The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

About a month ago, XM Radio opened up their airwaves with a web stream for subscribers - something that SIRIUS did a while ago. Being an XM subscriber myself, I was thrilled to hear of this development for one very good reason: I can’t listen to XM in my home due to living in a 2nd floor north-facing apartment. I kept the subscription because it’s fun to have on rental-car road trips and my husband could at least use it in his office. Plus, I figured my monthly subscription cost was going to a good cause… anything to drown out the horror that has become FM radio.

My glee didn’t last long. I quickly discovered that for unknown reasons XM had decided to make their web stream Microsoft only. I immediately sent a letter to listener services.

I was very excited by your new XM online streaming service until I discovered you have chosen to exclude Mac users from this feature. What is the reason for this? There is Windows Media player for the Mac, and Flash Player and even Internet Explorer. I purchased a subscription to XM in May, as a birthday present for my husband. Unfortunately, we have been unable to listen to it in our own home because we have no direct satellite exposure from our 2nd floor north-facing apartment. We tried for a few weeks with different antennas and such but were unable to ever get more that interrupted pockets of static. My husband has slightly better luck in his office with the XM PC unit we purchased in addition to the Delphi home unit. Despite the fact that we have been mostly unable to use the subscription and the equipment we purchased, we did not cancel the service, in part because we thought it was a good idea to support XM even if we couldn’t currently benefit from it. It is sad that you have decided that you don’t need to support us in return. One would think that a company that is trying to do something “different” would support users who have been living by the motto “Think Different” for 20 years already.

Their reply?

We are happy to hear about your interest in XM Online.  We are sorry, but at this time, XM Radio Online supports Microsoft Windows only, and you  will not be able to listen on a Macintosh, Linux or other non-Microsoft environments since Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher is required.  An expansion of XM Online to  Macintosh has not been announced, so we are not aware of if and when this will occur.  Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

So much for that idea… Until Friday when XM ammended their System Requirents page to include the following:

NOTE: XM Radio Online is also usable on many other system configurations including Apple Macintosh computers and many other browsers including Mozilla Firefox, Netscape and Safari. Results may vary depending upon your specific system setup, software versions and configuration.

SIRIUS can keep Howard Stern (whose schtick stopped being funny to me somewhere around the time I graduated from high school).  I’m XM all the way now.  I just added the $3.99 XM Online subscription to my monthly bill.

By the way, even if you aren’t an XM subscriber, you can still subscribe to XM Online as a standalone for only $7.99/month.  Best of all, you can try XM Online for free with a 3-day trial.