[betandr]

I saw Netflix's chief product officer Neil Hunt say a while ago Netflix would "never" offer downloads, but I have to say I'm really pleased with this. Getting the train through spotty service areas effectively rendered Netflix unusable, but now! :)

[ziszis]

Neil Hunt a year ago [http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/09/the-real-reason-netflix-won...]

“I think it's something that lots of people ask for. We'll see if it's something lots of people will use. Undoubtedly it adds considerable complexity to your life with Amazon Prime – you have to remember that you want to download this thing. It's not going to be instant, you have to have the right storage on your device, you have to manage it, and I'm just not sure people are actually that compelled to do that, and that it's worth providing that level of complexity.”

Part of me wonders how much this was marketing spin to cover a gap they had relative to Amazon Prime and they were in actuality evaluating how to catch up.

This happens far to often. Notorious example is Ballmer saying iPhone will be a flop when teams internally know that Windows Mobile just blew up.

[MBCook]

He wasn't wrong, it does add serious interface complexity.

But we all know that it's a very desirable feature and most people are willing to pay for that complexity to be able to watch offline.

So it was mostly spin, like Steve Jobs saying they'd never make a tablet at a point where it had to be in final development internally.

[JadeNB]

> He wasn't wrong, it does add serious interface complexity.

How? I don't have Netflix, but, for Amazon Video, you get a download button—that seems to be the only bit of the interface that reflects the ability to download at all. After that, you don't have to worry about whether you're watching a local or streamed copy; the movie plays just the same.

[MBCook]

It was "click on anything and it plays".

Now it's "click on anything and it plays. Unless your offline. Where search also doesn't work. And when you're offline you probably go somewhere else to see what you're looking for. When online we need to show that too. And buttons to let you download or see the download status. And....

I'm not saying it's insurmountable, but it's quite a bit more than the old "everything you see you can watch now and that's all there is to it" model.

[JadeNB]

> It was "click on anything and it plays".

> Now it's "click on anything and it plays. Unless your offline. Where search also doesn't work. And when you're offline you probably go somewhere else to see what you're looking for. When online we need to show that too. And buttons to let you download or see the download status. And....

But it seems that your 'before' is not quite right: if you can't download videos, then it's "click on anything and it plays, unless you're offline", full stop! That is, by allowing download of videos, a total-failure mode has been replaced by a mode with different functionality. Although it's technically true that "you can do some things" is more complicated than "you can't do anything", I'm not sure that it's really worse.

[MBCook]

No, because if you were off-line the app wouldn't let you in. The app set that condition clearly and enforced it. So there was no confusion, 'cause if you could see it you could play it.

[talmand]

Anybody in such a position that says "never" to anything is either naive or they're protecting their current short-term interests. I'm willing to bet most of them say that for short-term reasons while internally they'll still consider it in the future; there was once a time that HBO would "never" offer a monthly streaming service and here we are today.