The New York Times has an interesting article about Netflix versus iTunes streaming movie rentals. Since the author neglects to mention the important fact that Netflix streaming doesn't currently work on Macs (unless you use Bootcamp, Parallels, or VMware), it's gratifying that a high percentage of the user comments at the bottom do note this. In fact, I saw some of the most well written comments about this article that I've ever seen posted online - it really seems to raise people's ire.
In my opinion, the problem is not that Netflix doesn't currently offer Mac support, but rather that all Netflix subscribers (myself included) are paying for the service whether or not they're able to take advantage of it. Charging users extra who wish to take advantage of the streaming, or discounting users who can't take advantage of it would be a more equitable solution.
I want to keep liking Netflix - they've been a great company and I have been quite happy with their DVD mail service. Netflix also has a superior user interface to iTunes; they have intelligent ratings which give customers an idea of how well they'll like a film, and they make it easy to browse for and discover interesting movies to rent. On iTunes, if you don't know the exact name of the movie you'll spend a lot of time clicking back and forth between text based lists of titles and stand alone detail pages. Going back to the list forces you to scroll back down to your previous position; the interface needs a lot of work.
Netflix is also a money saver; for $8.99 a month, unlimited streaming is significantly cheaper than $2.99 per movie (or $3.99 for HD). With iTunes, I can only rent three movies a month for the same price as unlimited Netflix streaming. Of course, there's also the caveat that Netflix apparently only offers old and somewhat obscure (?) movies for streaming while iTunes offers more recent titles. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.
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