HBO Max is a mess -- but it's still a smart bet on HBO’s future

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Confusion and HBO Max practically go hand-in-hand. When AT&T's WarnerMedia announced the streaming service last year, it was hard to tell if it was going to be an additional charge for existing HBO Now and cable subscribers. It took a few more months for us to learn that it would basically be an evolution of HBO Now with the same $14.99-a-month price. Even I, a well-informed media follower,  didn't realize Max would automatically replace HBO Now's app on my iPhone and Apple TV until the service launched this past Wednesday.

So it's no wonder the collective response to HBO Max on social media has simply been: "Huh?" Like many other news sites, Engadget put together a lengthy explainer to make sense of the service. But that shouldn't be necessary -- not for a marquee product coming from AT&T, one of the world's most successful corporations. It's clear that WarnerMedia, out of some combination of hubris and incompetence, simply failed to communicate. We only learned at the last minute that HBO Max wouldn't be coming to Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices at launch. And WarnerMedia didn't lock in a Comcast partnership until after HBO Max launched.