So, I appear to have iPlayer up and running on my Mac, though the download of Mock the Week I requested has not yet appeared in glorious technicolor for me to be certain it works.
How’s this done? Courtesy of the most excellent VMWare Fusion (declaration of interest: I work for a company that recently invested in VMWare, but I was using the software before anyway) which I have setup so that I can run any Windows-only apps I need in my job.
I was surprised to hit another error when downloading the iPlayer software that said it was Internet Explorer only, i.e. it refused to work because I had been trying to access it using FireFox. I can see why it might be a challenge to have the software work across Operating Systems (though don’t have much patience with the BBC for not yet porting it across) but across browsers in the same OS? What has IE got that iPlayer needs and FireFox can’t deliver?
But, the fact that I have a clunky workaround now to test the thing (and it may not even be that as worryingly I still don’t see any data arriving…) does not take the pressure off the BBC from having a proper cross-platform product for a cross-platform audience. See this Open Rights Group article for more information.
And it does still seem odd to me that the barrier appears to be a need for heavy content protection when I can attach a DVB stick to my Mac and download the same content and hold it forever without restriction – there is just the hassle factor of flagging programmes in the schedule ahead of time and having the machine left on. NB This is NOT me making a case for restricting the free-to-air content