Several months ago when I logged into my Netflix account to check my queue and saw the world’s best movie rental service was offering instant streaming, I got all kinds of excited. Despite the joy of impressive two day turn-around service on physical DVDs through the US Mail, I thrilled to the prospect of being able to watch something new right now.
Clicking the “Learn More” button brought me quickly to earth, however, and I must admit I was disappointed, though not surprised to learn the streaming service was, at that point, available to Windows users only.
To their credit, Netflix rolled out a beta version of their “Watch Instantly” service to a limited number of Mac users at the beginning of November, and it’s clear the company values its Mac subscriber base because Thursday it sent out an email saying the streaming service is now available to all Mac users.
Except “all” doesn’t mean “every” in this particular case. The Microsoft Silverlight-based player requires an Intel processor, so the only Mac users who can “Watch Instantly” are those who bought Macs built by Apple in the past three years. As anyone who’s been paying attention knows, that’s an awful lot of potential Netflix customers, but as an Apple fan who appreciates the extended useful life Steve Jobs’ company builds into its products and who happily tends the flame of devotion for my five year-old PowerBook G4, I feel a little left out of the Netflix party.
It’s all good, though, because now I have another reason to sing the praises of the U.S. Mail.
Via MacWorld
4 responses to “Netflix Sends New Generation Mac Users Instant Love”
I hate it how Silverlight seems to be used when most people already have Flash installed. Sure there are many advantages, but is it really necessary to trouble people with yet another installation? I simply don’t.
You’re not missing much. The video quality is very sporadic, and often feels like they didn’t have encoding standards when they started building the streaming library.
Even worse, the selection isn’t very good. When I browse through, I find the majority of movies available for streaming are rated 2.5 stars or less by netflix customers.
Very disappointing.