Not that unfriendly for the time. I'll remind you that Napster itself would be considered a UX nightmare by today's standard but for the time it was used by ever high school and college student in the country. Standards change.

They used it because it made content consumption possible. They did anything they could to get the content. There were all kinds of barriers: cables to connect your stereo (everyone did this), CD burning, file management, media players, corrupt files, bad connections, port forwarding details; the truth is it wasn't a great experience, it was simply possible for the vast majority of people to execute, and that was good enough.

it's weird to me you are suggesting Napster was "refined" for it's time, but Apple TV and Chromecast are not currently. it seems like a double standard.

> If someone were to build Popcorn Time as an iPhone or Android app that streams to Chromecast / AppleTV

why does moving Popcorn Time from the desktop iOS environment to the mobile iOS environment suddenly make this more so much more viable? seems like a pretty insignificant detail if you ask me.

Apple TV and Chromecast are refined when playing known-content (from apps). When playing content that is mirrored from a PC there is all sorts of problems. There can often be lag. It eats your PC battery so you have to go find the power supply and find a table to plug in your laptop while you're mirroring.