What’s With Disney? Narnia Heads to iPod, Not Mac.

Is the Mac a second class citizen at Disney? Is Walt’s old company pulling a fast one on Apple and Mac users, or simply playing both ends against the middle?

Either way, I don’t like being played. Especially by Disney.

It seems like just weeks ago that Apple’s Steve Jobs and the new head of Disney were on stage going ga ga for each other.

The end result was a bunch of ABC TV shows showing up in the iTunes Music Store (exclusive) and the word ‘friend’ being tossed hither and yon. We were expecting cake and a free iPod for everone in the audience.

Weeks later, the new honeymoon is over and Disney is dumping the Mac in favor of iPod support—for Windows—as Disney gets set to unveil their own download service for feature-length movies.

Disney’s new deal lets full-screen movies run on PCs and Apple’s new iPods with video but not on the Mac. What’s for dinner?

The upcoming movie release, ‘Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe’ will be available for PCs and iPods. Not for Macs.

I smell a wardobe malfunction in the Apple and Disney relationship. Worse, Disney will sense a malfunction in my relationship with Disney.

According to DM News (for direct marketers), the deal is simple; Disney wants to publish content and deliver it directly to consumers, and use all platforms available to it.

Except for the tens of millions of Mac users, since Disney’s proprietary software doesn’t work on Macs. Even the iPod gets tapped by Disney and uses iTunes to sync up movies.

A company called Maven Networks provides the software that connects to Disney, downloads the video, and plays it back on PCs.

Mac users need not apply.

Thanks, Disney. Guess how many Disney DVDs I’ll be buying this holiday season?

As a movie, Narnia ends up looking like its’ own channel online. The site offers trailers, movie clips, behind-the-scenes segments, and various interviews—all available to PC users, but not to Mac users.

Could it have killed them to use iTunes Music Store? After all, about 80-percent of all PC and Mac users use iTunes to buy and download musics, music videos, and even Disney’s own ABC TV shows.

Maven’s software even lets PC users synchronize the Disney movie with the new iPods with video. Oh, excuse me; that’s where iTunes gets ‘used.’

That’s ‘used’ as in, ‘I feel so dirty’ used.

Todd Boes, vice president of Maven, brags, “This has no Apple involvement.” Really? What else? Todd says, “It does not require consumers to be on the iTunes store.”

This little ‘crack’ in the Disney-Apple relationship has me worried. More and more it’s looking as though video will not go the way music went with iTunes, iTunes Music Store, and the iPod.

Video content vendors want to control their own distribution systems wherever possible, and Apple is likely to get left out of the parade. Possibly because of small market share for Mac users, possibly because of spite.

What the vendors of video smack don’t realize is that the user does not want twenty-seven eleven ways to do the same thing—play a freakin’ video on a computer (Mac or Windows). Click. Git ‘er done.

While it’s great to have a bunch of stores and great variety of products at each for hard goods and soft goods, digital goods are a different animal, and the sooner greedy content managers and distributors understand that, the better for them and their customers.

The fact that Disney has skipped the Mac on the way to the video piggy bank is an insult and denies their own words. “Jack Pan, vice president of interactive marketing at Walt Disney Studios put it this way:

“Even though they’re two separate deals, the idea is to be able to publish content and deliver it directly to consumers, embracing all the technology platforms they’re using.”

Except I’m using a Mac so your embrace feels rather shallow to me. Do I have to posture a little, ‘Just Say No To Disney’ to get them to wake up?

Bambi Hambi
Having a bad hairless day, Missy T? This is the first of many industry slights to come, I’m afraid. Let’s get used to it.

Jack D. Miller
Carol and I still have a Windows PC. We only boot it up on Sundays to check for viruses, spyware, and new trojan horse releases. Maybe I need to borrow a copy of Narnia and use MacTheRipper.

Alexis Kayhill
I’m not much on prognosticating the future, but I see some handwriting on the wall with this deal. Apple loses the living room battle because they’re Apple, not because they can’t deliver what the living room needs. Shame on Disney. Hypocrites.