First impressions are lasting impressions (From Windows Vista to the Mojave Experiment)

First, let's get this out of the way: Other than obviously working for the same company, I'm totally unrelated to the Mojave Experiment or any other marketing department for that matter. I'm "Dev" and the following post reflects my own opinions.

Windows Vista, from a product point of view, got itself some pretty bad reputation right from the start. It might be the delayed schedule, it might also be a few promised features that never made it to production (who said relational file system?). It might also be some bugs and glitches in the pre-SP1 version. And I guess biased public opinion had its effect as well. Whatever the reasons, the facts remain the same - Vista made a bad first impression on public opinion. I can only imagine the product and marketing people spending hours and days and week and months - trying to come up with a solution. However, first impressions, like the title reads, are lasting ones. This required "Thinking outside the box" (this term got so chewed up I'm feeling guilty using it).

So the marketing guys thought - (and this is just conjecture, I have absolutely no connection with that department) - Vista is actually pretty awesome, we just need to get over that bad first impression. So let's take a group of people that never heard of Vista and show them the cool features while recording their reaction - than we'll show it to the rest of the world and hope for good results.

But wait, where on earth will you find someone that knows how to run a Windows based computer but never  heard of Vista? So here's a better, more practical idea...

Come forth the Mojave Experiment.

The experiment was ingeniously simple. It went like this: They took a group of people and told them they were going to try out some features in the next operating system by Microsoft, codenamed "Mojave". These people where then placed in front of a computer running Windows Vista. I imagine it was a slightly modified version of Vista made so it would not easily expose the true nature of this experiment.

The results were amazing, and a point was proven. People think Vista sucks because they were led to believe so, and not because they tried it for themselves.

By the way, before joining Microsoft I was one of the first enthusiasts in my company (if not the first) to install Windows Vista on my main development machine (a laptop). I remember vividly how friends, co-workers and family members alike made faces and remarks along the lines of "Are you sure you want to do that? Vista is so slow and there are a lot of problems."

Nonsense, I tell you. I think Vista is a major leap forward over XP, or any other OS available today. There are many areas of improvement. My favorite, of course, being usability. The new Explorer, Control Panel, Network problems diagnostics tool, all blessed with a new, impressive, user experience. Of course like every major change in your life it takes adjusting and getting used to doing things differently. The problem with software, especially operating systems, is that you depend on thousands of software vendors to do things differently on their part before you can really feel the change.

So don't just believe everything you hear or read, experiment for yourself.