Phil Shiller and iTunes Interview

[MacRumors]

Businessweek published some excerpts (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2003/tc2003057_3524_tc056.htm) from an interview with Phill Schiller regarding the iTunes music store, and is unrevealing with questions to Beyond iTunes:


Q: Any plans for video down the road?

A: No, right now we just want to make the world's best music store. But I want to point out that iTunes includes particular music videos in the store. You can view some amazing music videos for free.

This hasn't stopped users and sites to speculate that downloadable movies are in the future from Apple.

[puffypoopy]

what's the deal here?

Phil just said they are focusing on Music only (and the Music Store) - only saying there are good music videos on there. Why does everyone jump the gun on things like this?

[jayb2000]

Let's see, they are using AAC, which is the same as QT 6.2, they already run a huge dowload site for trailers.

Seems like it would be pretty easy for them to add that.

Then mix with TIVO and BAM - pretty cools setup.

All controlled by the phantom "communications device' of course. ;)

[speechgod]

Movies? Yeah right.

[bigdog]

Ryan et. al over at MOSR (http://www.macosrumors.com/) called for Apple to do a movie download system in the next 2 years. I think that pretty much rules it out.

[mgescuro]

Look. How many people are going to download video??
Probably not a good amount of people. Why?? The proliferation of broadband internet is not that high!! Can you imagine downloading a movie at 56K?? Forget about it!!

If Apple were to do something like that, they would have to work with the major movie companies. Then they'd have to partner with Earthlink to bring broadband to Mac users. Then they'd have to offer Mac with even larger storage systems, etc, etc, etc.

Unless of course, you'd just want to rent it and a price... but you'd still need broadband. Then the question is... why would you want to watch a movie on your laptop or desktop. Chances are your home theatre system will be MUCH better for movie... unless of course, Apple develops an Rendezvous system and connect to TiVo. But again.. the R&D will take years before that happens.

[rdas7]

Look. How many people are going to download video??

How many people are going to download graphics?

How many people are going to download applications

How many people are going to download audio?!

Who is EVER going to need any more than 400k of storage space on a floppy?

With processor speeds increasing and the cost of storage decreasing even faster (Wired Article:
Shifting Into Overdrive (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/view.html?pg=5)) it's not long before we're loading up our iPods with Terabytes of data and our P800s with a "measly" 1GB Memory Stick.

Back in the day, the jump from a 1200 to a 9600 baud modem was an amazing leap. At 28.8k we thought things wouldn't get any faster (notice how ZIPPY those pages are loading?).

True 56k is just about the cap for the current system, but 3G wireless gives a *theoretical* throughput of around 320kbps through the air, and certainly with 802.11a/g we're looking at megabits per second... who's to say these won't eclipse copper wire broadband/cable, etc. in the future?

If history is anything to go by, our kids will laugh at us when we tell them that we had to physically go to Blockbuster to rent movies, and how we felt "holding" our first compact disc. They will look at us and say, "Why didn't you just download it?" from behind their contact-lense monitors and dual-button Apple mice.

[tgranbois]

I work for a company that is involved in streaming data, not compression codecs, and i have seen that there is already the abiity to stream dvd quality video over the net with multiple streams. So the technology is there, it will just take the last bit of capital for it to be real for the big time. We are using our contacts in the entertainment industry to arrange a demonstration with Apple, so maybe it wont be too long until this service is available, with a minimal cost to Apple.

[YWN]

Well, I would love an movie download area for apple, I have broadband, and so does a very large ammount of the internet users, why? It is cheaper on the long run, and it is faster, if you want to download movies, ur not gonna do that on an 56k. And I guess that most people on 56k also don't download a lot of music. Because that also cost a lot, and is more expensive then broadband. So no need for Apple to offer broadband... Movies, YES!!! I see a lot of movies on my computer, and it has fairly good quality. It is far cheaper then the travel to a cinema, and then get a seat.

GET THE MOVIE DOWNLOAD!!! I WANT IT!!!

[ldkaplan]

<snip>
But I want to point out that iTunes includes particular music videos in the store.
</snip>

What's this about? I didn't see any vidoes. Anyone have any details?

Regardless, if they want to make "the world's best music store", they need to focus on filling in those Partial Albums.

