Beyond the Misty Mountains

So after watching the amazing Dr. Horrible for free more times than I can count over the weekend, I decided I would support their efforts and pay for the downloaded version. That and I really just want to watch it more.

So I goto their site and click the link to get it from iTunes. This takes me to a browser page asking me if I have iTunes installed. For some reason it pops up the confirm box twice for me to click yes I have it.

iTunes pops up and takes me to the page for Dr Horrible. So I click the ‘Buy Season Pass’ button. This pops up a box asking for my account name and password. Now I have an iTunes account but I only ever used it way back in the day with those free pepsi songs. So I enter in my password and iTunes thinks for a second then realizes it will need my credit card details. Expected. So it pops up the account login box again before it takes me to the credit card page.

I enter in my credit card details and billing address info and click done and I’m taken to my account page. I’m sitting here wondering ‘am I done?’. Is it purchased? Is it downloading? A few clicks around iTunes and a trip to the ‘purchased’ section reveals that I have nothing downloading. It didn’t purchase anything.

So now I have to go start over. Which for some odd reason a trip to the my account loses your iTunes back button. I have to go back to the website and click the iTunes link again to get back to the page I was in in iTunes. Click the ‘Buy Season Pass’ button. And it asks for my password again. This box has no remember password feature.

This time I come out successful and a downloads section appears with 3 files downloading. Finally.

If this same user experience existed in online shops no one would ever use them. Seriously, can you imagine having to add something to your shopping cart. Login to proceed. Login to enter you billing info. Have to start over with adding it back to your cart. Login again to purchase.

So much for Apple usability.

update: To add to this, downloading through iTunes is painfully slow. Then when I went to watch them I popped them into the best media player around, vlc, and all I got was black. Turns out they are DRM protected m4v files. So the only option is to watch them in either iTunes or quicktime. Both of which chug barely able to play them. So after searching the web for something to strip the drm from the videos, like I did the few audio files I got from iTunes, and not finding anything usefull I turned to the amazing bittorrent and found a high quality rip to download. So now I have the unwatchable DRM laden ones I payed for and the watchable bittorrent ones.