Netflix Streaming App Coming to iPad

What you're seeing is that people are starting to realize that this device can do the vast majority of things that people want to do on their computers. And with nearly none of the time/cognitive/frustration burden of a "computer" -- notice how "normals" don't think of the iPad as a "computer": they think of it as... well, an iPad. Normals don't want computers but they want what computers can do.

Yes. The entire appeal of the iPad isn't, 'This can do a great many of the things that my computer can already do!' it's, 'This makes it so much more pleasant to do [X] than it is on a computer!'

So every new feature that we see demonstrated isn't just filling in a little bit more of the difference between an iPad and a netbook; it's bringing the experience of the iPad to the tasks and behavior we're looking for.

This is the way that innovation happens, even though a lot of people don't realize it. They're stuck in the old mode of innovation, the King's Quest VI mode. The first time I saw a CGI video playing off a CD-ROM I was blown away by the capabilities of computers. By now I know what computers can do, and I have seen enough CGI video to be pretty well-convinced that anything I want can be rendered by it. Likewise, we have enough technologies at our disposal right now that we could spend a long, long time improving the software that we use simply by designing better interfaces for it. If you wait around for an entirely new technology—something that isn't possible on your laptop, like Star Wars-style holograms—you're gonna miss several boats.

To put it more directly: there's surely some people who have already ordered the iPad who will be thinking, 'Oh, nice. There's another thing I can use it for.' But the story here is the many, many more people who are thinking, 'I love Netflix/Hulu/[whatever pre-existing service will be replicated next week], and if I could use it on a magic ultra-light wireless multi-touch slate, I'd buy one in a fucking second.'

Whoa, what? From the article:

What’s even more interesting is that this wasn’t a skunkworks proof-of-concept project, Microsoft got the OK from Apple. This is in stark-contrast to Apple’s stance on Adobe Flash, which currently has plans for all mobile platforms except for the iPhone.

So according to Mashable, Apple is indeed allowing a runtime environment, running interpreted code on the iPhone, in direct contravention of the SDK guidelines (unlike Flash CS5, which is compiling native IPA binaries with nothing interpreted at runtime). Very weird.

This is something called Silverlight that is totally different from Silverlight.

Netflix could have built their own DRM system that runs on the iPad, but I'm guessing they just used RDF to distract and confuse the studios.

Nope. Only silverlight video streaming works on the iphone. They implemented Apple's http video protocol on the server side. Doesn't need Apple's permission for that. You can't run actual silverlight apps on the iPhone.

I love how it has 57 five star reviews without anyone actually having it yet.

I basically don't pay attention to stories on April Fools day - to the few I do, I just wait and see if there is any follow up the next day.

Probably not. I doubt you'd get sufficient speeds even if they allowed it.

Yeah... ever since the switch to Silverlight, Netflix streaming has been unwatchable even on my fairly up-to-date desktop machine.