Microsoft Ends Windows Media Player on the Mac

alphasubzero949 writes "According to News.com, Microsoft has had no plans to update or improve Windows Media Player and has instead thrown its weight behind a third party plugin to fill the void. Adam Anderson, Microsoft public relations manager, told News.com, 'It's basically a business decision for Microsoft. Like any other company, we have business priorities. Our focus really is in delivering the best experience to Windows customers.'"

Comments

Symbiotic relationship?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

The whole relationship between Apple and Microsoft has been weird to me. I figure its a symbiotic relationship like a dead tree with a fungus. Why Microsoft was supporting a competitor at all is up for discussion. Seeing as how WMP wasn't really a money maker in the first place, it makes sense that they drop development.

Re:Symbiotic relationship?

[anticypher]

Doesn't anyone remember when Apple was doing really badly at the end of 1997, when Steve Jobs came back as "not the CEO, just a consultant"? Apple was doing very poorly because they, like every other OS manufacturer at the time, were locked out of every distribution channel by M$'s aggressive (and later, ruled illegal) control of >95% of the retail market place.

The MacWorld of 1998 had Jobs introducing Gates on stage, and they announced that M$ would make a US$150 million investment in Apple, buying US$75M of non-voting stock at twice the price (IIRC, AAPL was at $11/share, M$ paid $22/share). The deal also included a patent portfolio swap, where each has unlimited access to the other's patents royalty free. M$ agreed to support a fully functional version of office on the mac for at least 10 years. Apple agreed to drop its support of the anti-trust case. There were a bunch of other details in the deal which made the business rather unsavory, but both companies desperately needed each other at that moment in time.

Since then, it was obvious who really got the better end of that deal. Apple has unlimited access to every patent M$ owns or licenses from other companies. Apple can out-innovate M$ at every step, and never has to worry about a patent challenge in the courts. Jobs learned his lessons when dealing with Gates, and certainly made sure Apple couldn't be too screwed over by M$ later on. Now, with Apple rising on a whole raft of good, trendy, high-margin products and a completely independant distribution chain, and M$ floundering in a sea of troubles, it looks like Jobs is getting his revenge.

the AC

Re:Symbiotic relationship?

[jimbolaya]

Mac users would still prefer iTMS due to it's Ease of use and Integration.

Apparently, so would most Windows users.

Re:They shoot themselves in the foot

[toddbu]

Actually, it's a bad decision for Microsoft.

There's another reason as well. If Microsoft's actions limit the number of people who can view the files, there will be more of a push by consumers to get web sites like CNN.com that use Windows Media exclusively to support more formats. I think that Microsoft's hope is that this will keep people from migrating away from Windows, but I think it will have the opposite effect.

When is an upgrade not an upgrade?

[maggard]

First off the player GUI isn't the important thing, it's the underlying architecture.

MacOS pioneered a ubiquitous universal media layer with QT and making the MS codecs part of that is just plain shu-weet. Most real users aren't all that concerned about how pretty or not the default player is, the big concern is getting the material in and out of any/all applications.

Now everything, from Pages to Word to whatever, will be able to embed, play, link almost every format.

Yeah, almost. Nope, not talking Real (is anyone?), rather the latest codecs from MS. I'm told by my video geekin' buddies that Flip4Mac, nifty as it is, is last year's code and can't handle the latest 'n greatest WMP 10 codes from MS. Anyone know the truth on this, done any testing?

However, more importantly, in spite of MS's promise at MacWorld last week of another 5 years of Mac Office (all of which is good profit) word is the black spot is on Mac projects and folks are being reassigned, contractors not being extended, the MacBU folks off in Sili Valley are finding their req's from the Redmond mothership are taking longer and loonggeerrrr to fill.

If so then there really is a sea change and the gentleman's agreement between MS & Apple seems to be coming to an end. Sure MS is gonna keep the Office stuff, heck most of it started on the Mac, makes money, and is a check-off item on procurement sheets requiring cross-platform.

But media, where Apple has traditionally been strong, where the iPod reigns, where his Steveness rules both a computer company and a production studio, where cross-platform for everyone has always been the rule, may be where the real break starts to happen. Apple has always been lazy about QT under Windows (heck QT Player still doesn't make use of Overlay, making it often a pain to work with) is MS now returning the favor and poisoning their own well?

Will next year the response to "I can't get this to play on my Mac" be "Install Windows Vista on it"?

business decision

[penguin-collective]

He misspoke; what he meant to say was:

"It's basically a business decision for Microsoft," Anderson said. "Like any other company, we like to leverage our strength in the market in such a way as to keep competitors out of the market. Call in 'monopolistic practices' if you like, but as long as we are going to get away with it, we are going to continue to do it."

Windows Media Player has been really important for the Mac because there are a lot of media out there that are WMF only.

However, we can hope that this will accelerate the move to open formats.

That's a feature, not a bug

[commodoresloat]

However.. the free plugin does not enable a Mac user to encode WMV. You'll have to pay for that.

"Decode" is the only thing anyone in their right mind should be doing with WMV.

