macdavid pro

Last week I was excited to learn about Hulu finally releasing an iPhone app. I was always eager to see this happen as I always carried the assumption that the app would be essentially like the desktop experience: free episodes of the current primetime television shows that I love and now available in the palm of my hand–on the go. All good and dandy, so long as you’re willing to pony up and pay for it.

Hulu Plus is apparently an app for “Plus Members” only. In order to view the latest video content one has to sign up for a monthly charge of $9.99…or let’s just say 10 bucks.

Now I was immediately disappointed and dismayed because I was under the impression that the shows were free with the only “cost” of having to view episodes after the actual air date. I thought to myself, “Where in translation did Hulu lose this fabulous idea? I promptly and unequivocally stated in an app store review that (paraphrasing), “If you drop it to $5 dollars or less a month, you might get my business. Until then, I’m deleting this app.”

Afterward I scanned the hundreds (at the time) now thousands of reviews placed for this app and the overwhelming majority asserted a similar resolve: Has Hulu gone quackers!? I’m not paying 10 bucks to watch tv when I can just watch them in real time on television, use NetFlix or even iTunes. I think perhaps Hulu has hit a wall and a big one at that.

Mashable posted a question on their Facebook page asking, “What’s your opinion of Hulu Plus? Is it worth the price?”

Here are a few of the responses to that question.

In all fairness to Hulu and in the name of simply good business, the company has to make money to provide a service. It is most certainly a phenomenally novel idea to provide free current primetime TV content online with limited commercial interruption, but that only brings in so much, I assuming. And for the record, I’m not against a SMALL fee for using Hulu Plus on my iPhone, but I’ll be darned if Hulu thinks I’m gonna shell out 10 bucks a month for what I can get elsewhere on a much larger screen.

Somehow, Hulu must find a way overcome this hurdle or that app will go into the trash bin of app store history. I don’t think that I’m only ono this one. What do you think?

Obviously Zynga has come quite a long way. Got a nice deal here with 7-Eleven and an iPhone app in the works for Farmville. Sing it with me y’all! “Movin’ on up to the East side. We finally got a piece of the pie!”

Btw, I snapped this with my iPhone while getting gas at 7-Eleven. (To totally digress for a moment, I have to say that I love my iPhone 3GS’s camera feature. It has come in handy ever since I accidentally broke my point-and-shoot camera in New York City last summer. More importantly, in light of the great quality that the 3GS delivers I am even more excited about getting my reserved iPhone 4 next Thursday!)

When I originally created this silly little video, the idea was I recorded a video log of my trial run with an iPhone application I’d been developing. I don’t want to spoil it for folks that haven’t seen it by saying much more, however. But at any rate, I was publicly releasing one of my top-secret logs exclusively for readers of this blog.

Today, I am re-releasing it today less than 30 days prior to the day I released it a year ago. I chose it because so many folks loved it, particularly making it a select video for the front page of Viddler.com, one of my favorite video sharing sites. So, enjoy! …again.

P.S. I am asked often, will I make more funny videos. Yes, with time. I know this past year was a total dud since the making of this video, but I’ve been plottin’ and plannin’ all summer so far. Be patient with me. Not now, but soon!