Blogging Pubbitch

Just had to jump through an enormous number of hoops to download a new copy of RealPlayer One for OS X because my previously working beta had decided to time out and never work again. I'm not entirely sure that it's not time limited, the site was a dog to navigate, they asked for personal information to download the player, and they had opt-out rather than opt-in checkbox invitations for more spam than I know how to deal with.

MS, for all their failings, don't make it this hard to get hold of their player. If I didn't know better, I'd say that Real were desperate to put themselves out of business by alienating any users that are foolish enough to go near them. I can only describe them as being actively user hostile and randomly useless.