Media evolves. This is fact. Often, there is one company who draws a line in the sand and forces America to shake off the old and embrace the new. This is not easy and many more companies fail at this than those who succeed. I will concede this one point to Hastings from his open post to members. AOL, Real, Classmates, Starbucks Hear Music (personally a sad one for me), IBM, Amway (oh wait, they’re Quixtar now … even worse than Netflix’s Quickster name ), dare I say GM, and yes hundreds of other businesses have fallen on their faces because they chose to (in the spirit of making movie references) hold the line one moment longer than Mel Gibson would have in Braveheart or jumped too early. Hell, even the mothership took a detour for a stint before getting Steve Jobs back on board to point them in the right direction. They could be going off to … ahem … a galaxy far far away for all we know with his recent decision to step down. But I digress, this is about Netflix, not the primordial soup of mutated, deceased, thriving or soon to be consumed companies around them.

Netflix, you’ve had something that very few companies have and all companies dream of … a loyal following who love being your marketing arm. I’d even go so far as to say they’re evangelists for your cause. We love movies. We love convenience. We loved Netflix.

So lets get down to the nitty gritty for a quick second here, shall we? This more or less shakes down to a few things: evolution of media, arrogance, poor communication, and entitlement. Like I said before, media evolves. When I was at Starbucks we fought to create a CD burning kiosk that was on the downward slope of the CD industry. It was great technology, worked seamlessly, etc, but iTunes Music Store killed the business model. The Concorde met the same fate due to video chat, email, higher gas prices and a more connected world. Technology dies so that new technology can live. [ can you hear Elton John's Circle of Life now? ] There is a natural order to this, one that requires the public to be generally ok with having things change. When change is imposed and the waters are overly disturbed … bad things happen. Nothing is clearer than seeing more than twenty three thousand comments to a post about this imposed change. Which brings us to arrogance. You have a business model that has some secret sauce the layperson isn’t privy to. Fine, that’s why we all don’t have our own Netflix companies. We can’t always know what you have up your sleeve (clearly), but we have grown accustomed to a standard display of reciprocal trust. We pay you for movies we love. You provide a service for said movies … be it physical media or streaming. This has gone really well for some time now. You grossly underestimated the public’s temperature when it came to digital vs physical media. This saddens me for a number of reasons; the largest being that we loved you and you didn’t listen. Girly, I know, but hey, I’m that dude in that role for this instance. A ton of us were ok with the price hike, not all, but we backed you up. We’re getting more now than we were before and we rationalized paying for it. But this? This shows you really don’t know your customers at all … and furthermore, that we don’t really know you Netflix. [ insert scene in movie where the jilted lover sends a friend to go get their DVDs back from his ex's house ] I’m ok with shelling out a few extra bucks for a service that works seamlessly across the board. As far as the frustration of having two accounts, or two payments, or two queues, or any of that crap … I’m going to let Bryan Thompson say it, because he said it best:

This is great news! My dentist just did the same thing. It’s so much better. Now when I have cavities on my top row of teeth I go to one dentist, and when I have cavities on the bottom row, I go to the other dentist across town. Sure it’s frustrating that sometimes they can’t access my dental records that used to all be in one place, and yes I admit that it seems strange that they now charge me almost twice as much for the exact same dental care I received six months ago…but they are innovators! Besides, what choice do I have? They’re the only two dentists around. Well done Netflix! If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it. Simply hike the price, alienate your customer base and complicate your user interface under the guise of “progress”. Kudos.

Your arrogance shows a one sided approach and poor business understanding. Your customers make your business. Now when they see a red envelope, they see red. We will not just perpetually take your antics with a spoonful of sugar to help this “medicine” go down. However, moving on to entitlement, we really don’t have any say as to what you want to do with your business. This is the hardest part and likely where my metaphors will start getting really mixed up. [ queue sappy music where the guy realizes that she needs to be free, remixed with a soundtrack for a baby walking for the first time and that scene where Scar kills Mufasa in the wildebeest stampede ] You need to sow your seeds apparently. You’re young and naïve. You’re going to fall on your face. I am your father… [ man the wheels are falling off ... wrap it up, wrap it up ] We feel entitled to this service, but we aren’t. We just pay for it. It’s a give/take relationship and you can choose to exit it on your own accord. Which it seems like, for some reason or another, you’re choosing to do. We’ll be pissed. We’ll eat chocolate cake and cry a tear or two as we sit in front of our VHS player we found in the garage or Hulu Plus. But we’ll always remember the good times where we all got along.

We await your next move Netflix. Like a magician, had better be a good prestige or I fear you’ll watch your theatre clear faster than if someone yelled “fire.” Don’t screw this next step up Netflix. [ queue Inception massive horn sound or crickets ... it can be your movie too ]

For all intents and purposes, this should be a rant right now. It is, however, somewhat of a reflection on what I love to do and how that sometimes works out poorly.

Last night, around 10pm I started upgrading to iOS 5.0 Beta. I knew that I should have been climbing into bed momentarily, but the temptation for shininess was too great. I had to get it onto my iPhone 4 and iPad. Four hours later, I was crawling into bed with a bricked iPhone and an iPad that was still going through a restoration process. The main culprit, from what I could gather, was not the installation process of the new iOS. It was, instead our internet dropping out RIGHT at a critical moment when iTunes and xCode needed to talk with some Apple server and couldn’t. Thus a communication meltdown led to a late night and early morning breakdown that rivaled … well the last time I tried to do the exact same thing for my iPhone 3Gs.

