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Media (Apple) Media Microsoft Businesses Apple

Microsoft Ends Windows Media Player on the Mac 470

Posted by CowboyNeal from the who-didn't-see-this-one-coming dept.
alphasubzero949 writes "According to News.com, Microsoft has had no plans to update or improve Windows Media Player and has instead thrown its weight behind a third party plugin to fill the void. Adam Anderson, Microsoft public relations manager, told News.com, 'It's basically a business decision for Microsoft. Like any other company, we have business priorities. Our focus really is in delivering the best experience to Windows customers.'"
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Microsoft Ends Windows Media Player on the Mac More

Microsoft Ends Windows Media Player on the Mac

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  • Oh dear! (Score:5, Funny)

    by nano2nd ( 205661 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @02:39AM (#14461656) Homepage
    I've had a mac for two years and I didn't know Windows Media Player for mac even existed!

    • Re:Oh dear! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TTimo ( 253584 ) <ttimo&ttimo,net> on Friday January 13, 2006 @04:19AM (#14461932) Homepage
      Windows Media player for Mac was a joke anyway. Very buggy, playback would stop/hang randomly. It's been there, and broken for years .. if only the format was open enough for others to implement working codecs.

      • Re:Oh dear! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by CvD ( 94050 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @06:21AM (#14462280) Homepage Journal
        Unfortunately it was the only way to play a lot of WMV files. VLC and MPlayer do not correctly play a lot of these files. I hope that I will be able to in the future. There are a lot of .wmv files floating around, and it would suck not being able to watch them on a Mac.

        Cheers

        • Re:Oh dear! (Score:3, Interesting)

          by eclectic4 ( 665330 )
          "Unfortunately it was the only way to play a lot of WMV files."

          To verify what "a lot" means, it does not mean most. "Most" WMV files play just great in VLC, the vast majority in fact. The only ones that will not play are ones using WMV3. For those I use Windows Media Player for Mac. So, the only ones that will not play on the Mac are the WMV 10/DRM'd videos (as far as I can tell, and I use this stuff daily). Big freakin' deal. If MS wants to shoot themselves in the foot by not paying a dev a weeks pay to

          • Re:Oh dear! (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Kadin2048 ( 468275 )
            Unfortunately though, there are a lot of WMV3 codec videos floating around out there. I'm not sure why, perhaps it's the default codec used by something, but I'd guess that 60-70% of the WMV files I've come across lately have refused to play in VLC. And they're not DRMed files either, just random stuff I've had sent to me.

            The real problem in my mind is why people are encoding their content with such a stupid format, given the vast number of better alternatives. I pretty much delete anything that gets sent t
    • you obviously don't watch nearly enough porn.

  • Symbiotic relationship? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 ) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Friday January 13, 2006 @02:40AM (#14461660)
    The whole relationship between Apple and Microsoft has been weird to me. I figure its a symbiotic relationship like a dead tree with a fungus. Why Microsoft was supporting a competitor at all is up for discussion. Seeing as how WMP wasn't really a money maker in the first place, it makes sense that they drop development.
    • Why Microsoft was supporting a competitor at all is up for discussion.

      One word... antitrust.

    • I never considered it weird myself and actually kind of enjoyed it for some twisted reason. What is weird to me though is that it feels like they're dropping things left and right. I realize it's only two products thus far, but IE and Windows Media Player for Mac have been around for quite some time.

      Is the rest of the Mactopia line going to be on the chopping block next? Is Microsoft gearing up for an all-out "platform-warm" with Apple and planning to remove their presences from OS X completely?

      Seriously

      • Re:Symbiotic relationship? (Score:4, Funny)

        by somethinghollow ( 530478 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:49AM (#14461880) Homepage Journal
        At the MacWorld San Francisco keynote, the head of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit said they pledged to keep making Office for at least five years. That should give Apple plenty of time to make a decent office suite.
      • I wonder if Microsoft is anticipating a larger Apple market share with the introduction of Intel Macs, and are positioning themselves for a dual-boot status?

      • Re:Symbiotic relationship? (Score:4, Funny)

        by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @06:58AM (#14462369) Homepage Journal
        I never considered it weird myself and actually kind of enjoyed it for some twisted reason.

