Mojave Experiment Redux

I’ll start with a disclaimer: I’m not one of the ever-mounting cavalcade of Vista haters out there. I played around with the Beta of Vista, thought the paranoid User Account Control prompts were a little heavy handed, but necessary for the average user who has the computer security sense of a drunken sailor on shore leave. My transition to Vista was easy and uneventful. I, for the most part, followed the advice I gave others and only upgraded as it was time to buy a new rig and made sure it had the gravitas to handle Vista simply by confirming pre-installation in an uncrippled state. Don’t get me started on the whole Vista-Ready, Vista-Capable business or I just might quickly turn into a Vista expatriate and lead the pitchfork and torch brigade to castle Microsoft. But… not yet.

See, I’ve thought for years that one of Microsoft’s biggest tactical error in its software development was the need they felt to remain backwards compatible to an insane degree. Do I want the recent software I purchased to work with my new OS? Sure. Should I expect software written in the mid 90s to work? I say no. In fact, I blame the need Microsoft had in keepin’ with old for many of the security vulnerabilities that made MS OSes such an easy target in the Internet age and for contributing to the general lack of innovation in operating systems.

Then came Vista, with its promise of a more secure environment, new advanced file system, and the inevitable upping of the eye-candy of everyday computer use. Possibly bolstered by Apple’s processor swap to an Intel chipset, which that placed Mac users in the position of buying a new library of software to go along with their new OS, Microsoft slightly moved away from its stranglehold on the past.

It didn’t go so well.

People complained that it wouldn’t run on their Packard Bells from 1995, grumbled that all the pretty-pretties wouldn’t show up on their three-year-old machine, and were outraged that their beloved poorly written, Kernel-intruding shareware application wouldn’t run under Vista. Those irresponsible with computer security were annoyed with the UAC prompts. Gamers were mad that their fancy video card didn’t have drivers yet. And, it is true, a lot of us did have to contend with the usual amount of bugs in a new OS that really should have been caught before the code went gold, and the stripping of a lot of the interesting features (like the new filesystem) that were promised.

So, Windows Vista got a rep possibly worse than the infamous Windows Millennium Edition, which somehow managed to contain all the Y2K bugs that were supposed to show up in other computer systems all in one disappointing shrink-wrapped package. In a move that harkens back to bad 70s commercials, Microsoft tried to turn the tide of negativity by putting out videos introducing your average man (and woman) off the street to Microsoft’s successor to Vista, code named Mojave. In an attempt to illustrate that most the Vista hate out there was from people that had hardly, if at all, used the OS, the punch line of the spots were that the OS that everybody was loving so much was actually everybody’s ugly duckling, the dreaded Deathstar-like Windows Vista.

Again, it didn’t go so well.

The man-on-the-street tactic doesn’t work particularly well with a product that the average person uses, but only understands as much as they need to. The non-geek look to their computer guru neighbors, nephews, or co-workers for their cues on what’s good and what’s bad in technology. Microsoft needed to step up and challenge the negativity in computer geekdom, not fireside with mom, dad, and the Pepsi Challenge crowd.

But the story of the Mojave Experiment may not end as a morality tale about the evils of not knowing your audience in advertising. Mojave’s final chapter might be a surprise last minute victory, and simply be entitled Windows 7.

Granted, we’re still in beta territory with Microsoft Windows 7, but so far the accolades have poured in from the reviews. I’ve played with the new OS as soon as the Beta became legitimately available, and what struck me almost immediately was that this was, in a lot of respects, the Mojave Experiment made real. Sure, there has been some nips and tucks so it will run better on the emerging hot market of netbooks, and some of the big goofs in Vista (like the mind-numbing slowness to rudimentary file copies) that had already been fixed by a Service Pack were not present here in Vista++; but is there any innovation in Windows 7? Maybe a little. Is it as ballsy as Vista? Nope. And that’s too bad, folks. We need a little more innovation in our technology so we can learn to make it works better. We need to be willing to step up to a paradigm shift or we’re going to be interacting with computers in fundamentally the same way we do now twenty years from now. Geekdom needs to remember that we embrace the new, explore it, help to make it better; instead of staying in our little comfort zones and dismissing anything outside that dares us to change.

Whether it is called Windows 7, Mohave, or Vista-Plus, so far it looks to be a step back, and that is exactly what we don’t need. To innovate is to experiment, and experiments aren’t always perfect. And I can appreciate those that weren’t comfortable upgrading because of hardware or software issues. But to those that wanted to walk down the path of innovation, there should come a little respect and forgiveness that the path may have a few rocks in it. We should help to clear the path instead of driving the trailblazers back to well-worn ground.