Editing Windows Media Player (section)

===Mac OS X===
Version 9 was the final version of Windows Media Player to be released for [[Mac OS X]] before development was canceled by Microsoft. It was developed by the Windows Media team at Microsoft instead of the [[Macintosh Business Unit]] and released in 2003. On release the application lacked many basic features that were found in other media players such as Apple's [[iTunes]] and [[QuickTime]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Wilson |first=Mark |date=2007-04-17 |title=Where are the WVP2 codecs for QuickTime on a Mac? |url=https://www.markwilson.co.uk/blog/2007/04/where-are-the-wvp2-codecs-for-quicktime-on-a-mac.htm |access-date=2025-03-05 |website=markwilson.it |language=en-GB}}</ref> It also lacked support for many media formats that version 9 of the Windows counterpart supported on release 10 months earlier.

The Mac version supported only [[Windows Media]] encoded media (up to version 9) enclosed in the [[Advanced Systems Format|ASF]] format, lacking support for all other formats such as [[MP4]], [[Moving Picture Experts Group|MPEG]], and Microsoft's own [[Audio Video Interleave|AVI]] format. On the user interface front, it did not prevent [[screensaver]]s from running during playback, it did not support file drag-and-drop, nor did it support playlists. While Windows Media Player 9 had added support for some files that use the [[Windows Media Video|WMV9]] codec (also known as the WMV3 codec by the [[FourCC]]), in other aspects it was seen as having degraded in features from previous versions.

On January 12, 2006, Microsoft announced it had ceased development of Windows Media Player for Mac. Microsoft now distributes a third-party [[Plug-in (computing)|plugin]] called WMV Player (produced and maintained by [[Flip4Mac]]) which allows some forms of [[Windows Media]] to be played within [[Apple Computer|Apple's]] [[QuickTime]] Player and other QuickTime-aware applications.<ref>{{cite news | url=http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/flip4mac.mspx | title=Windows Media Components for QuickTime | publisher=[[Microsoft]] | access-date=March 30, 2007|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060112005045/http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/flip4mac.mspx|archive-date=January 12, 2006}}</ref>