        You mean, like the feeling you get when you dress up in women's clothes?

        **ducks**

      • Entourage (Score:4, Informative)

        by Kadin2048 ( 468275 ) <slashdot...kadin@@@xoxy...net> on Friday January 13, 2006 @09:09AM (#14462923) Homepage Journal
        Messenger is basically unnecessary, because there are third-party products that do what it does (MSN support) better, and with better system integration. Messenger as it exists right now would have been a fine program in 2002, but today it's lame. Plus, very few Mac users I know want to only use MSN for Instant Messenging, and that's what the program is geared to. Most people who want to talk to people who use MSN are going to use Adium or one of the other multi-protocol IM clients.

        There might be a small niche of users who haven't discovered the joy that is Adium (I'm now a total convert since they built in Address Book integration and encryption) and are still using the standalone MSN client, but I think they'll find that they're better off once they make the switch to another product.

        The real MS product that it would be detrimental to the Mac platform to lose is Entourage. Without that, I can't think of an easy way to interact with an Exchange Server (Apple Mail will do the email part, but it won't do the calendaring or PIM functions). Granted I think Exchange is stupid, but it's popular.
    • The relationship comes from a point of time where there was competition for a default format.

      A media company going with real, quicktime or WMPs is making a big investment. One of the concerns actualy was "could everyone wanting to view our content actualy do so". Quicktime, the answer was yes becuase it run on apple and windows. Microsoft needed to show some of the same for thier product. Now that most comercial grade media encoders/ editers can produce in more then one format, it isn't as important. Actua

    • Competition regulations? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TangoCharlie ( 113383 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @04:01AM (#14461902) Homepage Journal
      I've always suspected that Microsoft has kept some support for Apple going to counter-act any potential monopoly claims.

      While Apple appears to provide a competing product Microsoft can always maintain that they don't have a complete monopoly and so are less likely to be the subject of calls to split them up.

      This made business sence at Microsoft because Apple wasn't really a competitor... however, I believe Microsoft sees Apple to be an increasing risk (not "risc" ?!) and so is cutting back on Mac products which don't have a revenue stream.

      If Apple's move to Intel has the effect of increasing Apple's market share expect Microsoft to withdraw Microsoft Office. Indeed, I expect Microsoft will be painfully slow to release an x86 native MacOffice at all.

      We'll see.

      • Re:Competition regulations? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by WiggyWack ( 88258 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @10:34AM (#14463648) Homepage
        If Apple's move to Intel has the effect of increasing Apple's market share expect Microsoft to withdraw Microsoft Office.

        Why? Microsoft makes money on Office for Mac.

        Everyone who buys a Mac is a lost sale of Windows for Microsoft. But Microsoft still has a chance to make a profit by selling Office to that Mac user. Why would they want to lose a Windows sale AND an Office sale? The profit to Microsoft for a Mac user buying Office retail is probably greater than the profit from an OEM copy of Windows anyway.

    • Re:Symbiotic relationship? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by anticypher ( 48312 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [rehpycitna]> on Friday January 13, 2006 @06:48AM (#14462342) Homepage
      Doesn't anyone remember when Apple was doing really badly at the end of 1997, when Steve Jobs came back as "not the CEO, just a consultant"? Apple was doing very poorly because they, like every other OS manufacturer at the time, were locked out of every distribution channel by M$'s aggressive (and later, ruled illegal) control of >95% of the retail market place.

      The MacWorld of 1998 had Jobs introducing Gates on stage, and they announced that M$ would make a US$150 million investment in Apple, buying US$75M of non-voting stock at twice the price (IIRC, AAPL was at $11/share, M$ paid $22/share). The deal also included a patent portfolio swap, where each has unlimited access to the other's patents royalty free. M$ agreed to support a fully functional version of office on the mac for at least 10 years. Apple agreed to drop its support of the anti-trust case. There were a bunch of other details in the deal which made the business rather unsavory, but both companies desperately needed each other at that moment in time.

