Today Microsoft finally released their flash competitor, Silverlight. I have to admit that they actually have a catchy name, but that’s not really why you’re reading this….right? I downloaded and installed the app on my MBP and it installed flawlessly under OSX 10.4.10. So far so good, next I restarted safari and visited the silverlight site. First impressions are good, it loads relatively fast and looks decent. Then I proceded to hsn.tv (one of the featured sites) and that’s where my gripes start. You see I (along with many other geeks) have this theory that MS has never really gotten a product right until at least version 3. Silverlight 1.o, at this point really feels like a rushed product. I admit that it works (at least the install and simple stuff), but the hsn.tv streaming site stopped multiple times (to rebuffer I assume) and the whole computer interface over the live video feels forced (reminds me of coding HTML for MSNTV or WebTV….YUCK).
I then tried another site, WWE. Again the plugin loaded fine but that’s where it stopped, small video screen that reminded me of Real Video 3.0 (remember them), running inside a larger background (now the background did have the video blended inside it….kinda pedestrian). I then proceded to try some of their community picked apps and had to really stop. I have to admit that I’ve seen widgets (mac, yahoo, konfabulator) that looked/felt better than these apps.
Anyways, with all the talk about MS now going after Adobe/flash and google/ajax and the general online apps movement, I have to say….Dream on. Oh and BTW goodluck uninstalling it from your MAC….Format C:\ anyone? Now I’m interested in your comments, so blast away. I want to hear from MS fanboys/girls, google fanboys/girls, flash fanboys/girls and anyone else for that matter.
One response to “Silverlight is here….MS joins the 21 Century?”
What is even worse is now that I have Silverlight 1.0 installed on my PPC Mac.. anytime I visit microsoft.com it wants me to download and install Silverlight 2.0 which.. only works on an Intel Mac. The MBU needs to fix this stuff. PPC Macs aren’t going away anytime soon and to buy a newer computer to replace my antique G3 iMac just because of a plugin, I don’t think so. I wonder what the Dual Processing G5 PowerMac people feel like?
Oh well.. At least I can easily remove Silverlight as it’s installed just as a plugin in the Internet Plugins folders.