[SilentPanda]

Originally posted by ldkaplan
<snip>
But I want to point out that iTunes includes particular music videos in the store.
</snip>

What's this about? I didn't see any vidoes. Anyone have any details?

Regardless, if they want to make "the world's best music store", they need to focus on filling in those Partial Albums.

On the homepage of the iTunes Music Store if you click on one of the artists on the left hand side (exclusives I believe) a good percentage of them have music videos.... I know Matchbox Twenty, Alicia Keys, Bon Jovi, Counting Crows, and Eminem do.

[alset]

Someone asked where the videos are. Check the artists who have exclusive tracks and you will find some. Try Jack Johnson, U2 or Eminim. Make sure you are loading their full page, not just a browser window.

As for movies, I am sure Apple and everyone else will evaluate and see how soon the market will be receptive. Someone will offer this service. It's just a question of who and how soon.

Remember those promises of cable on demand that cable companies used to make? Well, the medium is here. I just hope M$ doesn't beat us to the punch.

As to anyone who doesn't think net users will be willing to download, movie piracy is already gaining ground at a rapid rate. I know a few people with huge collections of TV shows and movies that came off the net.

Dan

edit: Also, Schiller was very well spoken when promoting the platform.

[Jimmni]

As far as I can see, the problem with movie downloads (to buy and have, not rent) isn't the size of the downloads... If Apple can make a success of iTMS with just American Mac users, they could make a success of movie store with just broadband users. What would put me off using it would be if I had to watch the film on my computer. My computer isn't in front of my couch, and that's where I like to watch movies from. I'd buy and download films that I could burn, but I'd never 'rent' them to watch on my computer. This isn't actually that big of a problem though, because with DVD writers becoming more common, and DVD players in a good proportion of homes, Apple wouldn't be that hard pressed to make a program to burn DVDs. If it was limited to 1 burn per movie, that would probably satisfy the industry, and consumers would have nothing to complain about (how many copies do you get when you buy a film at the video shop?). Just a few thoughts.

It does seem to me that Apple would be more likely to sell films than rent them. Though with rentals getting so expensive (I noticed new releases were £3.75 a night in Blockbuster last time I went in...) there could be a market for it. I'd still pay the extra though, and watch from the comfort of my couch.

- Jimmni

[SilentPanda]

I don't think Schiller's comments even really hinted at downloading movies in the future but whatever...

I could see allowing people to download music videos for a small fee... maybe around $3 or so... but that's iffy... right now music videos aren't sold often unless the artist has a bunch of them. So the artists might as well attempt to sell their videos. You can buy compilations of videos on DVD for some artists of course. I'd probably be willing to pay $3 or so for a high enough quality music video that I could burn to DVD and not notice... the current size of 480 x (whatever) is fairly decent right now although a little bigger probably wouldn't hurt.

As for downloading movies to burn to DVD? I myself use the DTS audio track any time I can... of course if I let a friend borrow a movie and they don't have a DTS decoder they can use the dolby track no problem. It's not the video downloading that concerns me but more so the audio downloading that is my concern. If the DVD has a DTS audio track I'd definitely buy it from the store instead of download it so that I can use that track and my friends can use the dolby track... I'd probably download a movie if the DVD didn't offer a DTS track and the download had Dolby 5.1... I dunno... my concern would be mostly with the audio tracks and not the video....

[iSmell]

It will happen eventually, from Apple or elsewhere.
Remember Napster? That got really big, mainly on college campuses where everybody has access to a highspeed network, about three years ago. Now digital music is mainstream and commercial.

But guess what college kids are doing now? Trading movies. It hasn't gotten to the level that Napster reached at its height yet, but it's growing quickly.

By the time Apple (or another company) got the Studios to agree to it and set it all up and everything, the bandwidth and storage space would probably be there. Remember Apple said they'd been working on the iTMS for over a year.

I bet more than one company out there already has plans for this, and I would be surprised if Apple wasn't one of them.














College Monkey

[iSmell]

Originally posted by SilentPanda
[snip] my concern would be mostly with the audio tracks and not the video....

I'm pretty sure that MPEG 4 supports multichannel sound and aac is high quality, so I don't think this will be a problem. DivX may not have surround sound, but they won't be selling DivX movies anyway.
They could also make a set top box that would hold movies (tivo style) or just stream them from your computer. Or maybe even a video pod that you could watch movies on or dock it at a TV and watch on the TV with surround sound and everything.
All the technology is out there (Tivo, 802.11, iPod, portable DVD players) it just needs to be pieced together.











