The New York Times today released a beta version of its Times Reader for the Mac; a free download for registered NYTimes.com members.
Rob Larson, Vice President, Digital Production, NYTimes.com, writes, “Please note that Times Reader for the Mac uses [Microsoft’s] Silverlight plugin. The installation process will prompt you to install Silverlight if you do not already have it on your computer.”
More info and download link here.
MacDailyNews Take: Judging by the initial comments to Larson’s post, there seems to be some resistance by Mac users to (and/or problems encountered when) installing Microsoft’s Silverlight on their Macs.
What’s the point when I go to http://www.nytimes.com anyway?
Besides, it installs Microsoft’s Silverfish.
It even SOUNDS icky!
From my Wikipedia Dashboard Widget:
The favorite food of silverfish is any matter that contains starch or polysaccharides, such as dextrin in adhesives. These include glue, book bindings, paper, photos, sugar, hair, and dandruff. Silverfish can also cause damage to books, tapestries, and textiles. Silverfish will commonly graze in and around showers, baths, and sinks on the cellulose present in many shampoos, shaving foams and so on. Apart from these cases, the damage caused by silverfish is negligible and they have no direct effect on human health beyond psychological distress to those who are frightened or disgusted by their appearance. However, they also have a bite which may cause irritation but has no long term effects. Other substances that may be eaten include cotton, linen, silk and synthetic fibers, and dead insects or even its own exuvia (moulted exoskeleton). During famine, a silverfish may even attack leatherware and synthetic fabrics. In extreme cases, silverfish may live for a year without eating. [2] Silverfish are also known to sometimes find accommodation with ants in ant nests.[citation needed]
While I haven’t had a chance to try the NY Times Reader yet, I have installed Silverlight at home in order to watch videos on demand on TSN (the Canadian ESPN). I haven’t had any problems with the newer TSN video player at all, and find it much more Safari-friendly than their previous one. That said, I do feel really dirty for installing Silverlight…*sigh* I like my hockey on demand, though…
I wonder how much of the 50B$ not spent on Yahoo when on bribing NYT to use this crap.
Silverlight is much better at serving up MLB.com video than WMP ever was.
They still need to get some things fixed, but for a version 1.0 software it is pretty good.
Ugh, I suddenly feel dirty for having said all that…gonna take a hard scrub shower now.
Sorry NYT,
I will not install anything in my Mac that requires any software made by Microsoft. Please supply users with a workaround. Thanks.
KEEP MICROSOFT OFF MY MAC
No way is Silverlight getting loaded here.
I smell a boycott.
Didn’t Microsoft also recently announce that some new money-losing venture of theirs was “Mac-compatible”, only to have it turn out that it’s really only Silverlight-compatible?
And yeah, not installing Silverlight on my Mac either.
MW: should, as in these people should know better than to try to shoehorn new proprietary plugins into our browsers this late in the game. Use open internet standards, folks.
“Silverlight is much better at serving up MLB.com video than WMP ever was.”
setting the bar pretty low there, aren’t you?
just installed it and played around with it, not that bad actually, very fast to load and start whatever it has been coded for, it’s definatly not just for video
could microsoft have done something semi decent? (prob not)
There is NO WAY I’m going to contaminate my Mac with M$ crapware!
I have Silverlight installed on my Mac, because I needed it to use ITV Catch up, which is ITV’s version of the BBC iPlayer.
It runs ok. Can’t tell of any difference between Adobe Flash & Microsoft Siverlight.
like others above, there’s no way in hell i’m installing MS Silverblight on my Mac.
Anti-American Commies. Don’t believe anything you read in that has been rag!
Install Silverlight on a perfectly good Mac…..
Not a chance.
Tough crowd. The MS act got boo’d before it ever got onstage.
Ack! The font looks TERRIBLE!
Wow. It’s all pixelated and janky. Oh horror of horrors! What have I done? How do I uninstall Silverlight? My God, I am stupid sometimes.
I have not installed or used anything Microshaft since way before OSX – and I sure as heck won’t start now…
Amazing how stupid some corporations – and people – are…
CR
SILVERLIGHT!?!
*throws egg*
*throws egg*
*throws egg*
Microsoft may be the big evil, but that doesn’t prevent them from doing something right once in a great while (give a blind man enough darts and eventually he’ll hit the bulls-eye, maybe after hitting everything else in the room…)
Right now there are a few things that MS has that seem to work fairly well:
Sync (voice activated stuff for cars)
.NET (C# is an awesome language and it’s fairly powerful)
Silverlight (actually mac compatible!)
Visual Studio (very powerful IDE)
With all that they Are the big evil and I don’t support them if I can help it.
Many of posts coming from those who vow never to install Silverlight on their Mac show how closed-minded many Mac owners are.
Silverlight has actually received excellent reviews.
“give a blind man enough darts and eventually he’ll hit the bulls-eye, maybe after hitting everything else in the room…”
While creating more blind people in the process? Sometimes you have to take his darts away from him.
Why would ANYONE (MDN readers especially) install this crap!? Do you REALLY want to increment MS’s install counters to endorse “Microsoft software only” web content? Do you REALLY want to go back to the days where ACTIVE X was needed to view sites properly? Well guess what? This is Active X all over again!!
The world doesn’t need Microsoft software to view Internet content, and CERTAINLY not on Mac. Do not fall for it.
I wonder what David Pogue thinks about this 😐
He works for the NYT doesn’t he?