NBC’s online coverage of The 2008 Summer Olympics from Beijing, China relies on Microsoft’s Silverlight 2.0b2 which is an Adobe Flash competitor (and a beta, no less!) that also happens to exclude millions of PowerPC-based Apple Mac users:
Contact:
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Paul” for the heads up.]
“Hey, let’s exclude a major portion of the Mac user base since they’re better educated and make more money than the Windows schlubs, to whom, of course, we’ll cater like the whores that we are — our advertisers will love it!”
Whoever’s making the technical (and business decisions) over at NBC is obviously an idiot.
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Monopoly? Nahh.
It’s NBC, what do you expect? I mean at least there is Mac support..
Considering Apple itself is not going to support PPC based Macs with it’s next major OS release, you can hardly blame Microsoft for not providing legacy PPC support..
Boycott the crappy Microsoft Silverlight.
Hmm…. nbc.com is that way but nbcolympics.com works just fine on my mac. Been watching the US relay team f’up the Frenchy’s all day.
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Not for nothing it’s called MSNBC.
“Boycott the crappy Microsoft Silverlight.”
I have up until this point.. I downloaded it the other day because I missed the opening ceremony and the only way to watch it was through http://www.nbcolympics.com
I rather watch this stuff on TV then to subject my Mac to Silverlight.
Wow MDN. You’ve been rolling on your Takes today. Bravo! They’re awesome!
I tried looking at this earlier and suddenly lost my appetite for watching any more of the coverage.
Good work NBC.!!!
There are minimum system requirements for Windows users as well. And trust me there many more millions of users who are on a pre XP SP2 OS than there are Mac users on PPC.
Get over it already MDN.
The Mac users that are better educated and make more money bought Intel Macs and are watching the Olympics if they feel like it.
The Mac users without Intel Macs are cheap, lazy, welfare recipients, students, or bums who bought on craigslist the PowerPC macs the better educated, wealthier Mac owners got rid of when they got their Intel Macs.
(Only slightly in jest…sorry folks, except for a few of the highest-end dual G5 PowerMacs the PowerPC-based Macintosh is a relic. I have my share–an iBook, a Powerbook G4, a G5 tower, a MDD G4, and what they make is good iTunes servers–the towers–and good carry along laptops when all I’m doing is word processing–the iBook and Powerbook.)
I have been using Silverlight for MLB and now the Olympics. When it doesn’t drop/reset my Apple Express wi-fi connection, which is often, Silverlight actually looks pretty good.
Of course, NBC and MSFT are bed buddies on that MSNBC cable channel thinggy, so would you expect any less?
FWIW, the MSN team seems to run (and very badly at that) nbcolympics.com
Pity the Win 95 and Win 98 users, too. heh.
Interesting that NBC would chose a beta product — I wonder if their advertisers realize this. It might be fun passing the word on to those advertisers…
Hmm. Will have to try this when I get home. I know I’ve used Silverlight very successfully on my PowerPC-based Mac before. Is it the specific version that’s required that’s causing a problem?
Just want to make sure this is not a case of Mac users jumping to the conclusion that we’re getting screwed over based on some weird technical detail of a small number of systems. I work at a Web site that we try to keep very Mac-friendly, and we periodically see livid e-mails from Mac users who encounter a problem and assume it’s because we’re cutting Macs out (tends to be ISP-related issues). So just want to make sure that’s not the case here.
Also, I have seen some problems related to not Silverlight per se but a combination of Silverlight, PowerPC and OS X earlier than version 10.5. Could that be the specific issue here? I know MDN has, in the past, mentioned that sooner or later, we all have to catch up to the present, and updating to 10.5 is a relatively easy way to partially do that…
RyanAir also uses Silverlight for its overview map.
Tiger, Leopard and Intel Macs are all supported so there is not much to gripe about.
As someone already mentioned, even Apple will not be supporting PPC with the upcoming Snow Leopard. We need to get used to the fact that there is going to be less and less PPC support going forward.
Since Snow Job Leopard, Steve’s master plan to obsolete PPC Macs and get the last hold outs in the user base to upgrade will not be ready for a year, Steve obviously paid NBC to make sure they did this now to keep new Mac sales rolling.
Goddammit, I just spent $75 on a G4 card for my beige G3! It is current hardware and ought to be properly supported.
This sucks.
Wasn’t it Apple who dropped Classic support? Doesn’t Snow Leopard require an Intel Mac? Why should Microsoft or NBC worry about them when even Apple wants to ignore their existence and force everyone to upgrade?
” let’s exclude a major portion of the Mac user base since they’re better educated and make more money than the Windows schlubs, “
Actually you’re excluding the ones who haven’t brought a new PC in 2-4 years. They’re probably also living in single wide trailers and driving those ’83 Crown Victorias you see with those disintegrating vinyl roofs. Most probably it’s a conscious choice to improve the demographics for advertisers.
NBC, and most other media outfits (i.e. misfits) want to peddle their influence (not news), to “sheep” as to lead them to the slaughter, rather than intelligent human beings whom make their own decisions after weighing the facts.
This has only been going on for the past 40 years.
Have to agree with MZeus on this one. Apple hasn’t sold a PPC Mac in over 2 years? And with streaming video, MDN expects PPC Macs to be supported with new technology?
Sorry, but that’s a little extreme. MDN bashes MS all the time for holding onto its legacy crap, and now bashes MS (via NBC) for not supporting Apple’s legacy hardware. Be consistent, MDN.
“… since they’re better educated and make more money”
Then they should be smart enough to choose, and able to afford a modern Mac.
Do not forget all the linux users
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I know this is a mac site and I’m mac fan, but we are not alone.
I gotta say that there seems to be a lot of breast-beating going on here about nothing. First, it appears that while the tech spec says Intel-only, there are PPC users of Silverlight who are reporting they can watch the coverage. So, it is just a question of what is officially supported (I have for many years used Safari to access my bank account, even though the only officially supported browsers are Explorer and Netscape – yeah, Netscape).
Second, welcome to the world of personal technology. If you haven’t noticed, things change. It is one of the reasons why Mac OSX is a far better operating system than any flavor or Windows. Get used to it.
Finally, virtually all samplings of website traffic indicate that Mac PPC usage is now in the minority – far less than 50%. I am not going to blame MSNBC (which certainly makes its share of stupid decisions) for not supporting a submarket of a niche market. Hell, I am excited to learn that they even know the Mac exists (but less excited by the idea of putting Silverlight on my MBP).
Nothing to see here… move along.