why we launched boxee for Mac before Windows
the picture above summarizes the market research we used in order to decide whether to start with Mac or Windows..
on a personal note. this is a bit scary… i feel less special now. i think i need to go watch an Apple ad to make me feel better about myself….
ok. i feel better now.
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The real question is… how much longer until the windows version is out?
early December is our target.. hope we make it
I will refer to my twitter post..
http://twitter.com/primeluva/status/982550408
@avner: copy that. i guess i can wait until december.
LMFAO. That’s awesome.
I can’t complain, I benefit from your market research. Been running Boxee on the AppleTV for awhile now.
So if they made the Windows version first that’d make them a Windows fanboy?
So we wont get it this fall
you will always be special to me
according to Wikipedia the fall ends on Nov 30th.. so i guess that in order to live by our earlier promise (launching Windows “later this fall”), we should get it our before Dec 1st.. let me see what can be done
any plan to release a hardware boxee appliance? I know if the price were right, I would certainly buy one! it wouldn’t even need onboard storage, I’d be ecstatic to get a box that would stream from my computer and the internet with a nice UI like you have with Boxee
Wow, a picture from an university (what major? Design?
or an apple keynote really tells you a lot about market share. I really hope that the way you do your research will not affect the quality of the product or you’ll have one user less. And honestly I think totally >different< about the Mac issue.
My girlfriend is a student too and guess what, she (and her mom) has a recent macbook. And guess how happy she is with the device: Not at all.
And saying that she has no clue won’t help. I had mac in the past and I’m not a beginner – those problems are real and built-in, and mostly faulty hardware / OS.
Actually I wanted to give Mac another try but that’ll now be delayed for years I guess – with Windows 7 ahead and some great Linux editions out there.
Not only that Mac does nothing better but worse for the consumer (hardware binding, DRM, appstore and so on) no, they aren’t even true technological leaders. And don’t mention things like the slick OS , which was stolen from Xerox – or touch display in the iPhone, I already bought train tickets as a child from touch screen devices at train stations here in Germany. And the design is mostly a rip-off of braun devices from 50+ years in the past.
I do support the idea of releasing on Linux first to make it a true opensource project. But throwing people into the concept that they’ll be better off when they support an even more powerhungry company is just plain wrong. And speaking of support… well, you don’t even want to hear my stories about Mac support.
I’d love if you’d push the windows version forward so I can integrate it into my houses media server network. If you don’t I’ll just stick with my recent solution. (Which only lacks the design part anyways)
To favor one proprietary system over another just makes you look like one thing: (a) biased (fanboy).
Speaking of that: I hope you do know that windows and mac had a cooperation going on for years now and are still working together?
Don’t let your personal taste influence you on business decisions or it’ll be over quickly. Or will you treat future windows users with this kind of disrespect and favor mac and linux users over them? This is a dangerous potential and it reminds me of racism.
Please either make a strong decision and support only linux and mac or support all platforms equally, everything else is far from professional.
@dottedfish no worries. Windows version is coming soon. we are not religious regarding platform support. we’d like to have boxee run on as many devices and operating systems as possible.
Is it my imagination or is that photo a bit……..fake?
Zoom in a bit and it looks to me like some of those logos have been pasted on. Perhaps I’m just jealous.
For once, we had a head start on something amazing. My Macbook and my Apple TV thank you for all your hard work. You’ve actually made my television useful again. I love my Mac and I love Boxee. You guys rock!
Thanks for Boxee, on Apple TV and on linux
After having sold my Apple TV 6 months ago, I have bought another one just to run BOXEE !
(and the linux version will let me wait, comfortably, the windows one)
Really bad blog posting from a company. Alienating future users is not very smart as to disclosing your “favorite platform”. Probably should of just done your thing and kept your platform of choice internal.
If I see whats his face again on Cranky Geeks (which brought me here in anticipation) I will just grin and bear it.
Surely the real issue is that it’s a lot easier to make a OS X version if you’re making a version for Linux as well?
