Microsoft to abandon Mac player?

They did - no loss - it SUCKED big time. I actively avoid wmv files because of this (their quality blows next to .mpg in quicktime as well. This, of course, means that I don't watch channel 9. Publish in industry standard mpg and I'll watch. Otherwise, you're talking to a wall.

As for the replacement Flip4Mac plugins to view wmv content - they suck too. Now, immediately after encountering MS proprietary content, Safari crashes (it never crashed like that before).

Face it, MS doesn't get media. Please exit the market at once for the benefit of the users. Ditto the browser. Thanks.

Innocent: sounds like we're taking your advice.

Now we've gotta decide what to do on Channel 9. I see MPG4 in our future!

Offering a plug-in like Flip4Mac is a good solution, even if it may have some bugs as stated above. This allows for us Mac users to view all (ok most) of our video content in Quicktime which is definitely a better player on the Mac.

I really don't like having multiple pieces of software that do the same thing. Which is why I chose a multi-protocol IM client like Adium (www.adiumx.com) over iChat for text based chat.

I think this is a step in the right direction.

The open OS X version of MPlayer seems to play more WMV and WMA files than the latest WMP9 for OS X, but it was not nearly as fully featured or usefull.

A WMP written in OS X's native development environment would be very well accepted. Real Mac users can spot a poorly ported App from a mile away.

Hint: Google's Earth for Mac is also a Windows port, not native and looks just as ugly as WMP9.

We can't expect support from the big guy's, but some day Mac users will eherit the earth and those who wrote native apps will be given the best fate in the newly named: Appletopia.

Flash video is cross-platform by design. Microsoft should consider direct WMV->Flash streaming without reencoding. Assuming they care about their customers.

I can attest to the fact that the Flip4Mac plugin is buggy, plenty buggy, but, and this is a huge but .... the content that it does play is so freaking good and so rich and smooth that it puts Microsoft to shame.

Why Microsoft and the Mac business unit can not make a Windows Media Player that plays back content as smoothly and rich as Flip4Mac does is beyond me.

I will support Flip4Mac and I look forward to more improvements in their player. Flip4Mac's clear superiority over Microsoft's "Windows Media Player" is yet another reason why I no longer use Microsoft products.

It's a market force thing.

WMP for Mac was, simply, awful....IN THE EYES OF MAC USERS.
It didn't allow them to access Windows DRM, it failed more often than not when connecting to online content (even without DRM) and it was less featured, more buggy and uglier than the Windows version. I reckon the team was under-resourced, under-motivated and for a long time, under a big axe. IIRC it wasn't part of the Mac Business Unit which does get a lot of (grudging) respect from the Mac loons out there.

I think it's a mistake to exit it, but MS has a habit of exiting markets where they just don't seem to be gaining traction. It was nice of them to license the Flip4Mac plug-ins but it's crashed Quicktime, Safari and Finder in a matter of hours....

Let's see what tomorrow brings. Looking forward to your report.

Quicktime crashes on the PC all the time. Microsoft is far, far, far from perfect, but they don't have a monopoly on buggy media players. On the PC, Quicktime is the unstable one and WMP is stable. Exiting the mac market makes sense, if true.

Anonyma:

There are many applications that crash on a Windows system.

Too many.

I blame the platform, not the applications.

:-)

Scoble, it'd be great if you could get a good answer to this.

I don't understand how this can be a good move for Microsoft. Enough content creation happens on the Mac for it to be platform worth supporting.

I've been moaning about WMP OSX for a long time, and I am glad that Microsoft took an alternative approach.

It must make more sense for them to licence flip than to fix the mess that was WMP, and watching WMV using just another codec in QT is a great bonus, even with the bugs - makes C9 more useful to me at least.

Thanks Microsoft, proves that not everything you do it wrong :)

People, this has nothing to do with the quality of WMP on OSX, which, I think even the people responsible for it at the company would attest, sucks.