So it’s my own damn fault that I stayed up late and am exhausted today. No mistake about that one. Spun and I now have a rule that no major technological endeavors will begin after 10pm. This love, hate relationship I have with staying on the cusp of Apple technology is good to a point. However, there comes a time when I need to break free from the chains that tether me to this aging love-affair and do things that are actually important … like snuggle with my wife and sleep a full eight hours. Thankfully, iOS 5 is one step ahead of me by making updates wireless to the cloud. Perhaps we can work a clause into the new rule for unless working from a pillowtop mattress on iCloud tasks. I’m sure she’ll go for it.

As an aside, yes, this photo was one that was somewhat similar ages ago, which was intentional. My phone was in a weird limbo zone where it hadn’t fully been restored as I was walking in. It was half alive, half dead still. As a result, I figured a photo of a former life for the iPhone would be fitting. Also, this is the corner where I laid into a canvasser yesterday for running towards me as I was running up the hill with my skateboard. Cancel, cancel. Love, love.

Just like that, Steve Jobs puts the final nail in Flash’s coffin on the iPhone.  While I respect Apple’s reasoning, it is still terribly frustrating to know that in the end someone is going to be the gatekeeper. Kudos for saving battery life, but why not make a hybrid where people can make their own apps and put them on their own phone, just not submit them to the app store?  If I willingly want to axe my battery life by using a sub-par language, why shouldn’t I be able to on my own device?

Oh, look! More Kool-aid, maybe just one sip …

This is out of control.

Like two lovers who have had a host of squabbles behind closed doors and a few out in public or a pair of cities separated by a river, two of my favorite creative companies are at war. iMudslinging has begun from key supporters in the Adobe side, almost surely forcing Apple’s hand to now nearly entirely shut down the ability for folks like myself to make cool iApps by using AS3.  Yes, I know that it’s a bizarre mutant hybrid language that runs on a platform that isn’t specifically optimized for … well most browsers, phones, etc … but it’s still a valid language that has grown leaps and bounds over the years to something that is quite stunning.  That is of course to say when it’s used for good, not evil.

Flash is New Jersey, really; they can’t call the shots, but they own a HUGE piece of the creative pie.  It had roots in toxic waste, still has some seedy parts to it, but there are a slew of amazing things that have been done via Flash that have advanced the web.

I’ve been working up a couple apps of my own and am sorely disappointed by how this is shaking out.  First, because I’d rather not add Objective C to my list of languages … I’ve got too many things banging around upstairs right now to manage one more.  CS5 was going to be stellar, for me and my own “I bet I could …” mad scientist experiments.  Secondly, I’m upset by the initial response from the Flash community.  Yes, we’re being strong-handed by Apple who is pushing for their own standards and perhaps feels slighted for not being in on previous Adobe love, but if there’s one thing that will not help is thrashing the hell of out an individual or organization who at some point we’d like to work with again.  I speak for myself, not the entire Flash community when I say, “I’d very much like to develop QUALITY apps for the iDevices with a language I know inside and out.” It’s unfortunate that this war has exploded in the 11th hour … essentially just mere days before Adobe’s launch of CS5.  Tomorrow will be interesting, as will the next few days.  Hopefully, the big boys can have a sit-down in some back room over some espresso and maybe a pork sammich and work this thing out.  Perhaps the Big Apple can coexist with Jersey, or perhaps I’ll pick up another trade; welding would be fun to do again.

I’m an Apple fanboy.  Have been for years.  I proudly tote an iPhone 3G[s] around, purchased on the first day it was released, thus replacing the original iPhone, which was purchased the day it was released after sitting in the rain for hours.  I’ve slept on the streets of San Francisco to get a “lucky bag” for the flagship grand opening.  I’ve sat outside of stores waiting for the operating system releases.  I own three generations of laptops, numerous Airports in all shapes, sizes and functions. I will probably get a Mac cursor incorporated into a tattoo at some point.  I preach the gospel of Jobs to those teetering on the brink of pixel salvation.  My mac is an extension of my brain … or at least it was until Snow Leopard came along.

There are so many expletives that I would love to pepper through this post that even Tarantino would be appalled … however, I’ll refrain for the sake of keeping this blog kid friendly.  I will say that my blood is seething with a rage that I’ve only felt when VPN’ing into PCs, experiencing super lag while working, or having connections drop for no particular reason on a regular basis.  This is getting-flicked-in-the-ear and then thwacked-in-the-forehead pissoffery.

Shame on you Apple.  Shame on you for luring loyal fans who gleefully brand themselves with your tempting sexy products.  Shame on you for not testing your product on apps that are one generation back.  For example … say I want to fire up Photoshop CS3, or DreamWeaver, or even  Lightwave 8.5 … *BONK* you’re doing it wrong.  They either hobble along like James Caan after a lovely massage from Kathy Bates or they crash harder than idiots on YouTube.

For an OS release that was touted to be minor modifications and enhancements to make life easier, the $29 for a single copy or $49 for a family license sure sounded appealing.  However, given that now I’m going to have to drop $2k to get my apps up to a working level kind of defeats the purpose of UPgrading.  The least they could have done was put a little M$ decal on the box (or 10) saying “Caution: Snow Leopard doesn’t play nice with elder Leopards” … or “You buy it, you break it.”

I’m leery to throw down that 2k for the sake of a new dot release that will magically fix everything that has been borked, but at the same point, I’m now working with a system that doesn’t like my apps and a lot of promises to folks for production that can’t be met until I either throw down money or ride out the storm.

You had the world eating out of your hand Apple.  Your industrial design, your fanbase and your potential for greatness was limitless … given your recent string of boondoggles, I’m going to step down from my pulpit for a while and wait for you to get your act together before I laud your graces further.

I look forward to the day you can get your ish together and crank out a dot release that magically fixes everything that you decided to fubar, but for now I’ll go back to YouTube to watch those idiots and make myself feel a wee bit better.