Author Archive | Harry McCracken

Netflix (or is That Qwikster?) Apologizes, Splits in Two, Doesn’t Explain Price Hike

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 18, 2011 at 11:36 pm

I like Netflix. I was a happy subscriber to its DVDs-by-mail service for years. Today, I’m a happy subscriber to its streaming service, which is the form of Internet TV we watch most often in this household. But I’m happiest just enjoying its services–the more attention I pay to the company, its actions, and its explanations for those actions, the more confused I get.

Back in November of 2010, Netflix introduced a streaming-only plan and hiked the prices of service tiers that included DVDs. Then in July, it split up the streaming and DVD services in a way that amounted to a stiff price hike if you wanted both. Its explanation of why it was doing this was oblique at best. Some customers got irate and issued threats involving leaving for Blockbuster–and enough of them apparently made good on their warnings to rattle Wall Street last week.

Now Netflix founder and CEO has blogged to say he’s sorry about not clearly explaining the July changes himself–although not, apparently, about the price hikes themselves. But that’s not his big news. That would be the announcement that Netflix’s DVDs-by-mail service, which has gone by the name “Netflix” since 1998, will soon be rechristened Qwikster. It’ll be a separate division of Netflix, and will add video games to its DVDs and Blu-Rays.

Henceforth, if you subscribe to both the streaming and DVD services, you’ll essentially have to deal with two different companies, with separate plans, separate billing, separate queues, and separate customer service.

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The History of Operating Systems, Charted

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 18, 2011 at 4:26 pm

Horace Dediu of Asymco has tried to quantify and chart how fast Windows is evolving compared to other operating systems. I could write hundreds of words quibbling with his methodology–for one thing, Windows 3.1 wasn’t the first stand-alone version of Windows and, in fact, required that you buy and install a separate copy of DOS–but his thoughts are interesting and his commenters have lots of smart things to say.

The contrast is then striking: Consumerized devices with over-the-air updates on a 12 month cycle are five times more agile than a traditional corporate Windows desktop. Another way to look at this is that for every change in a corporate desktop environment, the average user will change their device experience five times. Although Microsoft might find comfort in Enterprises’ leisurely pace of change[2], those are the wrong customers to keep happy going forward.

Dediu says he’s glad that Windows 8 is named Windows 8. It’s worth reminding ourselves that it’s only a code name at this point–and that “Windows 8” is the first version of Windows in Windows history that might plausibly be called something other than Windows, since the Metro interface lacks windows as we knew them. (That said, I hope that Microsoft does indeed call it Windows 8.)

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PlayBooks for Cheap

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 16, 2011 at 1:55 pm

RIM’s PlayBook isn’t selling well–which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s used one. So the price is coming down. Unfortunately, that doesn’t solve anything: the problem with the PlayBook is that it’s broken, not that it’s too expensive.

RIM says it’s going to fix the most glaring issue–the lack of built-in e-mail–and with any luck, it’ll have more to say at its developer conference next month, which I’ll be attending. I hope it doesn’t do an HP and kill the product. For everything that’s so very wrong about the PlayBook, its problems are ones of execution–and I still think that it’s possible to build a great mobile platform using the PlayBook’s QNX operating system.

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Windows 8 Continues the Cheery Error Message Tradition, Unfortunately

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 16, 2011 at 10:46 am

(Image borrowed from Geek.com)

Software developers have a strange attitude towards notifying their customers of product error. They rarely just explain what happened, and apologize. Well, sometimes they do try, but with an explanation so technical that it’s pointless for us normal human beings. (That may or may not be better than providing an error code rather than actual information on what went wrong.)

There’s also a long-standing tradition of error messages being accompanied by humorous visuals, dating back at least to the Mac’s Bomb and Sad Mac icons, and probably much further than that. And now Geek.com is reporting that Windows 8 has a new sort of Blue Screen of Death that sports an oversized frowny face emoticon. (The developer preview of Windows 8 is buggy, but I haven’t run into any catastrophic errors that trigger this screen myself.)

I don’t get it. Are there any other industries that see failure as an occasion for merriment? I love Chrome, but its suffering browser tab and messages such as “Aw, Snap!” always leave me slightly more irritated than if I’d just gotten a straightforward alert that something had gone awry.

Of course, Windows 8 is merely a developer preview, so its error messages are presumably subject to further tweaking. How about dumping the frowny, Microsoft?

(Side note: The one cheery error message I like is Twitter’s Failwhale, in part because it was designed by my friend Yiying Lu. In fact, I’m almost sorry I rarely see it these days…)

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Please, PC Makers, Don’t Ruin Windows 8

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 16, 2011 at 1:07 am

Who says you can’t teach an old operating system new tricks? For years, Windows was the world’s most annoying piece of software. It would blithely interrupt your work to tell you that there were unused icons on your desktop. Its search feature–even in the Professional version–inexplicably involved a puppy dog. It made paying customers jump through hoops to prove they hadn’t pirated the software, and sometimes accused them of stealing it anyhow. It rebooted itself to install updates when it felt like it, regardless of what you might be doing at the moment. I get irritated just thinking about it.

With Windows 7, Microsoft took a major step in the right direction: The best thing about the upgrade was that it stayed out of your face. And now Windows 8 promises to go even further, with a new interface, Metro, that’s remarkably tasteful and pleasant. If Microsoft delivers on Win 8’s potential when it ships it next year, you might forget you’re using Windows at all.

But I’m already nervous that PC markers will sabotage Microsoft’s good work by layering on junkware that makes the operating system slower, less reliable, and more aggravating.

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U.S. Moviegoers Lose Interest in 3D

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 15, 2011 at 6:16 pm

I don’t mean to suggest that I know more about the movie business than Jeffrey Katzenberg. But I’m relieved to see that the gut instinct I had all along seems to be fact: 3D movies were, are, and always will be a fad.

I wonder how long it’ll take until Hollywood and consumer-electronics companies conclude that the magic of 3D isn’t that magical at home, either?

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The 24-Hour Notebook

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 14, 2011 at 9:24 am

I still can’t figure out why Microsoft and Intel are holding their annual developer confences at the same time in different parts of California. I chose to attend Microsoft’s BUILD. But interesting stuff is being shown at Intel’s IDF, too–including an upcoming processor that will supposedly be capable of powering a laptop for 24 hours on a charge, not to mention being able to run off solar power.

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Needed: A Great Office for Windows 8

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 14, 2011 at 1:08 am

My friend Jeremy Toeman says that it’s imperative that Microsoft come up with a great version of Office that uses Windows 8’s new Metro interface. He’s right, of course–without one, there’s little reason for any business to consider an upgrade, and a really good one could be a major selling point. And I’ll eat a Windows 8 tablet if Microsoft doesn’t have a pretty ambitious one ready by the time Windows 8 PCs go on sale.

I will quibble with one point in Jeremy’s post: He says that early demos of Windows Vista were “awesome.” I remember spending what seemed like eons running early versions of Vista and being briefed by Microsoft on them, and being consistently underwhelmed. I expressed some guardedVista skepticism well before the OS shipped, but to this day I wish I’d been even more skeptical even earlier. Then I could say “I told you so…”

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