It’s been a few months since I wrote about the BBC iPlayer – one of the BBC’s more ludicrous developments intended to provide viewers with more ways of watching their programmes. At a time when the BBC budget has been reduced it seems even more stupid to go down this path.

Why? Because with the gradual demise of analogue terrestrial television they’ll be a corresponding uptake in digital terrestrial receivers. More of these are gaining recording capabilities, allowing viewers to record and watch what they want, when they want. Without download timeouts, without needing a PC. Those with Sky+ boxes know what I’m talking about. These things change the way you consume television and actually makes you more critical and choosy about what you watch.

So it is with little fanfare that in order to comply with their obligations, the BBC announced that it is going to provide an iPlayer for Macs by the end of this year. That’s a Flash-based version of iPlayer. Streaming only; no downloads.