FutureMonkey

[vniow]

Even though I'm on dial-up, I'm a big fan of music videos and would gladly pay a small fee to get high quality ones that I could download on my computer (i.e. not streaming), the only (legal) ones that I can seem to find either are low quality streams from the artist's web site or you have to buy the entire album to get yet another low quality version.

Bring on the music videos!http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?s=&postid=258478

[lmalave]

Originally posted by mgescuro
... unless of course, Apple develops an Rendezvous system and connect to TiVo. But again.. the R&D will take years before that happens.

Ha! TiVos are already rendezvous enabled. Currently they only play slideshows from iPhoto and music from iTunes. So playing video from your Mac is not so far fetched. Even with current technology, though, a movie would still be a pretty hefty download. Still, even if it took up to an hour or two to downlad a movie at decent quality, I might still prefer that to going to the video store or waiting for NetFlix. Imagine if downloading a movie only cost a few bucks? As with the iTMS, you could burn a movie to DVD, play it on 3 macs, or play it in...an upcoming video playing device???

I think Schiller meant what he said, though - Apple has its hands full just with the the iTMS and the iPods.

[theFly]

A movie service would be a bit different then the current music service. On the music service, when you buy and download the music, you own it.

However, the question then comes up, do you run the movie service the same way? Most online movie services (well, I guess MovieLink accounts for most of them), are rental services where you download the file (about 500MB as I recall when I tried it for one movie).

You can keep it on your drive, but once you start playing it, you had 24 hours (I think) to watch it. After that, you couldn't watch it anymore.

I'd love to see how well movies can be compressed using MPEG4 and I think Mac users can benefit from the service. The question is, would users be willing to be limited to "rentals" or would they be willing to pay $15/$20 to be able to burn the movie to DVD (which I know the movie industry would never allow).

theFly
Fly on the Mac
www.flyonthemac.com
Rumors You Can Bet On

[nickgold]

Originally posted by rdas7
How many people are going to download graphics?

If history is anything to go by, our kids will laugh at us when we tell them that we had to physically go to Blockbuster to rent movies, and how we felt "holding" our first compact disc. They will look at us and say, "Why didn't you just download it?" from behind their contact-lense monitors and dual-button Apple mice.

LOL! Ok, that was funny.... :)

[Stella]

No mention of international support, whether this question was asked in the interview or the editor couldn't be arsed to include the article, is any ones guess.

However, before apple think about movie downloads, they should support the majority of the world first.

[Freg3000]

I think it will take a while because of bandwith concerns. I mean, even with a cable connection, how fun is it to download a 500 MB movie? And most people don't even have broadband. Maybe Apple thinks something will pop up with much faster speeds in the next 2 years.....we'll see......

[arn]

Sorry of the article wasn't clear.

The point wasn't that phil admitted to anything - in fact he denied it...

I am aware of this.

arn

[MacSlut]

An interesting thing happened that isn't talked about much, but in the lat 90s, audio CDs were a base level format. Both in terms of being a storage media and in terms of quality. Just as technology was taking us into higher resolution with more channel audio, technology was taking us into lower resolution, but less expensive and easier to distribute.

One the one hand people were saying CDs weren't good enough, we need SuperAudio CDs or DVD-A or DTS CDs. On the other hand people were saying 128Kps MP3s were good enough!

It will be interesting to see what happens with iTunes...if it becomes a new standard. I wouldn't be surprised at all if there later became a new and improved quality download that you could upgrade to. This is what the industry does, but this time, we're all going to ask why they weren't encoded that way in the first place since the technology already existed.

So now we have movies doing the same thing. Some are saying DVD is not good enough, we need HD-DVD...and certainly we can all see the difference, but at what point will the acceptable quality level of video stabalize such that the acceptable bandwidth/download time meets it?

In other words if there are enough people with bandwidth accepting a reasonable download time of a DiVX would these people also accept the poor quality?

Bandwidth is increasing...not just broadband acceptance but the speed of broadband. As this increases the variables of quality vs download time also improve as a trade-off of each other.

However, quality requirements are also increasing. I can't imagine paying to for something that wasn't at least DVD quality, and I'd prefer HD quality. At $20 bucks I would go to the store and buy a HD copy versus downloading a sub-DVD quality for a little less.

