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Comment by kgraves | Hacker News Reader

Wait, HBO Max supported Linux?

To be honest this outcome is unsurprising, especially when users using Linux on the desktop (Not Android) accounts for less than 4% market share worldwide. [0]

[0] https://netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.asp...

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It's not a linux app, I don't think there's any native code involved, the reddit poster was just running it in Firefox.

It's likely this is either a Firefox/platform bug or some sort of mistaken platform whitelisting on the part of HBO. Or plausibly it's a non-mistaken attempt to blacklist Linux users, but that seems rather less likely.

Losing 4% is quite a lot actually but probably the actual number of people that watch HBO on a Linux desktop is a lot lower than that.

Yeah, it’s the poorest 4%.

Nah, us Linux users make a decent buck making sure the lights stay on for the rest of you.

No, but many of these probably are professional workstations at workplaces, that people aren’t going to be using for entertainment.

But that 4% is very likely to be able to afford to pay for HBO and know how to easily pirate HBO content. HBO should want to make it as easy as possible for them to become paying customers.

Edit: Wording

This is how stupid companies are. Those 4% may not be a viable demographic of itself but by not supporting that 4% you explicitly tell them to pirate.

If the loss of revenue through piracy is less than the cost of ongoing Linux support, then this is a sensible business decision.

Making sure your website doesn't explode should have minimal cost.

4% of revenue at this scale, minus server costs, is an enormous amount of profit. Supporting one extra browser/OS combo should take less than one dev.

Does that mean HBO are giving Linux users a license to pirate because that's cheaper for HBO than supporting them? Where do I sign up?

What's beyond ridiculous is that I get HBO Max with my internet but I can't use it. Great...

Your phone has an app.

Awesome, I get to view these amazing high-budget shows on a crappy 6" screen.

Yep, you have no right to HBO, you only have the permission. If you are unsatisfied with your available options, I guess that's your problem not theirs.

The only sad thing here is that most people in the US don't have the possibility of choosing a different ISP/Cable provider because they are all monopolies.

I was just about to say lucky that I'm not living in a totalitarian military dictatorship like North Korea or the US and I can freely choose my service provider and that service provider doesn't just lease from a company which has a monopoly deal with the government.

Cast it to a TV screen or use a iPad or an Android tablet?

I can't comment on this, but Linux support is becoming standard. Hey, Todoist, Evernote, and the list goes on.

Haha, spend millions on marketing but making a web app work in the _browser_ independently of OS is too expensive.

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