Mac Forum / Applications / Media Player / January 2006

I guess we will soon find out whether Microsoft is going to continue
supporting the Mac platform, around the time Office Mac and Virtual PC aswell
as MSN Messenger come out as Universal Binaries for the X86 and PPC Macs.
Then we'll know whether Microsoft is going to continue supporting the Mac. If
they ever release another version, it better not be CRAP like 9. It should be
fully featured. It should have DRM 9 & 10. It should be just as secure as the
Windows version in the DRM arena. The main reason, none of these other music
service like Buy Music, Movielink, Napster, CinemaNow, Virgin Digital,
MusicMatch, Wal-Mart Digital Downloads, MSN Music just to name a few, can't
support the Mac is because the DRM is either too weak or not tested. If
they're gonna take the time to port an application they should port it
correctly and a fully as reasonably possible. iTunes Mac is the same as
iTunes Windows. Quicktime Mac is the same as Quicktime Windows, except for
Video capture. Other legal music services, with the exception of RealNetworks
(because they know DRM and can modify it 10 ways from Sunday) will never make
it to the Mac unless Microsoft's Mac division starts doing their job. WMV and
WMA with MS-DRM is the biggest DRM on the Internet. If Microsoft's Mac team
worked just about as hard as Apple's Windows Team we'd just about live in a
perfect world. There is no excuse Microsoft, in their right mind, can give
me. If MS never releases another version of WMP for the Mac, the only other
digital service on the platform will be ones based on Open MagicGate (Sony
Connect) and Helix DRM (Rhapsody, Real Music Store, Movielink and Starz
On-Demand). I'm not guarentee'ing those services for the Mac, but I'm saying
they are looking at some sort of support for the Mac in the future. I don't
know about you all, but just becasue I like Apple's OS, doesn't mean I like
their one music store and 3 iPod devices, the Video, Nano, Shuffle. WMP 9 is
a joke. The video is horrible, and it's their fault.  Know Why? Because I
have RealPlayer Mac and Quicktime 7 installed and it playsback just as good
as the Windows versions. This is on a G3 at 350MHZ & 16MB ATI Video. There's
no support for MS-DVR files, meaning I can't play my Media Center content
back over my network on my Mac. I swear Microsoft must have told the
developers to make a player that just barely works, good enough, to call it
WMP for OS X. I am assamed that a multi-million + dollar company would do
such a HALF-AS*** application. Apple is not that financially shining, yet
they produce both iTunes 6 Mac and iTunes 6 Windows that never change, except
in features, equally for both. Everything is in the same spot on both. I hope
someone within Microsoft's Mac division reads this post and takes this truth
to heart. If they want to have the biggest DRM in the world, and they still
want to support Office on X86 and PPC Macs, then they damn sure will want to
support the Mac with a decent version of Windows Media Player 10.