      Since then, it was obvious who really got the better end of that deal. Apple has unlimited access to every patent M$ owns or licenses from other companies. Apple can out-innovate M$ at every step, and never has to worry about a patent challenge in the courts. Jobs learned his lessons when dealing with Gates, and certainly made sure Apple couldn't be too screwed over by M$ later on. Now, with Apple rising on a whole raft of good, trendy, high-margin products and a completely independant distribution chain, and M$ floundering in a sea of troubles, it looks like Jobs is getting his revenge.

      the AC

      • Corrections... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MacDork ( 560499 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:14PM (#14466388) Journal
        The MacWorld of 1998 had Jobs introducing Gates on stage, and they announced that M$ would make a US$150 million investment in Apple, buying US$75M of non-voting stock at twice the price (IIRC, AAPL was at $11/share, M$ paid $22/share). The deal also included a patent portfolio swap, where each has unlimited access to the other's patents royalty free. M$ agreed to support a fully functional version of office on the mac for at least 10 years. Apple agreed to drop its support of the anti-trust case. There were a bunch of other details in the deal which made the business rather unsavory, but both companies desperately needed each other at that moment in time.

        • August, 1997. Look at the old stock charts. See that spike? That day.
        • The entire deal was for five years.
        • Apple agreed to settle its lawsuit with Microsoft for an undisclosed sum of money separate from the $150 million dollar investment.

        The only concession Apple really made for Microsoft was to bundle IE as the default browser on the Mac for 5 years. Later in the DOJ's anti-trust case, Apple's Avi Tevanian testified that Microsoft had tried to get Apple to step out of the QuickTime for Windows business and focus only on video editing and playback on the Macintosh. Apple refused. Google for "quicktime knife the baby" for details.

        it looks like Jobs is getting his revenge.

        I think the only revenge Jobs ever wanted was for being kicked out of his own company. Not so much revenge even, it's more like vindication. He came back and led Apple out of the woods and back to greatness. The Mac/PC holy war was a lot like the Apple II/Mac holy war. Jobs invented it to serve his own purposes. He had no real emotional investment in it himself. That was made quite clear through his actions 8 1/2 years ago. I continued to allow folks like John Dvorak over at PC mag to goad me for a while after, but when the press no longer tagged Apple with the beleaguered moniker, I got over the whole thing myself. A computer is a tool. I prefer a Mac, but I can see where Windows PCs and various *nixes fit into the equation.

        Bill Gates really doesn't figure into the picture here. He's always wanted to be the 'rockstar' that Jobs is, but no matter how much money he's made, he's never achieved that in his own mind. Jobs isn't concerned with Gates or money. After $100,000,000 he had more money than he could ever spend... to paraphrase Jobs. Jobs wants Apple to succeed out of personal pride. Beginning January 1, 1998 APPL has been a stock market superstar. Nobody can touch that track record. Given that they are still at 3% marketshare in their core market, they really have nowhere to go but up. Intel based Macs may very well be what turns the tables on Dell/HP/Lenovo dominance. And it won't have a thing to do with getting revenge on Gates. The technology deal with Microsoft announced at this MacWorld probably has a lot to do with that. Jobs wants Gates to support Windows on Apple hardware. Not as a replacement for OS X, but as a compliment to it. That way he can stand in front of a crowd at the next Macworld and say, "It slices, it dices, it runs Windows and Mac!" Jobs' "revenge" has nothing to do with Gates and everything to do with Jobs being escorted away from Apple campus in 1985. It's personal.

        But that's just MHO :-)

  • Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 ) <john.oyler@noSpAm.comcast.net> on Friday January 13, 2006 @02:40AM (#14461662) Journal
    Our focus really is in delivering the best experience to Windows customers.

    So now they're going to buy all windows users a free mac?

  • Closed Formats (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ozmanjusri ( 601766 )
    If Microsoft is not prepared to support their products on competitor's operating systems, they should not be allowed to develop closed formats, APIs or interfaces.

    • Re:Closed Formats (Score:5, Informative)

      by Moridineas ( 213502 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @02:43AM (#14461678) Journal
      Lucky you! http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/play er/flip4mac.mspx [microsoft.com]. They've provided a way to keep watching.

