Writing Apps for the iPad

The recent PBS app for the iPad got a lot of press and we, like many others, downloaded it. So far it hasn't quite been what we expected from the reviews. Today we were greeted with this error.

A PBS application that cannot play videos isn't going to be very useful to us. Sadly, as people are rushing to stake out their portion of the iPad/iPhone space we are seeing things like this more often.

We can imagine that PBS, like lots of Enterprises before them, saw the new application as a great thing but didn't understand that regular monitoring and updating of their new system would be needed. Or else, they went outside of their normal workflow processes to get the initial application populated but then did not set up ongoing processes to ensure that future media was ready for this new channel.