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Are there any other alternatives? (VideoLan? MplayerOSX? others...)

Actually MS now redistributes the Flip4Mac Quicktime plugin ( http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/flip4mac.mspx ) which used to be payware for free. It's pretty good too.
BUT! Here's the catch : it doesn't support DRM'ed files. It's no mystery then why they dropped official support then, Apple's one of the main competitors in the DRM content gig.

Edit:splelchzeck

Edited 2006-01-13 21:29

Yeah replying and then NOT answering the question, nice What I meant to say was that I've been using Flip4Mac for about half a year now on my mini and it's never crashed on me. Sometimes it doesn't play (presumably) DRM'ed content but on the whole its pretty good and faster than starting up Windows Media Player.

VLC is the undisputed king of players as far as I'm concerned, though I don't like the interface. Another up-and-coming one is Xineplayer ( http://xineplayer.berlios.de/ ) which uses the more familiar all in one interface.

And hey you never know, now that Apple is moving to intel we might be able to use the Windows dll's like people do on Linux !

Right, then why the MS Mediaplayer-less version of Windows was a big dud in Europe?. Seems to me everybody wants Windows Media Player.

No, not everybody wants MSWMP, but they just don’t know there are lots of players beside wmp:)

After all MS MediaPlayer is most hated player

RealPlayer haters might want to disagree. OSNews should do a survey .

The Windows version of MSN Messenger and Mediaplayer are actually some of Microsofts GOOD products, what disappoints many Mac aficiando's like myself, is the half-assed, half-baked crap that Microsoft pushes out as their 'pledge' to support the Mac platform.

MSN Messenger would be the PRIME example of this in action, for example, features that are supported in THIRD PARTY messengers (bringing them close to MSN 7 compatibility) that Microsofts Mac team can't be bothered with.

Maybe the solution to MSN Messenger is to release a plugin for iChat, and allow Apple to start shipping MSN capabilities with iChat out of the box - if Microsoft seems so incapable ot actually getting their act together.

AFAIK but dont hold me to this, VLC is not available on OS X, DivX is only available as a QT Plugin, theres only really MPlayerOS X as far as i'm aware, but ffmpeg for anything above WMV7/8 in my experience is a joke,

umm... VLC has been available on OS X for ever... and it does a better job of movie playback than QT.

VLC does not have a Safari plugin. This is most needed.

yeah, that is true.

MSFT is struggling and they are trying to focus on stuff they sell instead of giving away.

I doubt that i would be more apt to believe that microsfot would rather not contribute more then what they have already to the sucess of Mac OS X on the PC.

MSFT only makes money of Windows and Office-- MSN, IE, XBox etc are all failures. Cash-strapped govts are looking at OpenOffice. It took big bribery bucks recently for MSFT to prevent Massachusetts from Office to Open Office. Vista is looking pretty dull; still not UNIX; a hodge-podge of OSX like eye-candy and search features. I am serious MSFT is the KayPro of the 21st century.

BTW: AAPL beat Dell in Market Cap today! Yeah! Now if they can just do that based on Mac sales instead of based on iPod sales.....

BTW: AAPL beat Dell in Market Cap today! Yeah! Now if they can just do that based on Mac sales instead of based on iPod sales.....

No kidding, again one of the major factors in Mactels sucess is games. I hope game developers are more apt to port to Mactel now that PPC is gone.

It took big bribery bucks recently for MSFT to prevent Massachusetts from Office to Open Office.

What are you talking about? Mass. never said anything about switching to OpenOffice.org, they were switching to OpenDocument format, and they are still going to do that.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060106131844449

Check the date on that article if you bother reading it.

"BTW: AAPL beat Dell in Market Cap today! Yeah! Now if they can just do that based on Mac sales instead of based on iPod sales....."

It is true, and its a great comeback, but the story is a bit more complicated than it may seem, if you look at the 2005 financials.

Apple's revenues were 14 billion, net income 1.3

Dell revenues were 54, net income 3.

Apple is on a P/E ratio of 46 at the moment.

Apples computer business is said (Forbes) to be 45% of sales. Say roughly 7 billion. So in computers, it is around 15% the size of Dell.

Don't get too excited about the total market cap, which is just like the very low cap a couple of years ago, more a matter of the emotions of hedge fund operators than anything fundamental. But do notice that Apple is not going to get to be the size of Dell in computing any time soon with current strategies. Nor is it terribly likely to maintain a P/E ratio in the 40s for any considerable time. Nor is it likely to maintain its current margins.

People get so emotional about this stuff, so I want to be clear: it is not knocking Apple. It is just saying, its a good story, but it is not quite as good as it many seem before you look closely, and there are one or two bumps coming up. Not disasters, but bumps. If you are thinking of buying in to the story, be careful. As Warren Buffet said, the time to be greedy is when others are fearful. The time to be fearful is when no-one else is.

Realplayer for Mac is actually halfway decent. It's the Windows version that's evil.

Besides, the current WMP9 for Mac works fine on my iBook G4; I haven't experienced any of the trouble mentioned in some of the other posts.

QT is not that bad of a player on OS X... and VLC is not unstable either (in fact, it has been rock solid for me)

It doesnt refuse to let WMP9 play it you just highlight the file, go to "file" menu and select "open with" or if you have a 2 buttoned mouse just right click the file and select "open with"

Thats what I'm talking about. OSX won't let it do that. The only files it will allow WMP to try and open are WMV, and ASFs.