So while it is about bandwidth, it's also very much about the flux of quality standards.

The rest of the technology of course is already pretty much there. I say this in almost every post, but here it is again...APPLE SHOULD BUY TIVO. It's great that Tivo works with Apple's overall strategy, but it's becoming increasingly clear that Tivo (or whatever brand) will be the entertainment hub, not the PC/Mac.

Tivo's Market Cap is now 3X what it was just last Sept, but at under $400 million, it still very much makes sense.

So my prediction on when movies will happen? I believe quality standards for video will increase. If I'm wrong about that and quality standards decrease, then it could happen within 2 years...but I strongly believe quality standards will increase so we're looking at 5-10 years before it can be offered as a competitive channel to other forms of home movie rentals/sales.

[Jaykay]

Wow, people really are getting ahead of themselves with that, maybe music videos (to download) but movies are a long way off.


Originally posted by SilentPanda
On the homepage of the iTunes Music Store if you click on one of the artists on the left hand side (exclusives I believe) a good percentage of them have music videos.... I know Matchbox Twenty, Alicia Keys, Bon Jovi, Counting Crows, and Eminem do.

U2, Coldplay, Sheryl Crow and the queens of the stone age have videos too.

[maxterpiece]

sort of off topic but maybe not... Schiller seemed to be concentrating on the idea that the iTunes music store would really push iPod sales. He may be right, but I think it's time for apple to release a cheap, simple mp3 player. I know it's been done before, but if I could buy a 128mb flash card player for $99, plug it into my computers and then just drag about 2 hours of audio on it, then go do my thing, I think that would be cool. The iPod is so expensive -- spending $300-$500 dollars on a player that is done for if it is lost or dropped, is only something that a serious audiophile would do. Obviously there're lots of companies that have small players like what I'm talking about, but if Apple released one, it would sync with itunes and the new iTunes store, leaving regular computer users a practical reason to buy music online and to buy a nifty little player that is smaller, lighter, MUCH cheaper and more durable than the iPod. The iPod seems like overkill for a lot of people -- you know what I'm saying? Not everyone cares to have every CD they own with them at all times. For a lot of people it's just aggravating to have to navigate the iPod (not that it's complicated... it just requires time and thought. Having a simple player, they could just skip to the track that they want and be happy, seems like a hole that apple should fill.... or else they are letting a lot of customers slip through the cracks.
Max

[Trimix]

To download movies would be nice but right now i would very much prefer if we had the opportunity to download 'books on tapes', i.e. books on my i-pod.
That would be very very nice and it would not require much setting up.

Regarding the argument that not everybody has broadband, why would that stop a company like Apple or M$ or anybody for that matter? It almost seems to me as if we want every possible gimmick, gadget and form of service but are not even prepared to pay for a measly ISDN or ADSL or cable-link to the house.
You want to take part - then do some upgrading and stop moaning. This will come, and I rather want it to be Apple reaping the laurels than any other company for that matter.

[mainstreetmark]

Trimix -

http://www.apple.com/ipod/ Click on "Audible.com" on far right of black bar under iPod pic.

And the whole Movie thing -
- a couple of previous posters are right. I've been downloading movies for a while now. I s-video them to my big screen digital TV. It works out very well, and on a good connection, I can actually get a nice quality movie in about 2.5hrs (1.5 gig mpg or something). You can fairly easily obtain near DVD quality Two Towers in the newsgroups (takes up 4 CDs!), and people do it all the time.

Mind you, this is all pirate and stuff, but you know what? I'm tired of paying 8.50 to go to the theater just to sit through SEVEN commercials for hair gel and stuff, and then having the kid next to me announce that Yoda's going to get into a lightsaber fight - a fact I did NOT know, due to carefully controlling Star Wars hype. I'm perfectly happy stealing from Hollywood, just as I was perfectly happy stealing from the record industry. Something reasonable came along for the record industry - they compromised a bit, the users compromised a bit - and would-be stealers are now legally downloading. If I could pay $2 to download a full quality version of Fight Club - I would (or, for that matter, the million indie films that never make it to my particular theater - like one called "Sunshine State" that I never got to see, even though it was filmed here in my city, mostly). They could lock it up so that it could only be played on 2 macs and 1 burn or whatever, but that's fine with me. If the restrictions are reasonable, I'm willing to flex a bit. Would I pay $20 to watch a new release? Of course I would! Right now, I'd already be having my X-Men party with 20 people over all gathered around my big screen, instead of trolling around IRC waiting for a bot to start sending it to me.

