***STAY AWAY***

They still keep this available for a simple reason: To keep Apple OS X installed Macs UNSTABLE if owners are tricked to install it.

This is a Carbon monster which can't even work fine on PowerPC Macs, I can't begin to imagine what would it do to Intel Macs especially after Leopard/ Snow Leopard release.
Do not install, it won't play any modern wmv file and wmv streaming is in fact depreciated even on MS puppet sites. Install flip4mac quicktime components but be careful, they slip silverlight to it.

Also you need to hunt its plugin files in /Library/Internet Plugins and move them to trash, just dragging application to trash won't fix a thing. Every single legitimate plugin in /Internet Plugins will be loaded by every browser which runs on your OS X. It may even force Safari&Others to "Rosetta" mode which you end up running a emulated browser right on your mac.

Oh BTW, this is the real face of Microsoft for you.

Does anyone know how to view CNBC videos on a powerbook? I downloaded Flip4Mac (again). I already have the required version of WMP. Neither seem to activate/work when I click on a video on CNBC.

davidminehart@yahoo.com

hehehe...
worse and worse in every "update"...
a typical MS application!

WMP (or 'wimp') hasn't been updated in years, and is terrible anyway. It lacks a standard interface, and can't open over half of the windows media files out there. I'd use QuickTime any day.

After a two year hiatus, Microsoft's 'Windows Media Player [for Mac users]' is...well still on hiatus and threatening coma. It is rather unfortunate for 'AppleMacIntosh' (pronounced as one word), but fully understandable since WMP (pronounced wimp) has been in need of an organ transplant since it's birth.

WMP (remember this is theoretically a separate application from windows because making a product with a similar name for the mac proves that fact) could be eloquently described as a full featured rich media abstraction layer and user interface with complete platform independence...if it was Apple's QuickTime. It's not.

The WMP XPerience on a windows machine is extremely different than that on a Mac. This may be because the Application has not only been updated, but received an iron lung...namely a new version number 10, although I suspect Microsoft of misplacing a period somewhere in there.

If you want a hundred plugins and different ways to manage your media on a mac forget it. They aren't there for WMP, QuickTime 7.0.3 is mostly transparent and those jobs are taken by applications like iTunes. Want to author MS content, convert or manage some DRM? Not happening on a Mac.

Surely this could not have to do with the fairplay DRM crushing protected... uhm... guarded... uhm... music with harshly worded threats by microsoft attached.

WMP has become a political bone. On terminal life-support with no chance of recovery except in it's other life on the integrated windows platform. Any argument about the status as a political item and one of platform morals is only entertained by the extremely ignorant. Try it on the other side.

Even if MS COULD make a good version of WMP, there wouldn't be very many third party plug-ins in the Mac world because it is largely redundant.

In fact, the ONLY reason this application is needed is to play more recent windows media files. Most of this has to do with the file format being closed and proprietary.

Unfortunately, many websites use this player. Arguments about the 'quality' of the files seems to be based on authoring vis a QuickTime (we could go w/ h.264 aac mpeg-4) file is FAR superior to a WMP file, but takes longer to encode. Streaming of QuickTime files is also much handled much better and the software is free, even open-source. For example (since I didn't provide it a few sentences ago), scrubbing pausing and restarting many WMP files results in complete loss of sync and necessitates a restart of the stream or the file.

This exists because MS will not open up their format and also because of that VLC v QuickTime confusion about what should and shouldn't be a plugin thing.

You NEED to have this for a lot of your website experiences so install it and get used to it. If you have problems consider opening the site with something like Interarchy and downloading the File to your desktop as it will surely suck less than having to restream it.

Has anyone had any trouble with WMP and their "Intel" mac. I have a Macbook (Intel) and my window media player plug in for Safari just won't work. The player opens for other stuff...but Safari, nope!