@Eric didn’t mean it as jab at Windows users. i just thought it was a funny/scary picture. that’s all.
we use all 3 platforms at the office, and each has its issues.. going to release Windows soon enough.
@devolute true. true. our first internal release was actually for Ubuntu, and the move to OS X is much easier.
@avner…sorry…I had wondered on the intent of the blog post and that was just how I mostly saw it, thus making the comment with honesty.
I am still excited about Boxee and do plan on installing it on my Vista 64-bit HTPC and the new Linux based bedroom HTPC I am currently planning on building soon.
Thanks for the polite reply to my comment which may have been a bit harsh.
Sincerly
Eric
@Eric no worries
all taken in good spirit. looking forward to getting your feedback on boxee for Windows.
>the picture above summarizes the market research we used in order to decide whether to start with Mac or Windows..
Business Decision Fail.
Oh God. Look at the insecurities coming out of the woodworks.
The facts are very simple: Mac OS X is the best platform available on computers today. It presents a bond between the solid geek foundations of UNIX and Linux, the userfriendliness of Mac OS of old (but not all), and the omniscience of Windows.
Unless you have actually experienced the platform for an extended time and integrated it into your life you will never come close to understanding WHY it is the best computing platform you can have now – and in the future (you can keep hoping that Linux will get there, or you can just start using the future right now). As for Windows fanboys – I’m sorry that you are sort of stuck in your ways, but that’s either by choice (stubbornness) or by economy. Either way I feel more sorry for you.
We are over platform wars by now. Mac OS X is the way of the future (and has been for some time yet whether you have realised it or not), Linux has established itself as the tinkererer’s, engineer and geek platform of choice and Windows… well, Windows is still for the masses – the who-gives-a-damn-what-I-run, and the status quo and the plainly put…boring whatevers.
It’s not about fanboyism, elitism or anything else. Facts just simply just has an Apple bias.
@Erik
HAHAHA, are you serious!? Very funny post man. If you want to run Mac OS because you like it, go ahead and do that. But don’t tell yourself that it’s superior to Linux and Windows, and THEN go so far as to say that your statements aren’t “fanboyism” or “elitism”, because that’s exactly what they are. If you want to talk about how the facts point to Mac OS being superior, you should at least include 1 fact to support your claim. Like this:
FACT: There are dozens of programs that I run (and use every day) today that I would loose if I switched to Mac.
FACT: I’ve been running on Windows computers without problems for YEARS.
I have nothing against Mac OS, I think it’s a nice OS and I like the interface, in fact I used it all through college. But it’s this sort of crazed elitism that continues to turn me off to Apple as a whole.
Obviously Mac works for you, that’s fine. Don’t insinuate that someone is ignorant because they don’t share your point of view.
Because that IS ignorant.
@Erik
I used OS X for 2 years. Is this length of time sufficient to realize it is the best computing platform available? Because I failed to come to this realization. In fact, I came to a far different realization — That OS X is hoisted on a pedestal thanks to a bunch of common perceptions and UI slickness. Steve Jobs is a marketing GENIUS.
Now I came to the platform for a lot of reasons you listed. Primarily, I thought it was great to have a POSIX compliant OS that had corporate backing and good third party support. Of course, the assumption that the slick UI and applications running on top of the UNIX underpinnings would be equally as robust was wrong.
OS X is slow (on a dual core with 2 gig ram), made even worse by the fact that you have to suffer through pointless UI animations. It is simply not as responsive as XP, or Vista for that matter. I did find it ironic that my MacBook Pro ran Vista better than it ran OS X.
OS X is not more stable than Windows. Say all you want about UNIX and it’s implied stability. Applications still crash, and far more so than I’ve experience on Windows. Not once could I get iPhoto to successfully import my photo’s from my Canon digi without it crashing. Two years. Not one successful try. I even put a clean install and updated everything. Not Once. Of course, this is one of many examples. I often wonder why OS X users can look past its instability, and it dawned on me — There is a beautiful spinning beach ball to deter from the fact that something is haywire. Windows applications just pop up an ugly dialog. As you know, this makes all the difference in the world.
