LAUNCHcast doesn't work with OS X (aka please fail early)
My brother has been enjoying LAUNCHcast since before Yahoo! bought them. He reminded me about it today. After DSL came up I went to check it out. How truly annoying!
Hello Support at LAUNCHcast.
This service is pretty unfriendly to Mac OS X users. The form for customizing a radio station cannot be submitted with either Safari 1.0 (v85) or Mozilla Firebird 0.6. The links to existing stations claim to be "Launching your radio player" and never do anything. In Internet Explorer 5.2 the custom form can be submitted. Only with IE and only after completing the form do I see a message that OS X is not supported.
I filled out the dang form three times only to learn that I have to pay the Microsoft tax to enjoy your service. It's a long form. At the very least your site should notify OS X users before they complete the form that you don't support the platform. You could also make it self-evident that your service depends on Window Media Player. The link to the LAUNCHcast system requirements it too deeply nested.
Thanks for wasting my time.
ps. Your feedback form requires that I tell you which Windows Media Player I'm using. Since I'm not actually using Window Media Player, please disregard that part of my reply.
Naveen commented
i agree- is launchcast that scared of itunes?? >> i'll probably give up my sbc dsl. it's slow anyways.
A J commented
I also HATE the way Yahoo never pays attention to the tens of thousands of Mac users out there. Below is the email I sent their customer care department, and I urge anyone viewing this page to send them a letter too.
"Dear Yahoo!
I've been a Yahoo! user for quite a while, I've been a
Mac user for longer.
First of all, I just love the way you allow Windows users to pick their specific Operating System, but of course Macintosh users are a general, unimportant category for you. Did it ever occur to you that some people use Mac OS 9 and some use OS X and they're two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT operating systems.
Anyway, here's my story/complaint:
After joining Yahoo!, I began
to realize that in most portions of your site, you
don't support Mac OS X, or in some cases, you don't
support Macs at all.
I use Safari 1.2.2, a wonderful product by Apple. In
my opinion it is the best web browser available and
I hate using Internet Explorer or Netscape.
Nevertheless, every time I try to upload a file to my
Yahoo! Photos account, or do the same in Yahoo!
Briefcase, your server lets me know that there was
some error in the transfer. I start up Internet
Explorer and everything works fine. This is fine and
it works for me now, but it would be much easier if
I could do everything from Safari.
Also, Yahoo! Launch is a big problem for me. I have
used Launch on Windows computers and think its a
great idea and service, however, IT DOESN'T WORK
ON MAC OS X! I even tried following your
requirements (something like Mac OS 9, Netscape
4.0+, Windows Media Player 7+ Flash Plugin) I
started up Classic environment, downloaded and
installed the old versions of all the appropriate
programs and plugins (this took at least an hour)
and, with great anticipation and excitement, started
up my Launch station.
However, my Launch station was still not accessible
to me, it wouldn't work.
I then realized that Launch probably doesn't work in
the Classic environment. If you don't go to the
trouble of adapting you service to work on normal
Mac computers, you probably wouldn't go to the
trouble of adding support for the OS X Classic
Environment.
I restarted my computer into Mac OS 9 and thought
I had finally figured it out. I started up Netscape,
visited Launch.com and started my player.
And it seemed like it was working for the first
couple seconds, the images and Flash objects
loaded and it told me it was "Tuning". It never
stopped tuning.
So after finding out that after hours of work and a
huge amount of effort, I had produced a "Tuning"
screen.
My hopes were rekindled when the new version of
Launchcast radio arrived. I thought you had finally
added support for Macs. You hadn't. I returned to
my dissapointed state and began to search
message boards across the internet for an equal
alternative to your service. I never found one and
decided to write you an email.
It is my hope that this email, along with countless
others I'm sure you will recieve from enraged Mac
users, will help you to consider adding support for
Macs, especially those running OS X.
As of now, thanks for wasting my time, I continue
to enjoy uploading files to Briefcase and Photos in
Internet Explorer.
Signed,
A J
(Mac OS 10.3, Safari 1.2.2, Flash Player 7, Windows
Media Player 9.0 [although I hope I never have to
use this not-nearly-as-good-as-quicktime-and-
not-even-close-to-iTunes software again)
P.S. Yahoo Mail works perfectly as far as i've found
and I thank you very much for that."