Mock Turtle Soup

Windows has set up a website documenting the “Mojave Experiment“. It is now advertising said experiment in short commercials appearing on hulu.com and perhaps elsewhere as well.

The commercials consist of an experimenter asking people what they had heard about Window’s Vista. The subject would then say it was full of problems and that they would never ever use it themselves. Then the experimenter would demonstrate an operating system. Said subjects would then rave about what they were seeing and say things like, “I want this,” and the experimenter would respond rather smugly, “This is Vista.” Then a close-up of the subjects looking appropriately surprised. The tag-line should be something like: “We’ll convert you too!”

I would expect even Microsoft to be able to manage to get their programs to run correctly in a controlled environment. So the interesting aspect of this is not the so-called experiment, but the felt need to conduct and then advertise it in the first place.