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: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.

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.