At long last, there’s a desktop app for UK Mac users to download digital copies of BBC TV shows.
The launch of the Mac beta comes many months after its Windows rival. It also comes with a self-congratulatory news story at news.bbc.
And it’s also a bit of a mess.
Lots of people, myself included, have spent long hapless hours this evening, trying to find any way to download the app in the first place. I hunted high and low and found nothing. I signed up as a Labs user. I clicked randomly on some stuff. Hmmm. Finally a friend sent me this link, which took me to a Download option.
It’s an Adobe Air app, so installation is fairly straightforward from that point. Even so, with the app installed, I still can’t find a single show available as a download. And that’s after trying in three different browsers. Hence the disappointingly empty screenshot above.
But hey, let’s not moan. It’s great to have the app at all, and UK Mac users will be delighted to have it around. Thank you lovely Auntie Nerds!
17 responses to “BBC iPlayer App: Hard To Find, Very Beta, But Hey At Least It’s Out”
You forgot, it also doesn’t look like a Mac or a Windows application. This would be OK if they stuck it in a web browser, where user’s have no expectations on the UI, but it ruins the user experience in MacOS X. People paid for a Mac to get a Mac experience for their applications. To ruin this experience to be able to just shove something out the door is lame.
And it just plays into Adobe’s hands, which wants make their own ‘experience’ for all users, which just happens to be a least-common-denominator approach. Hopefully, AIR for client applications dies a quicker death than Java did.
I can’t get it to work either. I get the app, but there’s no download link on any of the programmes, so the point of this app is…..?
Complete and utter f**k up by the Beeb. Should have been available from the start and the roll out has been amateurish at best.
Thanks for the link; I have been hunting since the news came out – at last iPlayer for mac.
Totally agree with others that this should have been available from day 1 in equivalently working (dis) order to our friend on the dark side.
You have to sign up for BBC Labs, here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/l…
I got Buzzcocks and Have I Got News For You last night. This morning there’s more stuff available. Try searching around BBC4.
What a load of crap. The best bit is the satisfying crunching sound as it his the trash bin. Not possible to download anything with this. I know its a beta but come on guys- this looks like it was commissioned by the government and we know their track record with IT ( and the economy, education, health etc)
Well, it worked for me – in fact it started downloading Never Mind the Buzzcocks without even asking me first, which was a bit of a worry. Is this what I want a standalone iPlayer app for, I asked myself?
Just us a proxy to view the content on the site ;) If you’re on firefox, download the switchproxy plugin. Insert some UK based proxies that support HTTP and there ya go! Enjoy!
Just us a proxy to view the content on the site ;) If you’re on firefox, download the switchproxy plugin. Insert some UK based proxies that support HTTP and there ya go! Enjoy!
Ive just started using iPlayer grabber which works pretty well
http://www.macupdate.com/info….