      • Re:Closed Formats (Score:5, Informative)

        by aberkvam ( 109205 ) <aberkvam@berque. c o m> on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:14AM (#14461781) Homepage
        The Flip4Mac components not only provide a way for Mac users to "keep watching", they actually allow Mac users to watch Microsoft Video formats that the Microsoft Product never did. The most obvious example is that there was no good way for Mac users to watch Windows Media 9 Standard videos (WMV3) before the Flip4Mac components came out. (Windows Media Player, VLC [videolan.org], and MPlayer OSX [mplayerhq.hu] would all choke on them.) Now Mac users can watch them, preview them in the Finder, import and export them, etc.

        This is actually a huge upgrade and great news for Mac users.

        • The most obvious example is that there was no good way for Mac users to watch Windows Media 9 Standard videos (WMV3) before the Flip4Mac components came out.

          The latest WiMP for Mac would play WMV3 video just fine... as long as they were in a supported container type like a .wmv file. What it couldn't do was play WMV3 video in a .AVI wrapper, because .AVI was "too old" according to the error message. If you've had problems playing WMV3 it's because you've been downloading videos off the internet, where pe


    • If Microsoft is not prepared to support their products on competitor's operating systems, they should not be allowed to develop closed formats, APIs or interfaces.


      What about the iTunes stuff for Linux - when is Apple going to support that?

  • They shoot themselves in the foot (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @02:41AM (#14461668)
    Actually, it's a bad decision for Microsoft. Since they won't be able to claim that their evil DRM works for everyone (they silently ignore Unices), judges/govt monkeys will be more likely to see that DRM as something wrong. Also, the unwashed masses are more likely to trip into it as well, thus increasing the public awareness.

    Ahh, good. Anything bad for WM* and friends is great news for us.

    • Re:They shoot themselves in the foot (Score:5, Insightful)

      by toddbu ( 748790 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:06AM (#14461744)
      Actually, it's a bad decision for Microsoft.

      There's another reason as well. If Microsoft's actions limit the number of people who can view the files, there will be more of a push by consumers to get web sites like CNN.com that use Windows Media exclusively to support more formats. I think that Microsoft's hope is that this will keep people from migrating away from Windows, but I think it will have the opposite effect.

      • Re:They shoot themselves in the foot (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:11AM (#14461769)
        There's another reason as well. If Microsoft's actions limit the number of people who can view the files, there will be more of a push by consumers to get web sites like CNN.com that use Windows Media exclusively to support more formats. I think that Microsoft's hope is that this will keep people from migrating away from Windows, but I think it will have the opposite effect.


        I never understood why so many sites have their video on a dumbass proprietary format. Do the PHBs mandate this, or are the webmasters/otherTechiesinvolved so clueless not to use a free/open format? Not everybody has windows or wants the hell that is real-player.

        Is it bandwidth savings? Are the proprietary formats superior?

        • Marketshare BS (Score:2, Interesting)

          by alphasubzero949 ( 945598 )
          I've complained to web developers before about this and was given the usual canned marketshare/statistics crap. Some developers are just lazy and will flat out refuse to consider using more than one format.

        • Re:They shoot themselves in the foot (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Pecisk ( 688001 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @07:24AM (#14462432)
          For Windows Media usage, it is clearly because Windows Media Player is aviable on every Windows box, period. It is cleary because of that. Also server support is very important - Windows Media Services offerings are quite effective (disclaimer: I love Ogg Vorbis/Theora and what Fluendo try to do) and Real Server was quite only solution for any streaming.

          Streaming is technically very demanding from server software, so actually it is quite understandable that CNN or BBC uses Real and Windows Media to stream - because these formats are which have popular and usable players and their server parts.

        • It's practicality. They want their content easily accessible to the masses, so they need to use a format that's going to be supported by most people already. Hence, Windows Media. *everyone* has WMP, so it's the obvious solution. Forcing people to download something to listen to your content is impractical, and reduces the number of people watching your media.

          Now, however, Quicktime is getting a lot more popular. Everyone with iTunes has Quicktime, and every Mac user as well. It's not popular enough that it
      • Not to mention, more and more web sites require WMP in order to view/listen to their content. Some of those sites even deploy ActiveX and lock out non-Windows users all together.
      • It does work - I listen to football (soccer) commentaries that I have to pay for - in WMP formats. They were extremely dodgy on the Mac (had to use the Classic player, not the OSX one), despite the claims that it was supported, so I cancelled my subscription (as did quite a few other people I know).