Have I bought anything through iTunes? Well, no.. the stuff I like to listen to is barely obtainable in Kazaa. Hopefully, Apple will make provisions for the myriad of indie labels out there to sell through Apple. It seems inevitable....

(and, for what it's worth, it appears as though .99/song is not a fixed price. I would imagine those numbers would begin to fluctuate a bit over time. They should make it demand-based, so that less popular songs are nearly free. let the Market set the price.)

[madamimadam]

Did anyone else notice that the question asked was completely flawed. Why would you download movies via iTunes? Surely, if Apple did have plans to move into the movie market they would use a different program.

So, will people be able to download movies from iTunes... well... NO... he was not lying.

[Squire]

...and, for what it's worth, it appears as though .99/song is not a fixed price. I would imagine those numbers would begin to fluctuate a bit over time. They should make it demand-based, so that less popular songs are nearly free. let the Market set the price.

I totally agree with the prices. What's the sense of putting "$0.99" on the screen 200,000 times?

Squire

[Squire]

Originally posted by madamimadam
Did anyone else notice that the question asked was completely flawed. Why would you download movies via iTunes? Surely, if Apple did have plans to move into the movie market they would use a different program.

So, will people be able to download movies from iTunes... well... NO... he was not lying.

Enter the "iMovie Video Store."

Squire

[Trimix]

regarding the flexible pricing (letting the market decide)
why would I buy a song which in my mind is crap, even if it costs only half or almost nothing ?
we have already the flexibility to pick and choose - so why now a pricing fixed to the number of downloads ? what does the artist gain ?
if we want to be philospohical about it, then in the long run, artists would stop experimenting and just look at the number of downloads on any given system and imitate the songs ad infinitum...
we, as the consumers would be exposed to even more of the same...
just think of 50 plastic boygroups on offer all with a similar tune -
in my book, i am happy if they experiment, even if they need to hide their experiments on track 11 - but maybe I am blue-eyed

[Vroem]

Originally posted by iSmell
I'm pretty sure that MPEG 4 supports multichannel sound and aac is high quality, so I don't think this will be a problem. DivX may not have surround sound, but they won't be selling DivX movies anyway.

There is no profile for audio with more than 2 channels in the MPEG-4 standard. Of course you can put any stream you want in the MPEG-4 container, but then it would not be ISO anymore. (What where you saying about divx? It's a VIDEO profile, it has nothing to do with audio.)

[mainstreetmark]

if we want to be philospohical about it, then in the long run, artists would stop experimenting and just look at the number of downloads on any given system and imitate the songs ad infinitum...
we, as the consumers would be exposed to even more of the same...
just think of 50 plastic boygroups on offer all with a similar tune -
in my book, i am happy if they experiment, even if they need to hide their experiments on track 11 - but maybe I am blue-eyed [/B]

That's actually a pretty good point, but I would also tend to think that if everything started to sound the same, people would quit downloading it. We do get that 30 sec preview.

If, however, you like the preview of some song you never heard of, and the cost is only like .40, you might be tempted to download it more, which, I think, might actually promote diversity.

After all - all artists already know what songs sell. We have Clear Channel to thank for that.

[Winston Smith]

Originally posted by rdas7
How many people are going to download graphics?

How many people are going to download applications

How many people are going to download audio?!

Who is EVER going to need any more than 400k of storage space on a floppy?

With processor speeds increasing and the cost of storage decreasing even faster (Wired Article:
Shifting Into Overdrive (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/view.html?pg=5)) it's not long before we're loading up our iPods with Terabytes of data and our P800s with a "measly" 1GB Memory Stick.

Back in the day, the jump from a 1200 to a 9600 baud modem was an amazing leap. At 28.8k we thought things wouldn't get any faster (notice how ZIPPY those pages are loading?).

True 56k is just about the cap for the current system, but 3G wireless gives a *theoretical* throughput of around 320kbps through the air, and certainly with 802.11a/g we're looking at megabits per second... who's to say these won't eclipse copper wire broadband/cable, etc. in the future?

