I think they went wrong blaming the price raise on DVDs, and giving a completely bizarre narrative of how the prices changed. They claimed that most people were getting DVDs for $2 and that wasn't enough money, but most of their longtime subscribers had instead had streaming tacked onto their account for $2 (after it had been tacked on for free just prior to that). If they had just said this it would have been better: "First we gave you streaming for free while we built our library. Then we bumped that up to $2 on DVD accounts to pay for the improvements that we made to the library. Now we're bumping it to $8 to pay for the improvements that we've made since then. We realize that some DVD subscribers aren't going to want to pay for both features, so we're making them separate charges so that you can sign up for either or both."
P.S. I'm pretty sure this is the first time that TFA linked to on Slashdot was a podcast with no transcript, and I'm hoping it's also the last time
Had Netflix chosen Adobe Flash, they wouldn't be having so much trouble supporting platforms other than Windows.
For the record Netflix had a Flash player first, and then they moved from there to Silverlight. So it's possible that they knew something that you don't
Xbox features the metro UI. That said I don't think the reason Zune never took off was because of the UI. Lack of marketing, US only markplace, limited international availability, competition with the most popular MP3 player on the planet, and a shift away from MP3 players toward phones all contributed more heavily
The 10 Windows Phone ads that I see on my TV every day as well as an advertising intro to seemingly every single Flash video player on the internet would disagree with your assessment that Windows Phones aren't being marketed. Apple advertises a ton as always (though more often for iPads these days), but the Windows Phone ad budget seems to dwarf the combined Android marketing of all the carriers and handset makers.
I would consider "I won't use an app with ads" an unreasonable requirement, but it's obviously something that you're passionate about so I'll say to each his own. The problem is that if 99% of the market doesn't feel the same way that you do, then it's likely that you might not be able to find a single app in a category that fits your needs. Angry Birds has about a billion competitors though, so I think that's something different than what I'm talking about.
My problem is when I see apps like this or this that are obviously over-reaching. I don't think that it's just the case that most people don't look at the permissions of apps they're installing, though I do think that is part of the problem. I think that permissions of apps that the maker knows will come pre-installed on phones quite often have these crazy permissions (since the user didn't do the first install they didn't read it), and I think that there are also categories of apps where there are few competitors where they've essentially all agreed to ask for too much because like I said the "nuclear option" of not installing any app from an entire category is rarely taken.
Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. -- Frank Hubbard