Comments on: This is your brain on marketing. http://blog.smibs.com/posts/261/this-is-your-brain-on-marketing/ Blogging From Inside the New Media Revolution Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:26:02 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Philip http://blog.smibs.com/posts/261/this-is-your-brain-on-marketing/comment-page-1/#comment-1821 Philip Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:46:17 +0000 http://blog.smibs.com/?p=261#comment-1821 Ahh, but you see, the wonderful "Mojave" experiment isn't really scientific at _all_ - purely a marketing gimmick. The largest flaws: The hardware was controlled. In a perfect world, everyone would be running Vista ("Mojave") on hardware that it was designed for. In the real world however, people run it on whatever hardware they have. (This is one of the strong points of the Mac - they are able to get the OS perfect for the hardware, as they are able to get the hardware perfect for the OS.) Now, this isn't to say that Vista won't run on other hardware - it just won't run as _well_ as it did during this "experiment". The software was controlled. One of the larger flaws, and a major reason Vista slows down, is when you upgrade your Win XP machine to Vista. The leftover files, leftover programs, etc (the "gunk") does it's evil work on Vista - and the result is much worse performance than was offered by Microsoft. The other addition that slows computers down are simple day-to-day programs like firewalls, anti-virus, and various pieces of commercial software people need for their work. While I have not seen "Mojave", I can bet that their was no firewall (other than the Windows one), no anti-virus, and no additional software beyond a blank Vista install. It also just rankles me the wrong way - having been brough up in an environment that takes the marketing and throws cynicsm straight back at it, I don't fall into the trap of believing it very easily. It actually has to be right, in order to be smug - and in this case, it's smug and wrong. Microsoft's stated Mojave Experiment hypothesis: "If people could see Windows Vista firsthand, they would like it." The real hypothesis: If we trick people, they will see just how stupid they are. The end point is that Vista _looks_ pretty, and for the first little while has some useful features, but there are so many little ways that it falls apart after using it, that people have been downgrading, and then telling everyone else not to bother. Vista has bad press, and instead of trying to fix the underlying issues, Microsoft have tried to just pretend that everyone is stupid, and if you didn't get it to work this well, you must be doing it wrong. For a much longer look at the "Mojave Experiment" and its flaws, check out http://wilshipley.com/blog/2008/07/mojave-experiment-bad-science-bad.html which does a very good job of proving this whole thing wrong (very interesting is the first point on the placebo affect.) Ahh, but you see, the wonderful “Mojave” experiment isn’t really scientific at _all_ – purely a marketing gimmick.

The largest flaws:
The hardware was controlled. In a perfect world, everyone would be running Vista (”Mojave”) on hardware that it was designed for. In the real world however, people run it on whatever hardware they have. (This is one of the strong points of the Mac – they are able to get the OS perfect for the hardware, as they are able to get the hardware perfect for the OS.) Now, this isn’t to say that Vista won’t run on other hardware – it just won’t run as _well_ as it did during this “experiment”.

The software was controlled. One of the larger flaws, and a major reason Vista slows down, is when you upgrade your Win XP machine to Vista. The leftover files, leftover programs, etc (the “gunk”) does it’s evil work on Vista – and the result is much worse performance than was offered by Microsoft. The other addition that slows computers down are simple day-to-day programs like firewalls, anti-virus, and various pieces of commercial software people need for their work. While I have not seen “Mojave”, I can bet that their was no firewall (other than the Windows one), no anti-virus, and no additional software beyond a blank Vista install.

It also just rankles me the wrong way – having been brough up in an environment that takes the marketing and throws cynicsm straight back at it, I don’t fall into the trap of believing it very easily. It actually has to be right, in order to be smug – and in this case, it’s smug and wrong. Microsoft’s stated Mojave Experiment hypothesis: “If people could see Windows Vista firsthand, they would like it.” The real hypothesis: If we trick people, they will see just how stupid they are.

The end point is that Vista _looks_ pretty, and for the first little while has some useful features, but there are so many little ways that it falls apart after using it, that people have been downgrading, and then telling everyone else not to bother. Vista has bad press, and instead of trying to fix the underlying issues, Microsoft have tried to just pretend that everyone is stupid, and if you didn’t get it to work this well, you must be doing it wrong.

For a much longer look at the “Mojave Experiment” and its flaws, check out http://wilshipley.com/blog/2008/07/mojave-experiment-bad-science-bad.html which does a very good job of proving this whole thing wrong (very interesting is the first point on the placebo affect.)

]]>