Microsoft’s ‘Mojave Experiment’

I know, Mac guy shooting holes in a Microsoft marketing campaign for Vista: how shocking. But Wil Shipley has some good points about whether Microsoft’s “Mojave Experiment” actually proves anything at all about Vista:

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.

From a marketing perspective, though, this might prove to be a fairly successful campaign for Microsoft. The science of this “experiment” really does seem to be of the same caliber as that of the old Pepsi Challenge, but the Pepsi Challenge was a success in terms of selling more Pepsi.

★ Thursday, 31 July 2008