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Microsoft to end Media Player for Mac

Written by Philip Roy

Friday, 13 January 2006

I’ve never been a great fan of Windows Media Player for the Mac. But when a lot of your work is multimedia based, you generally need to have it installed. However, with certain events that happened earlier this week, the news that Microsoft is to end development of their Windows media Player for the Mac is both expected and, I think, a sensible move.

For around four months now, I’ve been using a third-party plug-in to watch WMV files on my Mac using QuickTime and have been able to remove the Windows Media Player from my Mac. This plug-in was both updated and released free to all in the middle of this week.

Windows Media Player has always been "a version behind” on the Mac. It's never had the features of the PC version, but most of us haven't really wanted it to. However another feature that it has always failed to have is the inability to play the most recent version of WMV files produced on the PC. The Windows Media Player has always been behind....intentionally I believe on the part of Microsoft.

So, in the middle of this week, the plug-in I used was both updated and also released for free for all Mac users (it had previously cost $10 USD) and can be downloaded from here.

At the same time, Flip4Mac announced that their Windows Media Components for QuickTime were to be to be distributed by Microsoft.

Now even with Apple and Microsoft announcing an official long term agreement at Macworld, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know what it really meant (heck, we even predicted it in the NZMac.com Forum ). If Microsoft are going to distribute something that helps QuickTime play WMV files, why would we (or they) need the Windows Media Player on a Mac?

Sure enough, it is now being reported that the company is to halt development of the Windows Media Player...
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-6026715.html

This is a sensible move by Microsoft and shows they appreciate just where Windows Media fits into the Mac world. They have never tried to dominate the Media Player scene on the Mac and this new approach doesn't so much admit defeat as realise where they should be keeping their focus.

As a commercial user of the plug-in (don't worry, they gave me and everyone who had bought the plug-in a discount this week to another updated component) I'm really pleased to see that our media experience is going to more focused and integrated.

Good on you Microsoft!

PS. As an aside, there was/is actually a small glitch with the free plug-in which is causing some crashing, but it appears there might be an update just released at the Flip4Mac site as the player is now at version 2.0.1

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