It has everything to do with DRM. Flip4Mac is NOT a long term DRM solution. Has MSFT pledged to bring their DRM and client-side scripting/interactivity capabilities to OSX via Flip4Mac? Of course not.

It's, first and foremost, MSFT denying its own customers who provide digital content the ability to offer xplatform distribution. It's a way to lock them into a Windows-only solution. It's an unabashed salvo against Apple's FairPlay. Pure and simple.

So, instead of giving mac users access to the paid content at the Windows based music store, they stop the access to the free content! And they call the iTunes Music store closed! This is all part of Microsoft plan of forcing us to use Windows to hear music! Lucky for us is not working so far... Open up guys!!!

I just don't think MS is interested in putting any effort to making a stable version of WMP for the Mac,it dosen't seem to tie in with their long term plans for Vista.
I use itunes for my Media files, and while it does seem to be slow(I don't think apple minds this) it still is much simpler to use than WMP. on my Pc WMP is very fast, but not very well organized.

"It’s, first and foremost, MSFT denying its own customers who provide digital content the ability to offer xplatform distribution. It’s a way to lock them into a Windows-only solution. It’s an unabashed salvo against Apple’s FairPlay. Pure and simple."

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Which is kind of absurd, considering FairPlay is cross-platform. It's kind of ironic that Microsoft is going to such great lengths to prove that it's an open platform with Office 12's new format, yet it's pulling an egregious lock-in move with digital media.

I'm a huge fan of Office on OSX - on the whole, it's damn nice and the MacBU has my gratitude. Virtual PC is also essential for me. Like every other software company ever, Microsoft makes some great software and ... some not so great software. Unlike Office and other Microsoft apps on OSX (save IE), WMP was stillborn - craptastic interface, slow, buggy and feature-incomplete. It drives me nuts that I can watch EVERY OTHER PIECE OF MEDIA ON THE INTERNET save WMV in my browser and that my only other option is to pay for a buggy plug-in.

This is sacrificing users for a market share ploy. Sad, but what can you do? Open source developers can create something like VLC on 20 different platforms for free, but Microsoft can't get a working client on the Mac in 5 years? Hmph.

"So, instead of giving mac users access to the paid content at the Windows based music store, they stop the access to the free content! And they call the iTunes Music store closed!"

Hahahaha. WMP is what I've always used when people whine, "Waaah. Why can't my iPod play WMA! Why doesn't iTunes Music Store open up to others?"

This is why. I can't get a Windows media file to play worth a damn on my Mac. Give Microsoft even a foothold into that market and watch Mac support wither away. Sigh.

You know, it's really nothing against Microsoft. They're not running a charity and exclusivity sells copies of Windows. Market giants, by nature, dictate certain things. I just wish they'd stop stepping all over my little Apple village.

Mac users have a serious problem that will definitely not be solved if Microsoft stops WMP development : DRM
Mac users cant have access to all the existing Microsoft DRM based services like downloading music and video on demand.
In France the major TV and cable operators are offering VOD services. Mac users just cant access those services.
By not supporting DRM on Macintosh platform, Microsoft puts high pressure on Macintosh users.

we’ve gotta decide what to do on Channel 9. I see MPG4 in our future!

Robert, good luck. I think it will be a cold day in H3ll before your boss lets you distribute content in a non-Microsoft proprietary format. Your employer is in the business of cramming Windows down the public's throat.

Post 4 re: MPlayer

I used to be happy running WMP files in mplayer, but lately (maybe it is the WMP10 codecs or whatever), video is missing, or audio plays back at chipmunk speed.

William Strathearn:

"Real Mac users can spot a poorly ported App from a mile away."

That's funny - as primarily a Windows user, that's just how I feel about the sluggish non-standards-conforming behemoth that is iTunes for Windows :-)

> “Real Mac users can spot a poorly ported App from a mile away.”