And then of course we come to the issue of security. Probably the biggest OS X misconception is that it’s secure. Thank your lucky stars they have a tiny market share — And Steve Jobs will keep it that way. Apple was the last to patch the widespread DNS cache poisoning vulnerability, by a long shot. Even when they did patch it, it didn’t even fix the vulnerability. There have been numerous local privilege escalation exploits that have flown under the radar. Why? Because Windows users don’t feel the need to champion every short coming of OS X the way OS X users feel the need to do with Windows. Steve Jobs has developed an entire ad campaign feeding on these misconceptions, and it’s grabbed even those who claim to be technically savvy, hook, line and sinker.
And worst of all, regarding Apple and it’s OS, are it’s users. Not all of them, but a very vocal minority. Very smarmy. The kind of people who assume that because you don’t use OS X you are “the who-gives-a-damn-what-I-run, and the status quo and the plainly put…boring whatevers.” I’ve met some superficial folk, but to pass that kind of judgment because someone doesn’t use your computing platform of choice? This is an unfathomable achievement of douche-baggery. Especially considering the fact that you are championing a company that makes monopoly-era Microsoft look like Mother Theresa. This company is trying to DRM a shoe. Ridiculous vendor lock-in. Apple update on Windows is nothing more than a trojan horse, installing crap without permission. If MS did half this stuff, you guys would be up in arms and Steve Jobs would create a cutsie marketing campaign surrounding it.
If OS X is your preferred computing platform, good for you, but the evangelism is nauseating.
Don’t look now but your insecurities are showing again.
FACT: There are dozens of programs that I run (and use every day) today that I would loose if I switched to Mac.
That doesn’t mean that Windows is better, it just means that it is bigger. I have to use Windows to run Solidworks at work and I HATE it with a capital H. If Mac OS X or Linux had a 80% market share, then Solidworks would be on that platform. People tie the fact that Windows is the de facto standard to the idea that it is better. Windows is not better, it simply is the platform of choice if you are a developer only choosing one platform.
And to say “I have run Windows with no problems for years!” is to say, you haven’t run the other OSes, gotten used to having their power, and then switched back to Windows and missed this feature or that feature, because then you have a problem with it. I thought Windows was great until I figured out what all the fuss was about in the other camps, and now that I often have to go back into windows (xp) leaves me hobbled by no universal command line for a power user like me or something so simple as virtual desktops or being able to lock a web browser on top with info I need while working in an app undernieth it. It is just a plain pain in the ass to lose little things like that after it becoming as blended into your way of using a computer as the right click.
Mac market share in the US ~ 8%
Windows market share in the US ~ 91%
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/06/01/mac-hits-record-78-market-share-in-net-applications-survey/
Hmm, me thinks that photo is not market research, it is an attempt to justify form over (platform) function. Can’t wait for Boxee on Windows, it rules on Linux – but my soundcard aint supported in Linux
@Rupert – but it is the *right* 8 percent.
I’d also be curious to see adoption rates of Leopard vs. Vista among people upgrading their system. I don’t think XP users are moving to Vista in droves.
Mostly, I’m just curious as to where the photo is from. I saw similar at RailsConf, but not quite so overwhelming a majority.
@Kevin
I wasn’t trying to say that Windows was better by saying that there are programs that aren’t available on Mac. I was just pointing out that this would be a big issue for me personally. I have tons of apps that I LOVE and use all the time that I would loose if I switched.
“you haven’t run the other OSes, gotten used to having their power” actually no, I used a school mandated Mac (I went to design school) for my entire time at college and promptly sold it in favor of a Pc when I completed my schooling. I have used Macs a lot and I simply prefer to pay less to be on a platform that does exactly what I want and need it to.
