F’n Webkinz

So, my kids got Webkinz for Christmas, and there’s a little snag.

Using a Mac, OS 10.5.1, with a fully patched version of Safari 3.0.4 and a fresh install of Flash Player 9, I cannot see the confirmation code when trying to register a new account.

Cannot get confirmation for Webkinz login

I tried using a system with Ubuntu 7.10, Firefox 2.0.0.11, and Flash 9 as well, but could not see the login.

The minimum requirements are:

Windows Requirements

  • PIII 1.2 MHz or higher
  • Windows OS 2000/XP
  • RAM: 512MB recommended
  • Browsers: Internet Explorer 6, Netscape 7.2, Firefox 1.0, AOL Explorer 1.5
  • Monitor Resolution: 1024×768
  • High Speed Internet Required
  • Adobe Flash 9

Mac Requirements

  • 1.2 MHz or higher
  • Mac OS X 10.3
  • RAM: 512MB recommended
  • Browsers: Safari 1.2.3 or higher, Firefox 1.5
  • Resolution: 1024×768
  • High Speed Recommended
  • Adobe Flash 9

I clearly meet the Mac requirements, yet when I try to register – Bupkis.
To make matters better, you can’t even request help from Webkinz without having created an account (I deleted my email and the Webkinz code before taking the screenshot):
Send Help request to Webkinz
While I’m thrilled to see that Webkinz is trying to work with Macs – decent low end specs as their minimum requirements, I will not purchase any more Webkinz until they actually are compatible, or can tell me what’s wrong with my machines.
And I do have to give them Kudos – on my Ubuntu machine (Firefox and Flash 9), everything was working flawlessly until the same breakpoint I got on my Mac. So it does look like Webkinz is making an effort to be cross platform.
Postscript: I tried to do this with Parallels and an XP virtual machine, but that was running IE 7, so it didn’t work. Finally, our computer for running Quicken, a Windows 2000 machine, was able to get us logged in. Not quite sure what the trouble was.