>> "That’s funny - as primarily a Windows user, that’s just how I feel about the sluggish non-standards-conforming behemoth that is iTunes for Windows"

Neither company can claim that their players are particularly well-optimized, but at least iTunes on Windows retains full functionality and is pretty much the same user experience on Windows and MacOS.

WMP on OSX? Total and utter abortion, missing features, completely foreign interface, etc. Neither cross-platform player is great, but only WMP on OSX is TERRIBLE.

"“So, instead of giving mac users access to the paid content at the Windows based music store, they stop the access to the free content! And they call the iTunes Music store closed!”"

And then they wonder why Apple customers don't complain when Apple comes out with all these proprietary lock-in solutions like ITMS.

BECAUSE IF APPLE DOESN'T TAKE CARE OF THEIR CUSTOMERS NO ONE ELSE WILL!. All the big media companies are contractually obligated to suck at the teat of Microsoft and Microsoft doesn't care

I've purchased about 15 Windows based DRM music files from WalMart and Napster. Can't play them natively on my Mac so I have to burn them to CD and import them. Tell me Microsoft, how is that supporting your customers?
I can't go to Movielink and download any movies or shows because WMP on OS X doesn't support the DRM.

Once again, Apple "Gets it" and Microsoft doesn't. I can buy any content at ITMS and play it on either my Windows or OS X box. Heck, I don't even have to copy the file to my OS X box. I can just connect to my shared music and play it. Can't do that with WMP on Windows can I?

That's why ITMS gets my money and Walmart/Napster/Yahoo don't.

PS. Did you ever think you'd see people clamoring for DRM on their computer?

Getting Channel9 on MPEG-4 would be a great idea! That way, everyone could play it almost anywhere they wanted without too much pain, which is far from the case now.

According to Paul Thurrott:

Microsoft Drops WMP for Mac OS X, Adds a Keyboard

After the Apple/Microsoft love fest at Macworld, two unexpected events revealed that maybe relations between the companies aren't as rosy as they'd like us to believe. First, Microsoft dropped its Windows Media Player for Mac software, and is now pushing customers to download a third party plug-in that supports Windows Media audio and video formats in Apple's QuickTime Player. Apparently, the issue is Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM)-protected audio and video files; Apple wouldn't provide the technical details Microsoft needed to support the formats on OS X, so Microsoft just gave up.

If you're taking suggestions, I'd like to chime in: MP4 is cool, but I think Flash video would be the most seamless solution. I love how Google Video, for example, works effortlessly on every platform I use it on: Windows, Mac and Linux.

Yeah, Flash is the best solution when it comes to integrating video into a web page. Works perfectly on any platform and any browser.

I've never used Flip4Mac, but if it means that I can view Windows Media files in QuickTime without any issues then that means I need one less player on my Mac. Which is good for novice users since it's less confusing.

Right now, I have VLC, QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player all installed on my Mac, with each playing a different subset of media formats. It would be nice if I could just have one.

(Incidently I have 3 of those on Windows too, RealPlayer being the exception since I use Real Alternative instead).

You DRM people are crazy. I refuse to purchase products that use DRM that isn't trivially crackable. Avoid DRM - don't scream that you want it.

We're lucky to have a media framework like QuickTime at all since M$ once put pressure on Apple to "knife the baby" (kill quicktime). Yet another example of how M$ is anti-consumer.

Quicktime plugins is the right way to support media formats on the mac because then the formats are usable in all apps. So maybe this is M$ waking up and realizing that the baby is now a strapping young warrior.

I'm a Mac user but I use WMP all the time. I love watching videos online and I'd say 50% of them are WMV's. The player doesn't really suck it's just simple, but if anything I'd say Microsoft could win some hearts by improving it.

I used to use The Microsoft Media Player, but with their decision of send us (Mac users) the Flip4Mac plug-in, it is nice to have just one player for all my video collection.

This kind of decisions are quite difficult to understand, because Roos was on the stage tell us that the MacBU was going for another 5 years, and then they cut one application, you didn't realize if Microsoft is focusing just on Office (Office Pro Includes Virtual PC and any version on Office includes Messenger)

Supporting Windows Media via a QuickTime plug-in is a much better state of affairs. The Mac version of WMP is horrible.