Wow, lots of FUD. Windows enjoys a 91% US marketshare, yes, but that takes into account, government, business, etc which are not in the market for a product like boxee. The Mac consumer market enjoys a much larger share and is populated by more geeks/media types which is boxee’s market (especially in the alpha/beta phase).
Spouting nonsense that Macs dont support Canon cameras or that they “stole” OS X from Xerox is blatenly false. Try again.
Oh, and while it’s true you may not be able to run a windows app on the Mac (assuming you don’t want to run it in emulation via VMWare/Parallels or via a dual boot setup), more times than not you can find comparable if not superior software on the Mac platform that accomplishes what you need.
Yes, you can find many programs on Mac that do things that Windows apps do, but there are many little applications that have no Mac equal. Most of these apps aren’t used by many people but they are apps that my my life MUCH easier.
i don’t see a need to move to a more expensive platform that does a little less, because they have a pretty UI. Vista isn’t ugly, and Xp isn’t all that bad either with the right theme installed
Oh, and YES Apple stole the idea for the mouse from Xerox, but so did Microsoft so I’m not sure what anyone tries to prove with that one. hehe
It’s funny to see the bickering going back and forth, in truth I believe no OS is the perfect one and no OS is factually “better” or “superior”. It all matters on you’re preference, I switched to mac within the last year and I love it, if the prices were lower and I had switched earlier then I would have conned my 60 year old mom into buying one as well, why? because I feel your daily tasks such as browsing, email, IM, and music are easier, which means she would call me less for help and wouldn’t inadvertently catch a virus, but that doesn’t mean it’s all around better for everyone (she’s old and doesnt know computers well lol. However, I am a IT specialist for a major appliance corporation, I have been using PC’s for years, and I feel there is no hands down better OS all around, instead look at it as “What OS is better for certain jobs and/or functions? Try to take a “look at the bigger picture” approach.
In my home I have 2, 2003 server Active Directory domain controllers (primary and backup) to manage unified logons, drive mappings with folder access resctrictions for my son/guests and print serving across my whole home network, a windows home server for file sharing, online file sahring/remote desktop and surveillance recording/online streaming, 3 Vista PC’s, 1 XP laptop, 2 modded xbox’s running XBMC, and last my macbook! (osx/xp) which I do love dearly, I could go on and on about why I think my macbook is better then xp/Vista (which in some ways it is, no AV needed, no fragmenting, so far no OS crashes) but then again, could I reasonably afford a dedicated file server with TB’s of info that streams content to XBMC/windows media center? and the security cam functions as well remote desktop over my website with an apple product for as cheap? I haven’t yet seen that. I use both platforms every day, they both have their pros and cons, coming from an enterprise environment you learn that if you use different machines for different functions then they all work better, as opposed to every function on only 1 machine (which may work! albeit prolly slow!) Some will say they don’t want 8 computers around the house, or don’t have the money for that, well you could initially spend less on PC, have every app option in the world, and it’s inherent quirks too!, or spend a lil more get a macbook and do boot camp with both..
I still think those options limit you…
Just run 2 dedicated machines (PC and Mac) on a KVM and switch back and forth as needed, when you do that you’ll find yourself probably switching between them more often than you think! trust me. it’s then when you realize neither is better 100% of the time, just better at certain things that you truely become unbiased.
If you don’t realize that…
Maybe you’re not using either of the OS’s to their full potential.
never the less. I have loved my XBMC for years but I am feeling the age of no hardware add-ons and now limited performance of the aging xbox console, I just can’t wait till I’m accepted or invited to get/use boxee for either OS so I can have a more powerful media center in my living room! cause no matter if it’s on windows or osx, it will run faster and crash less then on my old xbox’s! lol
What BS. That picture is of a class at Missouri School of Journalism. Which has this FAQ for their incoming students:
“Q. What brand or model should I buy?
