“I do not recommend you try Amazon Unbox, and here’s why,” Tom Merritt blogs for CNET. “Even after it downloaded fully, it wouldn’t play. I tried several times in both the Amazon player and the regular Windows Media Player, to no avail. After less than two minutes, though, I found that if I dragged the progress indicator in the Amazon player a little, it would start playing.”
“I left work after that and rebooted my laptop at home. That’s when the real trouble began. I noticed that the Amazon player had launched itself. Annoying. I looked in the program for a preference to stop it from launching itself, and there was none. Typical. So I went to msconfig and unchecked Amazon Unbox so that it would definitely not launch itself at start-up. When I rebooted, it was no longer there. However, my firewall warned me that a Windows service (ADVWindowsClientService.exe) was trying to connect to the Net. I clicked More Info in the firewall alert and found it was Amazon Unbox. Downright offensive. It still was launching a Net-connection process that even msconfig apparently couldn’t stop. Forget it. That’s not the behavior of good software. I went to uninstall it,” Merritt explains.
“After the Install Shield launched and I chose uninstall, I got a login screen for my Amazon account. I just wanted to uninstall it. I shouldn’t have to log in to my account to do that. So I canceled the login, and the uninstall failed. I tried that three times, and it failed each time. Finally I gave up and logged in and the uninstall finished,” Merritt writes.
Merritt writes, “So, in summary, to be allowed the privilege of purchasing a video that I can’t burn to DVD and can’t watch on my iPod, I have to allow a program to hijack my start-up and force me to login to uninstall it? No way. Sorry, Amazon. I love a lot of what you do, but I will absolutely not recommend this service.”
Full article here.
Unsurprisingly, the reviews aren’t as pretty as the press release.
Related articles:
Analyst: ‘Amazon Unbox – Well that didn’t work at all’ – September 09, 2006
Analysts: Amazon’s ‘Unbox’ to be ‘Unsuccessful’ vs. Apple – September 08, 2006
Cringely: Apple, Amazon, and what Steve Jobs has up his sleeve for next Tuesday – September 08, 2006
Amazon.com launches ‘Amazon Unbox’ DVD-quality video download service with TV shows and movies – September 07, 2006
reacurring theme? lol
apple 1 , amazon 0
roll on tuesday !
Gee, I guess Amazon has already had their 15 minutes!
this is a really great product from Amazon. too bad I have not had a windoze pc going for almost 4 years. sigh, I guess I just won’t be able to use it.
And I ask, “Was this not expected?”
It seems obvious now that Amazon rushed this out the door just to steal some of the thunder from Apple’s announcement on Tuesday. With the web smacking Amazon around, Apple’s offering better be rock solid. (which I assume it will be
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You know, this just makes me realize what a great job Apple’s done so far: when I download an episode of Lost (or whatever) I don’t at all worry about it not playing, nor of iTunes hijacking my computer. Things just work as they should; a simple concept, but obviously not easy to execute with material this complex.
will sales people ever learn?…the DESIGN of your products and services actually does matter.
Wow. Amazing. All that trouble. PC users put up with it. Amazing.
MDN Magic Word: “Income” as in “I don’t see a lot of income for Amazon on this one”
Apple 1 – 0 Amazon?
say rather Apple 13 – 0 Amazon. Pretty much like Germany vs San Marino qualifier scores few days ago!
Tuesday-
I want my MTV (MacTV, that is).
Why all the repeated criticism and scathing comments? Amazon and Microsoft are working precisely according to well-established historical standards. If Unbox worked flawlessly, well, now that would be news worthy of attention.
Wow, painful.
I say the score is Apple 8 – Amazon 0. Apple got a touchdown off of a fumble and they are going to run the score up, so they converted the two point conversion.
What’s great is that Apple can quote all these bad reviews in its presentation on Tuesday. It can even make a list like it did with the iTMS to show what’s better with their offer than with competing one(s).
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Unreliable.
Unpleasant.
Ungainly.
Uninspired.
Unforgivable.
Unbox.
Are these companies complete morons? How on earth did that get past the drawing board? Now, even if they improve it, hardly anyone will use their service.
For the record: Whatever ad company or marketing firm or person who came up with “Unbox” as a name should be run out of the business and should never be allowed to use their minds creatively again.
Tom Merritt has since published an update to his experience…
Update: I received an email from Sheila at DV guru saying that she hadn’t had to log in to Amazon to uninstall. On a hunch, I reinstalled Unbox and this time allowed ADVWindowsClientService.exe to access the Internet when prompted by my firewall. This time when I uninstalled, I was not prompted to login. So ADVWindowsClientService.exe is connecting to the Net without your knowledge, even when uninstalling.
Why on earth would any consumer want to deal with any of this.
Onward Apple.
Unbox
Unbelievable
One more point:
Early adopters shouldn’t have to deal with this sort of garbage, either.
UnBox was probably thought up (copied) by an ad exec, drawn from the popular, and SUCCESSFUL 7 Up ad theme.
“7 up, the Uncola”.
Unbox, the newest killer app for the PC.
Literally.
Unbox, Xbox, all the same crap
So here’s how the launch conversation went…
Bezos: Apple’s about to release something big and kill us. How far are we from launch?
Amazon QA guy: We’re somewhere between vapor and pre-alpha.
Bezos: Is it on par with the rest of the PC experience?
QA guy: It’s a buggy POS… so, yes.
Bezos: Then launch, wintel users never know the difference. Just don’t let the Mac people see it.