“Apple fell far short of its goal of rolling out 1,000 movies for rent through the iTunes Store by the end of February,” Tom Krazit reports for CNET.
“Macworld’s Christopher Breen checked in Friday on Apple’s promise, and found that just 351 titles are available to rent through the latest version of Apple TV. If you check the iTunes Store from a Mac or PC, there are 399 movies available to rent. Breen notes that even if you include all the movies available through the iTunes Store, for both purchase and rentals, there are only 770 available,” Krazit reports.
“At Macworld, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the rental service, the company promised to have 1,000 titles available for rent by the end of February,” Krazit reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Adam W.” for the heads up.]
Bad form. Apple, take your pick: 1) hit your goals or 2) don’t make promises that you can’t fulfill. The alternative – what you’ve done here – is unacceptably Microsoftian.
not good
Apple hasn’t missed that many targest for things they have total control over. The movie industry is probably more to blame than Apple for this because if Apple pushes them, the movie companies could easily just say, “well screw it then.” And I’d rather them miss the dealine that was self imposed to please the crowds at the time, than them hit that time frame and release bug filled items like their competators. The music companies were slow to adopt the new model too, so cut them some slack. I’d prefer they go back and not tell anyone any dates. But then everyone would complain about buying something and it getting upgraded the next week. People will always bitch. All that will change is who is doing it.
I hope Steve Jobs isn’t falling into some kind of denial slump again like in 85, otherwise something bad might come of it.
This is all on the movie studios. Can you say sabotage.
I think it is Apple’s fault for not hiring and training enough staff to encode and verify the integrity and formatting of the movies. I have been concerned since the announcement for the iTunes rentals that they wouldn’t have enough staff to encode, format and catalog the movies for putting up on iTunes. We know that Steve doesn’t like to hire extra staff, and I think he blew it here! Please give us the 1,000 movie rentals stat!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: You just gotta be both right AND on time.
So here’s the question for Apple: What are you going to do? If the stock price was at $200, you could just say “Screw ’em … We ain’t explaining nothin.”
But at $122, you best start ‘splainin.
It’s pretty obvious this is squarely on the movie studios’ shoulders. They are much more cavalier with their promises than Apple.
To not be able to encode 1000 movies is an excuse that is as lame as it could possibly be (I could probably do it myself, on my three Macs, in a few weeks).
I doubt this is worth explaining; It is not like people have already seen everything there’s to see and are now waiting for more movies…
“IBM and Apple are pleased to announce, that by this time next year, we’ll be at 3 GHz.”
maybe it wasn’t apple that couldn’t meet the goal, but the studios…
It seems like the only thing we can do is boycott the studios completely and ONLY purchase and rent movies through iTunes. I’m so sick of being “marketed to” and the studios making all these restrictions as they try to squeeze the most theoretical profit out of everything. We want to pay them money, we just don’t want to support this antiquated distribution system and frankly I don’t give a f*ck if Walmart goes out of business or not — I just want to watch the movie. I don’t want it for free, but my god – when will they ever learn that it’s about giving the customers what we want????
How is this any different than promising that IBM/Motorola would have 3Mhz G5 chips in 12 months?
ha ha ha
a steve note is a guide \ and the current plan not contracts with stock holders or customers
most of you are missing it
If it were up to steve
all the movies would have been up
all bands would be on itunes
what I want to know is how is rev now that there are rentals?
I say spike and much more to come
I cancelled net flix … ready to cancel cable heck ready to cancel my phone
ALL OF THE NEW MONEY going to AAPL
and they just do what????
OS
CPU
content player / store
tv
iphone
show me who is doing it better first
company A really has a handle on XYZ
I say they can’t hold a candle
stand by take off
once again
Wow, Apple screws something up yet MDN take mentions Microsoft. Are all die-hard Mac fanatics this obsessed with Microsoft that they feel the need to mention it with regard to topics that have to do with Apple screwing up?
Apple is the new king of delays: Leopard, iPhone SDK, Apple TV 2, etc. And now it’s aiming to replace Microsoft. Not in terms of OS market share, but in terms of Vaporware king.
Not all mac users relate Apple delays with Microsoft. But a lot of mac user really hate the problems we had on the window platform. Kinda like someone with a Honda that has had problem list the other cars that has problems. Defense of a good platform made by Apple and the lack of love for windows and the problems…. A view point.
Like I keep saying, Apple simply cannot meet deadlines! Just cannot. Almost as annoying as all the Obama Bin Ladin banners on this site!
Spliting hairs boys and girls …. I bet the 6th will tell a bigger story – relax and rent – ahhhhh
@AAPL
Can you repeat that in English please?
I added them up and got 802 total..
iMaki,
Maybe on your version of the site you have…Osama what???? Where I come from I see various Apple products for sale, Nintendo Wii and one of those stupid lame-brain “message alert” ads. So, like are you on some medication, illicit drugs or just plain crazy. Frankly…I don’t give a damn!
Whatever AAPL is smoking, can I get some?
@sl,
Too fscking funny!!! I remember how horribly off Apple was on that prediction.
“So, like are you on some medication, illicit drugs or just plain crazy.”
Well, for me (in case you care), I smoked some weed earlier – nice diesel, too
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> – and I’m kinda crazy, too, but in a good way.
Maybe those who have been warning of Steve’s obsession with all these ‘great products’ ‘beautiful products’ ‘breakthrough products’ etc., are taking a toll on Apple’s future as the best computer company in the world.
iMaki,
Oh now I get your asinine humor. I went to this site through an overseas server. Don’t you mean Barack Obama the American senator from Illinois.
Political discourse is fine but narrow-mindedness is un-American. It allows America’s enemies to peddle their lies about the country. If you’re so fixated with Osama Bin Laden why don’t you join the armed forces and volunteer to fight in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al-Qaida.