But the real question is if it will be possible to provide the DRM and "Plays for Sure" functionality.

You wouldn't feel so badly about it if you ever had to actually use WMP for Mac. I'm sorry, it's just not a good piece of software, nowhere near the quality of WMP for Windows. Flip4Mac with Quicktime is pretty much better in every concievable way. Now that it's free for decoding, there aren't many compelling reasons to use WMP, and probably not many compelling reasons for MS to continue developing it.

"Flip4Mac with Quicktime is pretty much better in every concievable way."

Except where it counts the most: DRM.
If you can't open the file because of DRM, it doesn't matter how much "better" the player might be, does it now?

Anona: You didn't have access to WM DRM in the previous state of affairs, so a better playback experience for in-the-clear content is still a better experience.

I'll say it again: Flip4Mac with Quicktime is pretty much better in every concievable way than WMP for Mac. Neither of them have ever been able to play DRM content, so that's a canard.

"You didn’t have access to WM DRM in the previous state of affairs"

That's NOT factually true.

Jose, I learned that this app actually wasn't part of MacBU. It was part of the Windows Media team.

ever get them to start blogging?

WMP 9 for MacOS X had support for DRM up to version 1.3. It's not much, bu it's better than nothing. Of course, most site use at least DRM 7 nowadays but still.
Flip4Mac simply does not support DRM...

Maybe with Google hiring many Mac developers they'll pick up Microsoft's slack in the media player arena. Oh no wait, it's WMF files right? Oh, they won't care either. Stick with H264 format. Come on Channel 9, when are you gonna give it to us? :)

In correction to my previous statement, DRM v2 has never existed for the Mac platform. That's the DRM that powers all the subscription services like Napster and Yahoo; it's also the DRM powering all current pay-for-download services that are PlaysForSure compliant. As well as the previously cited Movielink (and CinemaNow). That I know of, no new DRM implementations are using the old stuff because the new stuff is better in a number of ways.

Whether MS drops support for Windows Media Player v9 for Mac in the not too distant future, it is still available for now and probably will be in the timeframe that any of the supported formats are still relevant.

Jose, I learned that this app actually wasn’t part of MacBU. It was part of the Windows Media team.

That's somehow news to you? Oy Vey, that's not surprising. The WM team has always been willing to let the Mac BU catch hell for their substandard work. What I would hope is they work with the Flip4Mac people to get more current WM support.

Yes, I know, that's never going to happen. BallmerGates wants you to have to be on Windows to have anything but a craptacular WM experience. I'd say it will happen at the same time as they put Office on Linux. Same day even, i'll call it:

The Fifth of Never.

Flip4Mac is a great step forward. The new QT 7.0.4 created a conflict that caused Safari to crash, but that was identified in the first day and a new version of F4M made available immediately.

Other bugs, for the most part, aren't bugs. I think people confuse compatibility with certain web links not working as bugs, when in fact there are many different media protocols, formats and nertwork variances which will take some time to accomodate on the F4M side.

DRM? Compatibility IS coming. Every manufacturer of software has a feature request list. F4M is no different, and it will add the most desired features.

The latest version of Flip4Mac still crashes Safari. All you have to do is hit the back button on the browser and you get an immediate crash. This is consistently reproducible. I'm unimpressed with Flip4Mac's quality control. Didn't they test it at all?

>The latest version of Flip4Mac still crashes Safari

Unfortunately, version 1.0.x was pretty much the same. I experienced numerous crashes and other glitches with it :-\

The 2.0.1 v Flip4Mac has not crashed on me yet, seems lik ethey have solved the problem. Some online content does still not stream...

No crashing of Safari with my 3 Macs and Flip4Mac. If you can reproduce a problem, send the details to support@flip4mac.com. Personally, I love the fact that Telestream is so approachable with issues.