Error Code 83

So Disney+ launched yesterday and I spent the better part of my Tuesday evening staring at a black screen with the words "Error Code 83" on it instead of watching anything even remotely Star Wars related. If you tried to sign up on day one you probably know exactly what Im talking about.

Heres what happened. Disney turned the thing on at midnight Pacific / 3am Eastern, which already seems like a weird choice, and within a couple hours the app was basically unusable for a huge chunk of people. Not "slow," not "buffering a lot" — just flat out refusing to load, throwing that error code over and over no matter how many times you force quit and reopen. I tried it on my phone, my laptop, and the Apple TV in the living room and got the same wall on all three. My wife eventually gave up and went to bed. I did not, because Im stubborn and I had already paid my $69.99 for the year (the discounted launch price, before it presumably goes up) and I wanted my Mandalorian.

I finally got in around 9pm, almost six hours after I first tried. And you know what, once it actually worked, it worked fine. Smooth playback, no weird artifacting, the UI is honestly nicer looking than Netflixs at this point, all rounded tiles and that dark blue that doesnt feel as sterile as most streaming apps. But that first-impressions window matters and Disney absolutely blew it for a lot of paying customers on launch night. Reports going around today say they pulled something like 10 million signups in the first 24 hours, which if true is a genuinely wild number and also probably explains exactly why the servers fell over. You cant really blame the plumbing for bursting when you invite the entire internet through it at once, but you can blame whoever didnt stress test for that outcome.

The thing that gets me is this isnt some scrappy startup we're talking about. This is Disney. They own ESPN, they own a chunk of Hulu, they just spent 71 billion dollars buying most of Fox. They had years to prepare for this specific night and the infrastructure still buckled. I dont think it's some unforgivable sin, streaming launches are hard and BBC iPlayer has fallen over on far smaller events, but it's a little funny watching a company that size get humbled by its own hype.

Once you're actually inside the app the content library is legitimately stacked, which is the part nobody seems to be talking about today because everyone's too busy screenshotting error messages. Every Simpsons episode, all the Pixar stuff, the Marvel movies, basically the whole Star Wars catalog including the prequels which I will defend to my grave as underrated, plus a pile of National Geographic documentaries I will probably never watch but am weirdly glad are there. Six ninety nine a month for all of that is not a bad deal at all next to what youre paying for Netflix now.

And then theres The Mandalorian itself, which is really the whole reason this launch mattered to anyone outside of Disney's shareholders. First episode is short, under 40 minutes, and I wont spoil anything except to say the internet is going to lose its mind over one particular reveal near the end and honestly they should. Its the first live action Star Wars TV show ever made and you can tell they spent real money on it, it doesnt look cheap the way a lot of streaming originals do.

Anyway. I dont think error code 83 is going to matter much in six months. Nobody remembers the specific error codes from bad launches, they just remember whether the thing eventually got good, and Netflix had its own share of rocky early years too. But if youre the type who writes these things down for later, mark it: November 12th 2019, Disney+ launch day, and half of America stuck on a black screen wondering if theyd wasted seventy bucks. I got my Baby Yoda eventually. Took long enough.

Also somewhat unrelated but Ive noticed my Twitter feed has been an even split today between Disney+ complaints and people arguing about the Apple Card credit limit thing from last week. Different scandal, same energy — big company ships a big thing, big company gets a very public black eye within 48 hours. Seems to be the pattern lately.