        Next season, they announced they had improved their Mac support - and while still WMP, whatever they had done works fine in the OSX player
    • "Actually, it's a bad decision for Microsoft. Since they won't be able to claim that their evil DRM works for everyone"

      Microsoft's DRM stuff never worked in Windows Media Palyer for Mac.. so this fact has been a reality for several years.
    • Since they won't be able to claim that their evil DRM works for everyone (they silently ignore Unices), judges/govt monkeys will be more likely to see that DRM as something wrong.

      That's wishful thinking, I'm afraid. The content industry is pushing very hard for DRM, and something as trivial as only being viewable on ~95% of home desktop computers won't worry them and therefore it won't worry the judges.

      Besides, as long as MS don't make it impossible for competing DRM solutions to exist and work under Window
    • Agreed, this was pretty dumb.

      Although, I totally understand the need to stick-it to the competition, they've just cut official support for the second largest consumer desktop OS, and an OS that is heavily used by those of us who work in new / digital media.

      Unless they really reach out to this 3rd party, this is an incredibly dumb move. Annoying the new media designers is not the best way to get your file formats and codecs recommended as a potential solution to a project :/

  • I've been using the Mac non-stop-- (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mrs. Grundy ( 680212 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @02:41AM (#14461671) Homepage
    since the SE and I didn't know windows media player was available--and I didn't care. The void they are talking about must be very small? It's a little like reading an announcement that MS Access is no longer available for the mac. Have I been missing out? Is that where all the good free porn is?

  • WMP never part of MacBU (Score:5, Informative)

    by Henriok ( 6762 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @02:41AM (#14461672)
    Windows Media Player was not a product that MacBU made, it was sorely lacking in almost every respect and laughing stock of the entire Mac community. It won't be missed. The QuickTime plugin Flip4Mac is better in almost every respect and enabled transcoding to the plethora of formats that QuickTime offers. However.. the free plugin does not enable a Mac user to encode WMV. You'll have to pay for that.

    One interessting thing here is that Flip4Mac licenses technology from MS that MS now are paying to get back :)
    • Henriok informatively said:

      However.. the free plugin does not enable a Mac user to encode WMV. You'll have to pay for that.

      And if you listen very closely, you can hear the hoards of Mac users who need this feature rushing out to pay for it!

      Err, or maybe that is just the sound of paint drying...

      But seriously, good on the developers of Flip4Mac! They have done an excellent job. There appear to be some stability issues, especially with QuickTime7.0.4, but otherwise, I think it does an excellent job and fo

    • That's a feature, not a bug (Score:5, Insightful)

      by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @05:15AM (#14462127)
      However.. the free plugin does not enable a Mac user to encode WMV. You'll have to pay for that.

      "Decode" is the only thing anyone in their right mind should be doing with WMV.

  • This is actually good for users (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dark_Nova ( 27836 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @02:44AM (#14461685)
    Provided that Microsoft keeps licensing this plugin and giving it away for free, this is good news for Mac users. The plugin is a much better option than Windows Media Player, allowing you to play Windows Media files in a nicer GUI.

    Microsoft probably didn't want to update Media Player to be a universal binary, so decided upon this option. They are distributing the plugin [microsoft.com] on their website for free, so this is a win-win situation.

  • Flip4Mac offered from Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)

    by Moridineas ( 213502 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @02:45AM (#14461689) Journal
    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/play er/flip4mac.mspx [microsoft.com]

    Check out the page. It lets Quicktime play wmv. I don't believe it's originally made by MS (not sure) but they are distributing a basic playback version for free. There's a more advanced version that lets one edit video streams as well. This is very cool, and better than dealing with the WMV player for Mac... Almost as annoying as Quicktime client for windows. Any way--mac, windows, linux/*bsd...I use mplayer or vlc. The odd wmv is the only thing I use wmv for, and this appears to solve that need.
    • I installed it. Does a GREAT job with nearly every WMV that Media Player can't handle, but you'll still need WMP around for some files. I had something from TechTV that was all distorted with F4M but plays fine in the old player.

      Anyway, it wasn't created by MS, but actually licensed from Telestream, Inc. [flipcenter.com]. This can be verified by the press release from them [flipcenter.com], but also because the plugin actually phones home to FlipCenter.com when it is used -- probably for update checks.

