Microsoft Opts out of Future Ventures of WMP for Mac
Inspite of promising its support for Apple’s platform, Microsoft has opted out of future releases of Windows Media Player for Mac, and the company’s Web site now directs visitors to download a third-party application from developer Flip4Mac.
Flip4Mac designs Windows Media Components for QuickTime, an add-in for Apple’s multimedia player. According to a press release on its Web site, it appears as if the Windows Media division at Microsoft has given the company its full consent to become the standard-bearer for Mac-based Windows Media playback.
Apparently Microsoft has taken a different way to deal with the Mac platform in recent months. Key developers in the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft have been reassigned elsewhere, such as the MSN unit, and the company has plans to slowly exit the consumer side of the business.
This may seem to fly in the face of Microsoft’s recent announcement of support for the Macintosh platform for the next five years through Office, but the company’s work is now focused solely on business applications.
Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox said, “If there is a MacBU scaleback, it adds new perspective to yesterday’s Microsoft Mac commitment. Soon, Office and Messenger may be the only Mac products offered by Microsoft, because of their appeal to bigger businesses,” He continued, “A consumer exit could mean the end of the low-cost Student & Teacher Edition, too, particularly with Apple offering iWork.”
In is quite vague if Telestream will try to bring Windows Media technologies on the Mac up to date and include support for WMP 10 codecs, or the “Janus” digital rights management framework.
Reports also surfaced on Wednesday that Flip4Mac’s application was unstable with the latest version of QuickTime, version 7.0.4. Crashes of QuickTime and Safari were reported on numerous Web sites. The company told users that it is working on a fix for the issue and hopes to have it
released by Thursday.
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