If history is anything to go by, our kids will laugh at us when we tell them that we had to physically go to Blockbuster to rent movies, and how we felt "holding" our first compact disc. They will look at us and say, "Why didn't you just download it?" from behind their contact-lense monitors and dual-button Apple mice.

Great post:D

1st, despite Arn's point that Phil Schiller denied it, if Apple isn't beginning to work on movie, tv etc downloading then the Jobs reality distortion field has finally disappeared. That would never happen and besides Jobs is already a respected figure in the movie industry with Pixar so he already has a leg up.

2nd, Early indications are that iTMS is a huge success (in America at least), what business do you know of that doesn't aim to expand, improve, or revolutionise its great successes except of course names we fondly remember.

3rd, Rumours of the communication device = something to connect your Mac to your other multimedia devices. Not very Apple when its just iTunes to your HiFi, but the whole iLife suite to your Hifi, HDTV, Mobile Phone, contact lens monitor etc - VERY Apple and not hard to do now.

Broadband adoption will happen when it HAS to happen, as a Mac that can run OS X comfortably largely has.
Of course I'll struggle to backup my Movie downloads to the floppy I had to have when I bought my Bondi Blue iMac, but then I've never really used that floppy. Now I don't use the Modem thats still preinstalled in Macs.

A little imagination is all we need and Dolby 5.1, DTS and THX support.........

[GregA]

Originally posted by Trimix
To download movies would be nice but right now i would very much prefer if we had the opportunity to download 'books on tapes', i.e. books on my i-pod.
That would be very very nice and it would not require much setting up. Interesting.

Make the iPod screen a bit larger... colour too (pictures in your books?). Then download the newspaper before catching the train to work. Listen to music while reading the news (or download a series of websites to read?)

I know... an old idea... that never took off.

Come to think of it, you could probably watch music video clips on one too?

[GregA]

Originally posted by Jimmni
As far as I can see, the problem with movie downloads <snip> would be if I had to watch the film on my computer. My computer isn't in front of my couch <snip> This isn't actually that big of a problem though, because with DVD writers becoming more common, and DVD players in a good proportion of homes, Apple wouldn't be that hard pressed to make a program to burn DVDs. Hi Jimmni,

Surely streaming the video to your TV would be much better. The technology to convert a digital video to TV is pretty standard now - DVD, Digital Video cameras, Satellite TV decoders, Set top boxes.... so a little Apple decoder box maybe?

Either it would just decode movies, or maybe be a whole remote Mac screen. But not burning a DVD so you can walk it into the next room (unless you mean as an archive....!)

Greg
(ps. I'd like to play my music through my stereo in the next room!)

[Flowbee]

If movies come into this equation, then a TV interface will have to be in place. I'm happy having my music on my computer, but I'll never watch video on it.

[Jimmni]

Originally posted by GregAussie

Surely streaming the video to your TV would be much better. The technology to convert a digital video to TV is pretty standard now - DVD, Digital Video cameras, Satellite TV decoders, Set top boxes.... so a little Apple decoder box maybe?

Either it would just decode movies, or maybe be a whole remote Mac screen. But not burning a DVD so you can walk it into the next room (unless you mean as an archive....!)


The problem with what you suggest is that I'm on a serious budget. I love films, and most of the money I spend gets spent on watching or buying films. But I'm a student, and had to save up to get my £60 DVD player. I just couldn't justify buying new hardware for film watching for a good few years. If the box was £40 and films were £2.50 or less, released alongside or before rental stores, I might get tempted. But we all know Apple. The box would be £150. I just couldn't buy that sort of thing. And I'm in a shared house, with a shared connection. What if I'm streaming a film and one of my housemates starts a heavy download? I just don't like the idea of streaming a film at all. I like archiving my films too, as you say. I'd happily pay £8-10 for a DVDr that I could burn myself. I'd be more likely to plump for a DVD writer to burn films I could play at my friends' houses than for a set top box that relied on being at my house, and relied on me having broadband at the time.

- Jimmni

[iJon]

Originally posted by mgescuro
Then they'd have to partner with Earthlink to bring broadband to Mac users.
what do you mean bring broadband to mac users. im almost positive they have broadband, because i am switching to them from sbc. if you are talking about satellite internet then you are right, but there are easy solutions to getting satellte internet on macs.

iJon