      Obviously, it's a little half-baked.

  • Excellent... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CoolMoDee ( 683437 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @02:55AM (#14461710) Homepage Journal
    During my entire Mac using experience (3 or 4 years now), Windows Media Player on my mac would work for about a week. Then it would suddenly stop working. The only thing that would get it working again was a fresh install, which of course I wasn't going to do, since MPlayer plays wmvs nicely. Oddly enough though, the upgrade to 10.4.4 made WMP work..once. Then a friend linked me to the quicktime plugin. Thus far it works great. Best move microsoft has made in a long time...

  • WMP, I'd rather eat glass (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "has had no plans to update or improve Windows Media Player"

    MS hasn't *improved* WMP since version 2 :-)

  • No big deal (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:02AM (#14461737)
    So they've decided it doesn't make sense to continue development of a free (to us) piece of software on a platform that is in the decided minority when it comes to desktops. Makes sense to me. They've even pointed us toward a third-party solution that'll continue to allow us Mac users to watch Windows media - granted, it's one that many of us have already heard about.

    So why is Microsoft behaving more or less reasonably as of late? Are they losing their guerilla edge in middle age? Lord knows it hasn't been (US) government pressure.

  • Cute Microsoft Joke (Score:5, Funny)

    by gbobeck ( 926553 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:08AM (#14461760) Homepage Journal
    "Our focus really is in delivering the best experience to Windows customers."


    I never knew what the sound of hot coffee comming out of my nose and splattering all over my monitor and keyboard sounded like until I saw that quote.

  • Quicktime is no better (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nighty5 ( 615965 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:09AM (#14461762)
    I own a PowerBook, and for me to have basic functionality in video support, you have to pay for it.

    Basic functionality like Full Screen support, what the?!?

    I just paid $AUS4,000 for a system and now I have to pay another $AUS45 to watch something in full screen?

    Apple might be all funky and groovey, but they really bleed every cent out of you for any added features.

    This stuff should be stock standard.

    On my god, mod me down - I've just flamed Apple!

    • Three Letters (Score:5, Informative)

      by AoT ( 107216 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:45AM (#14461866) Homepage Journal
      VLC.

      I love it to death. It does everything quicktime should do.

      videolan.org
    • While I don't agree with apple making fullscreen movie watching a Quicktime Pro only feature, but maybe they are doing it to cover license costs of being able to encode into all sorts of formats that apple doesn't own? As well as the legitimate editing features?
    • ''I own a PowerBook, and for me to have basic functionality in video support, you have to pay for it.

      Basic functionality like Full Screen support, what the?!? ''

      I can play videos in full screen in my Macintosh without any problems, without having to pay any money for it.
      Apple ships all Macs with a free video player. It is called iTunes.

    • Re:Quicktime is no better (Score:5, Informative)

      by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @04:54AM (#14462040)
      I just paid $AUS4,000 for a system and now I have to pay another $AUS45 to watch something in full screen?

      No, you definitely do not have to pay $45. Just play the video in iTunes, or mplayer, or VLC. Who told you that Quicktime was the only was to play videos?

  • Here is a corrected version of the editorial:

    Adam Anderson told News.com, 'It's basically a business decision for Microsoft. Like any other company, we have business priorities. Yeah you see because and customer satisfaction and software features are clearly not #1.

  • I'm looking forward to the possibility to use MPlayer + the Win32 codec pack on my MacBook.

    WMP for Mac couldn't play back the most recent WMV codec anyhow. Quite irritating.
  • This is great - WMP for Mac is abysmal - especially when attempting to play a clip as it's downloading - Quicktime has the most elegant way of doing this I've seen where the grey bar indicates how much of the clip has been downloaded while you are watching seamlessly unlike WMP's 'buffering....buffering....' crap that it does, (usually before it stops responding).

    I have not tested Flip4Mac yet but if it basically lets us play WMV and behaves just like Quicktime, I'm a happy man.

    I hope they stop support fo

  • Are you Sirius? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mntbighker ( 945406 )
    WMP9 is the only thing that will allow you to listen to Sirius radio streams. Flip4Mac actually prevents WMP plugin from working with Sirius. I wish Apple would make iTunes work with Sirius so I could listen through my Airport Express.

