Mircosoft HALTS DEVELOPMENT of Mac Version of Media Player
 

http://news.com.com/Music+stops+for+...6715&subj=news

The on-line media war has now begun in earnest.

Thank goodness they have stopped!

Windows Media Player for Mac was a *terrible* product! The new (and FREE!) 'Flip4Mac' software from Telestream is a bazillion times better at doing the exact same thing, and it's officially backed and distributed by Microsoft.

Consumers are better off with this new Microsoft decision! :-)

the flip4mac plugin is for quicktime, it's not a windows media player, so i question whether or not it'll equal the experience you get with the real windows media player in a real windows environment.

most especially, the embedded player functionality won't be the same, and i have to wonder if there is any real streaming capability with flip4mac... for instance, there are certain functions that the windows media player does when talking to a windows media server... has microsoft given those specs to the flip4mac people?

there have also been complaints that the flip4mac plugin does not work well in firefox, but then again, firefox is still buggy, even on the pc side of the fence.

Dan, are you a PC user? I only ask because it seems you don't understand just how much WMP for Mac sucked! LOL! Believe me, both the stand-alone player and the embedded player were truly terrible on the Mac, to the point that they were almost unusable. Half the time videos wouldn't play at all, and when they would, you couldn't pause/rewind/forward them. If you so much wiggled the window, the whole thing was liable to come crashing down.

The Flip4Mac plugin may not equal the 'real' stand-alone WMP in an actual Windows environment, but it's still a bazillion times better than what we Mac users have had to deal with!

:-)

DRM is stil the MAJOR issue ...
 

For me, I'm fine with seeing Windows Media Player (aka "WiMP") go for the Mac ... Flip4Mac is pretty much seemless and it allows me to do so much more with WMV files ... both in viewing and creating them from within my Mac.

The bigger question for me is what will happen (or, will anything ever happen) with the Digital Rights Management (DRM) issues that are still a major barrier for mac users trying to access WMV files.

Flip4Mac is great but it doesn't help me view a video on MTV's site. DRM rears up and kills the experience. Any ideas out there?

By, the way, Flip4Mac just released Version 2.

duane, i hear ya, and i'm very sympathetic towards people who are having those issues, lol.

all i'm saying is that flip4mac will not be perfect, either... right now i have a couple of sites that use embedded wmv, with none of the standard wmv controls visible to the user... flip4mac must be a nightmare there?

i'd like to point out that a lot of the wmv that you see on the 'net is set up to stream in a way that it's not always rewindable/ff-able like you are referring to, even on a pc... but yeah, it should be very stable, and not crash like that!

exactly my point, thank you.

now that apple is selling intel pc's, i have to wonder if microsoft is getting nervous about some possible competition on the pricing of the typical standard pc, vs. apple pc hardware? sales of winxp could suffer, if apple gets the pricing down... interesting.

Yes, I agree; Flip4Mac isn't going to be anywhere near as good as WMP on Windows. My only point was that F4M is much better than the craptastic WMP for Mac. LOL!

Honestly though, I seriously doubt Microsoft is too worried about Apple--and certainly not worried enough to stop developing certain software apps! The truth of the matter is that there isn't a justifiable (read: monetary) reason to continue to develop WMP for Mac, much like there wasn't a justifiable reason to keep developing IE.

But make no mistake, Microsoft's support of Apple isn't exactly lacking just because they're using intel-brand silicon instead of IBM-brand silicon. Remember, 2005 was the Microsoft MBU's *BEST* sales year ever, and they just formally committed to another 5-year contract to produce and develop Office for Mac....because it's something they *CAN* monetarily justify.

:-)

Not likely. The least expensive Mac today is the Mac Mini without a monitor for $400-500, and you can get a complete PC desktop or notebook for that price...or a basic desktop with monitor for about $300. Plus the likelihood of people buying Macs en masses is slim unless/until Macs can dual-boot Windows, at which point that's not necessarily a problem for Microsoft.

Sounds like this is simply an economic decision by Microsoft, and Mac users don't seem to mind.