Musings from The Software Underground

Amazon.com's new Unbox service beats Apple's rumored movie download service to market, but the reviews have been very, very unkind:

First up is Tom Merritt from the CNET Alpha Blog:

So, in summary, to be allowed the privilege of purchasing a video that I can't burn to DVD and can't watch on my iPod, I have to allow a program to hijack my start-up and force me to login to uninstall it? No way. Sorry, Amazon. I love a lot of what you do, but I will absolutely not recommend this service. Try again. -- My fight with Amazon Unbox

Next is a JupiterResearch analyist:

Load player, it connects and then nothing. No download. No nothing. It shows but nothing happens. Fifteen minutes of nothing. I click troubleshoot. It tells me it's checking stuff like DRM. Everything checks out. Message pops up. You have used all licenses for this file. If you want to watch it on this PC, you need to purchase it again. OK. We're done. -- Amazon Unbox - Well that didn't work at all

Not to mention, no support for Mac users, no support for iPods, no support for burning to DVDs, which means that you are chained to your desktop to watch anything (I sit here enough as its is, thank you very much) and prices that are generally the same as what you'd pay for the actual DVDs...

Makes you wonder how this ever saw the light of day, in it's current form. I mean I'd expect it to improve over time (how could it not?) but it's not a very auspicious start. Yet again, more proof that ideas are easy, execution is hard. Well Apple, I guess... "It's Showtime"

(Please Apple, let me stream video from my Mac to my TV the way I can stream music to my amplifier now...)