  • Safari crashes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:21AM (#14461799) Journal
    Just installed Flip4Mac from the Microsoft download page, and while it works, Safari now crashes if I switch tabs or navigate away from the page after playing a clip.

    I might try a reboot - can anyone remember how to reboot a PowerBook? It's been a while.
  • I just discovered Flip4Mac the other day and just installed it to try it out a day or two ago. Microsoft striking a deal to give it away for free is great. Now I can play WMV files in QuickTime, which is a much better player on the Mac anyway.

  • When is an upgrade not an upgrade? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:34AM (#14461832) Homepage Journal
    First off the player GUI isn't the important thing, it's the underlying architecture.

    MacOS pioneered a ubiquitous universal media layer with QT and making the MS codecs part of that is just plain shu-weet. Most real users aren't all that concerned about how pretty or not the default player is, the big concern is getting the material in and out of any/all applications.

    Now everything, from Pages to Word to whatever, will be able to embed, play, link almost every format.

    Yeah, almost. Nope, not talking Real (is anyone?), rather the latest codecs from MS. I'm told by my video geekin' buddies that Flip4Mac, nifty as it is, is last year's code and can't handle the latest 'n greatest WMP 10 codes from MS. Anyone know the truth on this, done any testing?

    However, more importantly, in spite of MS's promise at MacWorld last week of another 5 years of Mac Office (all of which is good profit) word is the black spot is on Mac projects and folks are being reassigned, contractors not being extended, the MacBU folks off in Sili Valley are finding their req's from the Redmond mothership are taking longer and loonggeerrrr to fill.

    If so then there really is a sea change and the gentleman's agreement between MS & Apple seems to be coming to an end. Sure MS is gonna keep the Office stuff, heck most of it started on the Mac, makes money, and is a check-off item on procurement sheets requiring cross-platform.

    But media, where Apple has traditionally been strong, where the iPod reigns, where his Steveness rules both a computer company and a production studio, where cross-platform for everyone has always been the rule, may be where the real break starts to happen. Apple has always been lazy about QT under Windows (heck QT Player still doesn't make use of Overlay, making it often a pain to work with) is MS now returning the favor and poisoning their own well?

    Will next year the response to "I can't get this to play on my Mac" be "Install Windows Vista on it"?

  • business decision (Score:4, Insightful)

    by penguin-collective ( 932038 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @03:41AM (#14461854)
    He misspoke; what he meant to say was:

    "It's basically a business decision for Microsoft," Anderson said. "Like any other company, we like to leverage our strength in the market in such a way as to keep competitors out of the market. Call in 'monopolistic practices' if you like, but as long as we are going to get away with it, we are going to continue to do it."


    Windows Media Player has been really important for the Mac because there are a lot of media out there that are WMF only.

    However, we can hope that this will accelerate the move to open formats.
  • I "switched" in August of '05 and one of the things I've missed in Japan is watching Comedy Central and Cartoon Network. I thought that I would be able to watch the clips on their respective sites using my iBook.

    Sadly no. WMP on Mac is a joke. It crashes or fails constantly. It simply did not work. So I stumbled across Flip4Mac before MS started distrbuting it and I thought my problems were all solved. Things seemed to begin loading...

    But nothing ever plays. Not on ComedyCentral, not on Cartoon Netwo
  • Like anyone cares that there is no more WMP on the Mac...

    I stopped using WMP a LONG time ago and switched to using VLC for my movie playback needs - Windows, Mac, Linux, *BSD, and BeOS... At least with VLC on an unsecured box I know what is in the file or stream I am trying to play, and hell, the view messages feature is one of the best damn tools ever included - I use it all the time to help my ignorant-of-such-things-as-codecs to figure out what codec they need to download and install.

    I don't think anyone
  • First the final death of ie for mac http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2005/12/ 19/2142 [arstechnica.com] and now this? Death of 3rd class software on an otherwise elegant system? It's like, Mac just shook off a few fleas!

  • flip4mac issues (Score:3, Informative)

    by Triv ( 181010 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @06:35AM (#14462307) Journal
    Flip4mac is nifty, but it's got some serious usability issues.

