I've been a long time Microsoft & Apple product user (since 1993, first Mac 1993). While i can understand the criticism against MS, i also recognize how easy MS makes it for us to access, process and view important information.

For example MeGUI runs only on MS Windows. No problem for me, or any other serious user, because MS Windows has a lot of compatible (!) productivity software like AviSynth or Virtual Dub. Why do you think we do not have AviSynth or MeGUI for Mac OS X? The answer is simple: MS Windows has a much broader market, and we as the Mac users profit from it, because we can run MS Office 2011 on our Macs, Windows XP and Windows 7 inside VMs or via Boot Camp and much more.

Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Connector 1.0 is not the kind of productivity software, we would expect from MS. Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Connector 1.0 is like a translator plugin within MS Office, it provides essential compatibility for those users, who cannot or do not want to use MS Windows.

@MS: Why not update WMP for Mac to the latest version of the WMP framework? Snow Leopard should have some interesting APIs, including hardware accelerated H.264 decoding. Code from that could be reused in your Silverlight for Mac plugin.

Btw, it is obvious i come from a audio/video corner, so i want to speak about my decoder recommendations:
- On Windows XP SP3 or newer try the CCCP to decode your video and audio files. With your custom configuration, it is almost flawless.
- On Mac OS X 10.5.x or newer, try Perian to decode your video and audio files.

I'm also a software developer. I find the availability of older APIs within Windows amazing. It makes it much easier to maintain your application code. Within Apples software APIs, no one can be sure that they exist in coming versions of Mac OS X, despite the fact that Mac OS X uses enhanced compilers and file system compression, which both are able to reduce the size of executable files or entire final .app packages.

Why is this not on the installation stick of the Late 2010 MBA?

It seems iOS is more important @Apple.

I use JDownloader for such tasks. No problems here with JD + QuickTime or VLC.

http://jdownloader.org/

The advanced settings are a joke, compared to MeGUI+x264 on the Windows side. And on top of that, a really useful documentation for the options of the Turbo.264 HD SE is nearly non-existent. The so called documentation (Turbo.264 HD Manual.pdf), which lists just the options from the GUI without further explanation is not very helpful. Elgato, it is not that difficult! All information is available for free from people who know what they are doing.

Users of Turbo.264 HD SE have to go to websites, like
http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/MeGUI/Video_Encoder_Configuration/x264
and Elgato calls this support. Every freeware author has more useful documention than Elgato.

MU wrote:
"Before you install this update, make sure that the Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.0/11.5.3/11.5.6 Update is installed on your computer (see Related Links)."

This is not necessary. The 10.6.0 updater is a combo updater, which includes all previous updates. You can find the full download information here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2284171

:-)