The Mojave Experiment

17 08 2008

As readers, I’m guessing that a majority of you are Mac users, but either way, I’m not sure how many of you have heard of this “Mojave Experiment.” What it is, in a nut shell, is this: participants know nothing about Vista, are tricked into thinking they are testing a new OS codenamed “Mojave” [like the Mojave desert...dry and boring, maybe?] when in reality, they’re just using Vista.

At the beginning of each segment, one would say that 100% of the subjects heard negative things about Vista, and wouldn’t touch it. They were also asked to rate Vista on a scale from 1 to 10, then at the end of testing Mojave, rating the phoney OS similarly. Microsoft reports that 94% of participants rated Mojave higher than Vista, and that 0% rated Mojave lower than Vista [you can't go below a 0].

What I found interesting was the fine print. Of the 140 subjects, 20 were not video-taped. About 30 [22%] of the participants were Mac users. Meaning, the Mac users, could have not been taped at all, technically nullifying their rulings. [or meaning they can do whatever they want with the results, since there's no hard evidence]

Another beef I’ve got is the fact that none of the people that were polled knew anything about Vista. This meaning that they were basically behind the times, and probably thought that Windows ME was awesome. Also, with that information, I’ve guessed that their computers [mostly XP] had 256MB to 1GB of RAM, and maybe a mid-range processor. The computer they tested “Mojave” on was an HP Pavilion DV 2000 with 2GB of RAM. Now, I consider myself to be a power user, and I used to be an avid gamer, I have 2GB of RAM…so of course the computer is going to run fast, as well as it would with the dual core processor.

All I’m saying is: it was a kind of unfair game to pull on users who probably haven’t used a computer that much better that their own at home.

- The Mojave ExperimentFacts

PS: Vista users and the like…if you really want, I’ll load up my Vista and do a review, so no griping in the comments.


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18 08 2008
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[...] News » News News The Mojave Experiment2008-08-18 21:53:41Participants “Mojave Experiment.” What it is, in a majority of you are Mac [...]

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