“Mojave Experiment:” A Case Study in Slapping People in the Face

Written by Vikram on February 24, 2009

No company does a more splendid job of publicly humiliating its users than good old Microsoft.  They provide me with so many amusing missteps that someday I might exclusively blog about the stupidity of their marketing department. The latest installment in the Microsoft saga: they recently laid off 1,400 employees… and then sent them letters asking them to return part of their severance package. You can read about it here.

As enticing as that story is, what I want to talk about is the “Mojave Experiment.” If you’re lucky, you may have missed the ads on TV. These started around the time the multimillion-dollar  Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld  ad campaign went bust.

Mojave Slap

Here is a history of the “Mojave Experiment.”

  1. Microsoft spends millions of dollars on a fake “experiment” in which they publicly humiliate their users instead of fixing the bugs in Vista.
  2. They make believe that the whole Vista disaster is just a misunderstanding. After all, when the operating system is called “Mojave,” the problems magically disappear. Do they think people are that stupid: I guess calling a donkey a horse turns it into a Triple Crown winner!
  3. They tape a “focus group” in which a ethnically diverse group of ordinary people are shown some of the “tricks” of Vista. They react in front of the camera with ooohs and aaahs! TV does turn your brain to mush after all.
  4. They loved it!!! Really?… Well, our company did a mass move to Apple (and Windows XP for those requiring PC’s) after a double system-wide crash of the Vista operating system in early last year. If only we had been smart enough to call the system “Mojave,” we could have been saved all the heartache.

Never before has so much money been invested in insulting people. Nicely done!

Question: What is the one thing Mojave (desert) and Vista have in common?
Answer: A slow, horrible death if you venture out without proper support!

If you are running a business of any kind, please know that looking down on your customers or end users will only result in “Mojave” style failed experiments. Don’t be the company that alienates its users by insulting their intelligence – especially  on national television. Not cool.

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”- Albert Einstein