The popular Boxee media center software is the rare app that starts on the Mac before going to Windows. CC-licensed pic by Matt Grimm.
Here’s some good news for Mac users of Boxee, the popular media platform for Macs and Apple TV: The software is going Windows.
At a developer event on Tuesday night in San Francisco, Boxee released its first version for Windows PCs.
This is good news for Mac users because the Boxee platform will have a much larger user base for developers to create plug-ins for. Significantly, the software will run on Windows Media Center PCs, which is by far the biggest installed base of computers connected to TVs.
Boxee was launched on the Mac (and Linux) in early 2007. It is one of those rare pieces of software that launched on the Mac first before moving to Windows. In most cases, the migration between platforms is the other way around.
“We’re all Mac users,” explained Avner Ronen, Boxee’s founder and CEO, speaking by phone from New York recently. “The Mac is a lot of early adopters. It’s a savvy audience, people like us.”
Since then, Boxee has grown fast, thanks mostly to its open architecture.
Unlike the Apple TV and Apple’s Front Row software, Boxee is an open platform. It allows developers to add plug-ins for content anywhere on the Web, from the Weather Channel to the adult-oriented BoXXXee.
Ronen said the company is hoping for 1 million Boxee users by the end of the year –œ most of the new users coming from Windows –œ and a slew of new plug-ins. At Tuesday’s developercmeetup, Boxee announced new plug-ins for MLB.tv, Digg, Tumblr and Current TV.
Boxee now boasts more than 500,000 users, most on the Mac. About 100,000 users run Boxee on an Apple TV; 50,000 users are on Linux; and the remainder are on Mac minis or Mac laptops, most connected to HDTVs.
“Running on a Mac Mini is the most popular setup,” said Ronen.
Based in New York, Boxee got a lot of notice earlier this year when the streaming TV site Hulu blocked it. (Hulu is once again available on Boxee courtesy of a RSS hack).
“It’s a shame. We should be allies,” said Ronen. “We have similar vision.”
The vision is getting Web media on TV with easy-to-use software, Ronen said, that’s wide open for developers to innovate on.
“The goal is to be the Firefox for the living room,” he said. “Boxee could be the first meaningful platform for the living room to be completely open. No gatekeepers or committees or convincing people at big companies that your ideas have merit.”
Launching on the Mac first was a great move, Ronen explained.
“The Mac is a great playground,” he said. “We’ve learned a lot of lessons on the Mac, and a lot of these lessons will be implemented on Windows. Mac users are very friendly. We got great feedback.”
