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Samsung Reminds Us That You Can't Make People Use an App They Don't Want (recode.net)

Posted by msmash on from the rip dept.

Samsung has announced that it will be discontinuing Milk Music on September 22. The announcement comes a year after the South Korean technology conglomerate shuttered Milk Video, another service that didn't receive the traction Samsung was hoping. Peter Kafka, writing for Recode: It's true that you can't get media/apps/services to customers without access to a platform. But control of the platform doesn't mean customers are going to use your media/apps/services: They've got plenty of choices and they'll choose the ones they want. Ask Verizon and Comcast, which both launched video apps on their networks last year and have nothing to show for it. (You've heard of Verizon's Go90 only because Verizon keeps talking about it when people ask why it spent $10 billion on AOL and Yahoo; you have completely forgotten about Comcast's Watchable.) Soon you'll be able to ask AT&T, which is launching its own video app this fall, which will also feature lots of content people either don't want or can get elsewhere.

8 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Windows 10 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Can't make people use an app they don't want? Challenge Accepted." - Microsoft

    1. Re:Windows 10 by Pseudonymous+Powers · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Can't make people use an app they don't want? Challenge Accepted." - Microsoft

      To be fair, Microsoft only tries this every other release. Every other other release, they give people a re-skinned version of the version before last, which is what everybody really wanted to begin with. It's a "tick-schlock" development cycle.

    2. Re:Windows 10 by jellomizer · · Score: 2

      That was more apt to Microsoft with Internet Explorer.

      Back in the olden days over 20 years ago. Netscape was the prominent web browser. Back at the time The Applications installed on Windows were just baby versions of the real Application, just enough to get you to the next step. So IE was installed in Windows 95 mostly for the purpose of downloading Netscape. While IE was fast and light, it lacked way too many features and didn't support too many of the "Modern" HTML Language. features. Making most page render poorly.

      However Netscape was the big name in high tech, and was getting very popular, and started talking things that were scary to Microsoft. Such as the Web Browser being a cross platform application engine, and even replacing the Operating System for the Desktop as we know it towards a new form of thin client.

      This scared MS into getting into the browser war. So it put a lot of time and effort to Get IE to being a competitive browser. Being the first to put in such features just as CSS and Advanced JavaScript, and ActiveX. So they would always have control of the platform and the applications. Then with Windows 98, they integrated the Web Browser into the OS. So IE is always more handy and available then the 3rd party Netscape, combined with the fact that it was comparable with Netscape.

      The objective of the Browser war was to put MS in such a dominate position that it could control the Web Standards and keep it closed to MS only, where all future web development and application development would be for Microsoft only.

      Now this seemed like it was working IE won the browser war by IE 6.0 on XP. However Microsoft stayed on IE 6 for way too long, people began to want more out of their browsers. First with a bunch of major security attacks on IE (especially with Active X nonsense) made PC users willing to switch to Firefox as a safer browser. Where they shortly learned that it supported newer HTML features, then later the WebKit based browsers Chrome, Safari... came out supporting these new features as well. So developers started coding to the standards more than to IE, and just hacking IE Compatibility so it works.

      By the time IE 7 was released there were too many apps that still supported the broken browser and the outside pages used the newer browser. So it was the case IE for intranet and Others for Internet.

      Then we got that sneaky iPhone and then Chrome (Both with WebKit based browsers) that supported the Web Standards better than The current version of IE on a high speed desktop....

      So in short, If you are going to take that challenge make sure you meet your objective.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  2. So that's what that is... by Nidi62 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I have Verizon, and I noticed Go90 on my phone a little while back but didn't even open it because I had no idea what it was. Now that I know what it is I can delete it without worry. Thanks, Slashdot!

    Also, no wonder it has no marketshare when people that have your phones have never even heard of it. Not that I would have used it anyway, but still...

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    1. Re:So that's what that is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's why I'm getting a nexus, hate this bloatware all these assholes put on our stuff. Even apple doesn't let you delete it's ever expanding library of default app garbage.

    2. Re:So that's what that is... by Streetlight · · Score: 5, Informative

      I have Verizon, and I noticed Go90 on my phone a little while back but didn't even open it because I had no idea what it was. Now that I know what it is I can delete it without worry. Thanks, Slashdot!

      Ar you sure you can delete the Go90 app?

      --
      In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
  3. Spoiled milk by any other name by jheath314 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wonder if the app would have done better with a name other than "Milk". Maybe it's just me, but the word evokes thoughts about spoilage instead of music.

    --
    Procrastination Man strikes again!
  4. Re:Pointless, useless apps. by yithar7153 · · Score: 2

    You know what? I don't want a god damned app for everything I do on my smartphone. I don't want to have to download and take up gigs of space on my phone when you can just deliver a HTML5 web page that's going to effectively do everything some annoying app would have done.

    Yeah, if speed isn't important to you. See link as to why mobile web apps are slow. You need to mobile native apps to get good performance.