    1. if you right-click on a .wmv file, quicktime player doesn't pull up as a valid option to open the file.
    2. playback is fine, but navigating within the file is problematic - trying to skip to the middle of a file usually results in the 'counter keeps ticking, but the video and audio freezes' problem.
    3. opening files can (but doesn't always) take forever, and it has nothing to do with the size of the file.
    4. it's a good stopgap, but it still chokes on the occasional file - one in ten or so.

    Not saying it's not an interesting project, but it's not the holy grail either. I find that VLC is, if not as dependable (flip4mac opens files that VLC routinely chokes on) at least more flexible if it manages to open the file in the first place.

  • 3rd Party Filling the void? (Score:4, Informative)

    by jtshaw ( 398319 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @07:51AM (#14462513) Homepage
    I am the first to admit that I had no idea I could even get WMP for my PowerBook.
    However, I'm not sure there is a void that needs filling.

    MplayerOSX [sourceforge.net] has always worked great for playing anything on my Mac that Quicktime couldn't handle.

  • WMV exporting on Mac (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bushwahd ( 645943 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @08:22AM (#14462638)

    First, I agree with all above who have extolled the utter worthlessness of WMP (on either platform). I use this as an exemplar of evil UI design. What maroon decided that dragging the time cursor should NOT update the image in real time, as it does in QT Player? Who decided that hiding the config menu in some elaborately hokey frame was good design? And on and on... Piece 'o crap. Glad to see the back of it (though I only briefly ever used in on Mac and usually deleted it soon after). Still have to live with it on Windoze unless M$ caves completely and lets Flip4Mac do a QT codec for Windoze also. Ha!

    Anyway, I write to mention experiences with the 2 contenda's for outputting WMVs from Mac, which are PopWire Technology and Flip4Mac. I've used PopWire's $30 (only!) WMV9 Export Component for QuickTime (a plug-in to QT) for about a year with great satisfaction. As much as I hate to create WMV's for anyone, the job and benighted clients sometimes require them. I've found that WMV is the all around best format to give someone a movie to embed into Windoze PowerPoint presentations.

    The PopWire QT plug-in means that any and all QT apps (Final Cut, QT Pro, etc.) can directly output WMV as an exported file. Very handy. And, so far, no complaints: the quality is excellent as is the speed of conversion. I've used some of the (many) built-in presets, and diddled up a few of my own. The options dialog even lets you insert copyright and title and author metadata. Highly recommended.

    I discovered Flip4Mac about a month ago and dorked with the demos, then last week hit the Buy button for WMV Studio Pro. So far, I've had OK success. I first tried to export some pieces I had created with After Effects (Animation or in other cases 10-bit uncompressed BlackMagic codec), using the 2-pass VBR in WMV SP. Not good. Not good at all! Took a REALLY long time (dual 2Ghz G5) and looked absolutely awful. I was getting a little sweaty palmed about all those bucks I just fired off to these guys, plus the deadline looming...

    So I tried again with a 1-pass CBR preset, and while it took what seemed like a much longer time than PopWire would have, it did give a comparably respectable result. So I need to do some more tests to find out what works and what doesn't given different input material.

    I have had reasonable success viewing the odd WMV on the web using the Flip4Mac web QT plug-in that is installed as part of the free WMV Player (all this functionality is included in the higher end, pay-fer products like Studio Pro). However, I saw that someone else had trouble with the Comedy Channel movies. I did also: I don't care really, I was just looking for a sample WMV to try out the install of last night's 2.0.1 patch, but I don't have an answer for what CC does wrong that everyone else seems to do right. Maybe it is a streaming thing?

  • Fair enough (Score:3, Insightful)

    by localman ( 111171 ) on Friday January 13, 2006 @12:39PM (#14464887) Homepage
    WMP for mac is pretty weak, but it is the only way to play certain files.

    Quicktime is a great player -- but there's still several file formats it can't play by default. Mostly MS formats (like their various non-standard MPG4 versions). The plugins require all sorts of gymnastics to get them working on Quicktime. If MS gets someone to make a good, easy to install plugin for Quicktime, that covers all their WMP formats, that would be a good thing.

    Cheers.

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