Until now, Mac users have been left out in the cold when it comes to streaming movies from Netflix's Web site to their machine. But Netflix has adopted Microsoft's Silverlight, which will allow Intel-based Apple machines to stream movies and television shows to their computers.

Initially, the Silverlight rollout will only be available for a small percentage of customers—most likely to act as a beta test of sorts. However, according to Netflix, the service will be expanded to all users by the end of the year.

Silverlight is designed to deliver media content in a Web browser across platforms regardless of browser. Netflix users who watch video on the Web can look forward to enhanced timeline navigation—fast forwarding and rewinding.

The latest generation of Silverlight uses PlayReady DRM, which allows for playback of protected content on Windows and Apple machines.