BBC leaves Mac users wanting

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 22 May 2008 at 11:09

The BBC has admitted Apple users now consume 13% of iPlayer traffic, despite the fact it still doesn't offer a version of the application for the platform.

The iPlayer service now serves 21 million programs per month, and is seeing growth of 20% month on month, explained Ashley Highfield, BBC director of future media & technology, speaking at the Google Zeitgeist 2008 forum.

This means that 2.6 million shows per month are now being viewed on Apple computers. He also revealed that one in 10 iPlayer users access the service from an Apple computer, while a further 3% use either an iPhone or iPod touch.

Apple and Linux users must use the online streaming service, unlike Windows users who can download programs and view them offline at their leisure.

The BBC launched iPlayer in June last year, but to the chagrin of many users it failed to support either Mac or Linux platforms. The organisation later made a concession by offering an online streaming service, but was warned by the BBC Trust that it must provide application support as soon as possible.

Despite this ruling, the BBC claimed it would need to investigate the number of users demanding support for platforms before implementing them.

"It comes down to cost per person and reach at the end of the day. We are not ruling it out. But we are not committing to it at this stage," said Highfield, at the time of launch.

The BBC was unavailable for comment at the time of writing as to whether this constitutes enough traffic to warrant a Mac version of the iPlayer.