A. The faculty has designated Apple Computer as its preferred provider for two primary reasons: (1) Apple’s OS X operating system is based on Unix, which makes these computers far less susceptible to viruses than other computers. Viruses are a serious problem on university campuses. (2) Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro computers come bundled with iLife, a suite of applications ideal for learning the basics of photo editing, and audio and video editing. We’ll use those programs in several classes. Incoming students will receive information on recommended models and pricing in February of each year.”
They tell their students to buy Apples. This is no different than the Soviet Russians bragging that their leaders won 100% of the popular vote.
that pic of all the college students is awesome and exactly why microsoft is screwed.. they have the CIOs of today, but not the future.
You guys just rock… if I can add!
I think it was a pretty smart decision to go for the Mac first. We all know that the early adopter tribes in the mac movement can affect your distribution exponentially if you satisfy them. So far, you have impressed me, and I’ll be happy to let anyone in Italy about your product! We have been waiting for this software for years…. Thanks again… great work you guys! I’ll also be testing it in my Ubuntu 8.10 computers at home…! I have a tribe of rabid friends waiting to get their hands on this…! all running open source software!!! Let’s save the world!
fanboys…
yeah, keep repeating that, maybe someone will believe it… your just upset that for ONCE a company actually decided to think about Mac before Windows… god for bid that someone went against the grain. Every friggin company releases windows first and then says, “Oh, Mac? Uh… yeah, we’re looking into it.” So get off your high horse. Those that call others fanboys are obviously fanboys themselves on the other side of the argument. Just let it go. They chose Mac over your precious Windows, deal with it. Unlike most companies that won’t make Mac versions of their software, you should be thankful that Boxee is working on a Windows version. No thanking them, just whining and complaining from the lot of you! You all make me sick.
I like the boxee on mac and linux, but I live in a windows world where netflix (until recently) only streams on PC. I’ve got to get boxee on windows so I can achieve my netflix + hulu dream combo!
Um, what really tells you about the market is that Windows is 90% of the market share. October also gave Mac a pounding and Windows did okay. I have a Windows high-end machine and a PC with OS X and I dispise infantile fanboi-ism. There is no such thing as Mac vs PC. Both are PCs and BOTH run Windows. One of them runs a FreeBSD-based OS by default. There is your market research part 2… BOTH RUN WINDOWS! DOH!
OS X = nerfed Photoshop
OS X = gaming retarded
OS X = waiting on Steve to upgrade
I want to start by saying that your product is pretty cool, that way you’ll know I mean no disrespect when I ask everyone, why are you so anxious about the windows version of this software? Guess what, there is already software that does pretty much everything this does. It’s called “Windows Media Center”. Ever heard of it? Yeah, me too. The only thing it doesn’t have the integrated social networking stuff and Hulu (which, I admit, is pretty cool cuz I love Hulu). And before you reply and say, “it doesn’t do a movie library”, google it. I’m not going to jump in on the whole Mac vs PC thing that a few people seem to be doing, I’m just saying if you really can’t wait for the windows version of Boxee, use Windows Media Center. It’s pretty damn close.
I have a Gyration 2.4 Ghz wireless remote + keyboard for my Vista Media Center and I don’t need anything other than that to get youtube, hulu, cbs, etc. onto my HDTV. It’s basically like any other media center remote with the added feature of also acting like a Wii remote, so you can use it to operate the mouse pointer easily. I just minimize Vista Media Center and open up Firefox where all my bookmarks are links to video sites.
Also, the Mac OS (OSuX) is horribly slow and the keyboard acceleration is poor compared to Windows. The Dock also pales in comparison to the Taskbar in terms of pure productivity (since I can see all windows, minimized or not, in one place… you have to use Expose on mac to get that and it’s not nearly as easy to see what’s running).
i’m sure the gyration remote is awesome. i’d love to have its positional tracking integrated with boxee.
as much as your setup works for you, i’m not sure it would befit users looking for a simple setup that does not require going through a full fledged browser, hitting bookmarks, and navigating through a site to locate content.
to each his own my friend