Re:It's not Office.....yet

[Octorian]

I hope Office for Mac is continued for as long as possible. Why? For some people, who are lucky enough to be able to use Macs as "work computers", it is really the *only* reason we are able to do so. The need to have "really good and mostly seemless" compatability with Windows MS Office users is practically a requirement, and no, OpenOffice does NOT fit the bill. Some day I hope to have a job where I don't have to care about office suites at all (MS Office or OpenOffice), but those days are not hear yet.

Basically, the Mac provides something that Linux currently cannot provide. It is a platform that software vendors recognize enough to willingly support as an end-user platform. Also, in the laptop world, it has 100% compatability and support with *all* the hardware features of the laptops on which it runs.

Even if I did eventually switch to a PC laptop, and tried to run Linux on it, I'd pretty much have to pay for something like CrossOver Office just to be able to use the darn thing.

If only MS (and everyone else) would realize that MS Office is an even more difficult monopoly on the buisness world than Windows itself... If somehow pigs flew and MS decided to make MS Office for Linux, two things would happen: 1. We'd all flame it while praising OpenOffice. 2. Those of us trying to use Linux as a work desktop would actually try to buy it in droves.

Re:They shoot themselves in the foot

[Pecisk]

For Windows Media usage, it is clearly because Windows Media Player is aviable on every Windows box, period. It is cleary because of that. Also server support is very important - Windows Media Services offerings are quite effective (disclaimer: I love Ogg Vorbis/Theora and what Fluendo try to do) and Real Server was quite only solution for any streaming.

Streaming is technically very demanding from server software, so actually it is quite understandable that CNN or BBC uses Real and Windows Media to stream - because these formats are which have popular and usable players and their server parts.

Re:Competition regulations?

[WiggyWack]

If Apple's move to Intel has the effect of increasing Apple's market share expect Microsoft to withdraw Microsoft Office.

Why? Microsoft makes money on Office for Mac.

Everyone who buys a Mac is a lost sale of Windows for Microsoft. But Microsoft still has a chance to make a profit by selling Office to that Mac user. Why would they want to lose a Windows sale AND an Office sale? The profit to Microsoft for a Mac user buying Office retail is probably greater than the profit from an OEM copy of Windows anyway.

Corrections...

[MacDork]

The MacWorld of 1998 had Jobs introducing Gates on stage, and they announced that M$ would make a US$150 million investment in Apple, buying US$75M of non-voting stock at twice the price (IIRC, AAPL was at $11/share, M$ paid $22/share). The deal also included a patent portfolio swap, where each has unlimited access to the other's patents royalty free. M$ agreed to support a fully functional version of office on the mac for at least 10 years. Apple agreed to drop its support of the anti-trust case. There were a bunch of other details in the deal which made the business rather unsavory, but both companies desperately needed each other at that moment in time.

• August, 1997. Look at the old stock charts. See that spike? That day.
• The entire deal was for five years.
• Apple agreed to settle its lawsuit with Microsoft for an undisclosed sum of money separate from the $150 million dollar investment.

The only concession Apple really made for Microsoft was to bundle IE as the default browser on the Mac for 5 years. Later in the DOJ's anti-trust case, Apple's Avi Tevanian testified that Microsoft had tried to get Apple to step out of the QuickTime for Windows business and focus only on video editing and playback on the Macintosh. Apple refused. Google for "quicktime knife the baby" for details.

it looks like Jobs is getting his revenge.

I think the only revenge Jobs ever wanted was for being kicked out of his own company. Not so much revenge even, it's more like vindication. He came back and led Apple out of the woods and back to greatness. The Mac/PC holy war was a lot like the Apple II/Mac holy war. Jobs invented it to serve his own purposes. He had no real emotional investment in it himself. That was made quite clear through his actions 8 1/2 years ago. I continued to allow folks like John Dvorak over at PC mag to goad me for a while after, but when the press no longer tagged Apple with the beleaguered moniker, I got over the whole thing myself. A computer is a tool. I prefer a Mac, but I can see where Windows PCs and various *nixes fit into the equation.

Bill Gates really doesn't figure into the picture here. He's always wanted to be the 'rockstar' that Jobs is, but no matter how much money he's made, he's never achieved that in his own mind. Jobs isn't concerned with Gates or money. After $100,000,000 he had more money than he could ever spend... to paraphrase Jobs. Jobs wants Apple to succeed out of personal pride. Beginning January 1, 1998 APPL has been a stock market superstar. Nobody can touch that track record. Given that they are still at 3% marketshare in their core market, they really have nowhere to go but up. Intel based Macs may very well be what turns the tables on Dell/HP/Lenovo dominance. And it won't have a thing to do with getting revenge on Gates. The technology deal with Microsoft announced at this MacWorld probably has a lot to do with that. Jobs wants Gates to support Windows on Apple hardware. Not as a replacement for OS X, but as a compliment to it. That way he can stand in front of a crowd at the next Macworld and say, "It slices, it dices, it runs Windows and Mac!" Jobs' "revenge" has nothing to do with Gates and everything to do with Jobs being escorted away from Apple campus in 1985. It's personal.

But that's just MHO :-)