Windows Media Player is Microsoft's media player for Mac OS platform.
This player was Microsoft's try to get some of Quick Time's market share on the Mac OS. Since the player doesn't give you the same functionality as the original product, this was rather a failure in gaining some attention. Microsoft ceased the support and the last released version is the 9th.
The nice thing about this player is the native support for Windows Media formats and the fact that you can play the movies in full-screen mode without buying any kind of upgrade as Quick Time requires. As an alternative, there is
Flip4Mac codec pack which enables this kind of support on the Macintosh platform.
What kind of solution you prefer depends on you. Windows Media Player lacks the support for media file formats such as MP3, so the audio support is not that brilliant. Perhaps Microsoft was blinded by their own pride when creating this product since there isn't any support for World's most popular audio codecs, or maybe they thought Mac users should use only WMA.
The quality of the playback was quite good and the use of resources was decent. The startup speed is far beyond Quick Time's and it won't show you annoying banners and unwanted publicity.
The interface of this program is a minimal one for a decent media player. You can find the usual control buttons, but it lacks the support for Drag-and-Drop, so you can't drag a media file onto its interface in order to start playing it. In this case, the keyboard is your powerful ally.
Pluses: it has native support for Windows Media file formats, it is a fast player with no adds, it can play by default your videos in the full-screen mode.
Drawbacks / flaws: the audio codecs support is thin and I couldn't play any audio file with it, so it's just a video player rather than a media player.
In conclusion: if you are curios enough it's worth trying it, at least in order to see if Microsoft manage to finally release a good product for a competitor's software platform.
version reviewed: 9
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