Thanks to Pete Cashmore from Mashable, who alerts me to the “launch” of NBC’s “download” “service.” The “service” will “allow” “you” to “download” and “watch” NBC’s “content.”
Okay, enough sarcasm. Let’s expand a few of the quotes:
- Launch: Don’t call it a launch if you only serve customers with an out of date browser (Internet Explorer), require the download of the .NET Framework, won’t run on Firefox, and can’t operate with a Mac.
- Download: Why bother calling it a download? Once I’ve gone through all the hoops, I can’t copy the file to a portable player, including (especially) an iPod.
- Service: A big BROWSER NOT COMPATIBLE banner is not service-oriented.
- Allow: How very gracious of NBC to put up download content with so much barbed wire around it. How can they possibly imagine that this will draw a larger audience than iTunes did?
- You: Who is the target customer for this? Even if my mother-in-law used a PC (she’s on a Mac), I don’t think she’d be cool with downloading a 170+ MB OS component to watch content that she can see in reruns later anyway.
- Watch: Watch while you can. The downloads are timebombed and can only be viewed for seven days.
- Content: Where is the killer show that will compel me to put up with all this nonsense? And why if you’re going to timebomb the content do you bother embedding unskippable ads?
Wake me up when NBC decides to stop hating on its customers.