Not since Netflix tried to rebrand its DVD mailing service as Qwikster has there been a rebranding as perplexing as HBO Max dropping the HBO part, and deciding to just call it "Max." At least, in Netflix's case, the company was tryingreally hard to kill that part of its business. I have no idea what WarnerBros. Discovery is trying to do. 

According to the company, the problem with HBO Max was the HBO part. There is an important lesson here, which is that your brand is not what you call your streaming service. Your brand is the way your customers feel about whatever you make. In this case, the feelings are pretty clear--this is a bad idea. 

"We want it to be welcoming to all and easily recognizable, including to a key customer segment, kids and families," said JB Perrette, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery's global streaming and games. "We all love HBO. And it's a brand that has been built over five decades to be the edgy, groundbreaking trendsetter in entertainment for adults. But it's not exactly where parents would most eagerly drop off their kids."

I'm sure there are some people for whom HBO means adult. But, for a much wider audience, it just meant premium. It meant the best content you could find on television. 

A lot of companies make the mistake of thinking that they have to change a name or a logo, but usually, that has nothing to do with the perception their customers have of the product. It's usually just a misguided excuse to talk about their thing, but I don't know of anyone who doesn't work for Warner Bros. Discover who thinks dropping the most premium brand in television from the name was a good idea. 

But, as bad as it is, the branding isn't even the worst part. I know that's hard to believe, but the app is even worse. 

If you were an HBO Max subscriber, you would have gotten an email a few weeks ago that told you to "get ready to meet Max." According to the email, one of two things was supposed to happen. Either, HBO Max will automatically update to Max, or when you open HBO Max, you'll be prompted to download the Max app.

And, by "automatically update," they mean that, instead of just updating the existing app with a new icon and some new content, you'll have to download an entirely new app. For what it's worth, Apple makes pushing out software releases pretty easy, so there's really no reason to make people download a new app. 

Not only that, not a single device that we own automatically updated to Max. In every case, it required manually downloading the new app. On the Apple TV, the app doesn't even prompt you to download the new app, it just sits there and tells you there's a problem without any indication of what you're supposed to do.  

That's a pretty poor experience, but it gets worse still. The app is not even as good as the one it replaces. While it apparently uses the tvOS video player, Max has turned off all of the native features like, for example, the ability to ask Siri "What did she just say," and have the player rewind a few seconds and temporarily turn on closed captions.

There are lots of weird user experience decisions. I suppose it's a good thing that the app seems to remember your old settings, but a bug seems to be preventing integration with the "Up Next" feature on the Apple TV. 

Just today I got an email titled: "Find your way around." In it, there's a link to "learn more" about "how to get the most out of Max." When I clicked it, it just took me to the page in the HBO Max app to edit my profile. The HBO Max app. The one that no longer works. The entire app experience feels unnecessarily poor and rushed. 

For example, it will reportedly take weeks to fix the fact that the new app lumps writers, directors, and producers into a made-up category called "creators." Apparently, the change was made by developers and happened without the knowledge of executives. The credits were right on the previous app, is all I'm saying.

It seems fair to ask why you would make people go through the effort of downloading a new app just so they can have a worse experience. If you're going to go through all the effort to change the name of your product because you're excited about the shiny new thing, it seems like you'd want to make the experience as good for customers as possible. Getting the brand wrong is one thing. Making the product experience worse is something else entirely.