Replies

You said — “Dittos on Flip4Mac. Works great. And I like the price! It’s from Microsoft, too, believe it or not.”

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Actually — no — it’s from Telestream. Microsoft stopped supporting Macintosh with their own media player, so another company came in there and supported it — instead.

Telestream
Flip4Mac® WMV Components for QuickTime™
http://www.telestream.net/flip4mac-wmv/overview.htm

I believe it was Microsoft’s reaction against Apple for Apple’s continued development of QuickTime, which Microsoft tried to *kill* many times in the past, because it’s much better than what Microsoft has to offer. And so, this is sort of Microsoft’s hit back at Apple... LOL...

Microsoft Stops Developing Windows Media Player For The Mac
By Antone Gonsalves, ChannelWeb
3:26 PM EST Thu. Jan. 12, 2006

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) Corp. has stopped developing Windows Media Player for Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) Computer Inc.’s Mac OS X, choosing instead to direct people to a third party that offers components for playing Windows Media files in Apple’s QuickTime player.

Media encoding specialist Telestream said in a statement released this week that Microsoft had agreed to distribute Windows Media components for QuickTime through the Nevada City, Calif., company’s Flip4Mac technology. Flip4Mac enables Mac OS X users to play Windows Media video and audio directly within QuickTime.

Instead of providing a player, Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., directs Web site visitors to a page where they can download a free version of Flip4Mac. While not providing Windows Media Player 10 for the Mac, Microsoft still offers version 9 for Mac OS X and version 7.1 for the older Mac.

Microsoft officials were unavailable for comment, but Joe Wilcox, analyst for JupiterResearch, said the company decided to stop development in order to redirect resources to other areas. In addition, Microsoft claimed it didn’t have access to enough of Apple’s operating system to provide all the capabilities and copyright protection in Windows Media Player that the company wanted.

“I think it’s too bad in a way,” Wilcox said. “I would have liked to see a new Windows Media version for the Mac, and have Microsoft take the media battle to Apple’s home court.”

Both companies sell operating systems for portable media players, as well as computers. Currently, however, Apple has a strong lead with the iPod, which commands about three fourths of the market. To date, Microsoft’s hardware manufacturing partners have been out-marketed by Apple, analysts say.

In addition, both companies are fighting for a prominent position in people’s living rooms by offering their operating systems as an entertainment hub capable of distributing video, audio and photos to consumer electronic devices attached to a home network.

In announcing the deal with Telestream, Microsoft indicated there was still a demand for playing Windows Media files on the Mac.

“Consumers and content professionals are demanding great ways to view Windows Media content on the Macintosh using the platform and tools they know,” Kevin Unangst, director of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft, said in a statement. “The Windows Media Components for QuickTime, powered by Telestream’s Flip4Mac technology, provide this important capability and live up to Telestream’s reputation for outstanding media solutions.”

A Telestream spokeswoman, however, confirmed on Thursday that Flip4Mac was unstable with the latest QuickTime, version 7.0.4, causing the player to crash when closing Apple’s Web browser Safari. The company learned of the flaw late Tuesday or early Wednesday, and published a fix on the company’s Web site Thursday.

The joint announcement by Telestream and Microsoft came the same day the latter company said it would keep developing its Office suite for the Mac for at least five more years.

The announcement was important for enterprises that use the Mac OS X. About 21 percent of companies with 10,000 employees or more use the operating system on the desktop, and all of them use Office for the Mac, according to JupiterResearch.

http://www.crn.com/software/175804069;jsessionid=HTB5GYHPWZ3ODQE1GHOSKH4ATMY32JVN

No kudos to Microsoft... sorry....

Telestream Lets Windows Media Flow Into Mac Platform
By John P. Mello Jr.
MacNewsWorld
06/29/09 4:00 AM PT

For some Mac users, the letters “WMV” translate into “don’t even bother downloading this video from our site; it’s just not going to work.” Telestream, however, may offer those users some relief. The company offers Flip4Mac, which allows Mac mavens to import, export and play Windows media video files on their preferred platform.

It took Telestream six years after its founding in 1998 to cook up an Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Apple Store Discount on Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition . Click here. More about Apple application, but some 15 million Mac owners are glad it did.

That first product, Flip4Mac, which allowed Mac users to import, export and play Windows media video (WMV) files on their Apple machines, not only made Nevada City, Calif.-based Telestream a shining star in Apple’s constellation, but it also marked a new area of business for the company.

Prior to the introduction of Fip4Mac, Telestream concentrated on moving media files over the Internet. It targeted media workflow for broadcasters, advertising agencies and production houses. They had to share content, and the way they were doing it was through shipping tapes to each other.

“We became pioneers of shipping high-quality content over the Internet,” Telestream CEO and Cofounder Dan Castles told MacNewsWorld.

Top-to-Bottom Market

The high-end professional market still accounts for two-thirds of Telestream’s customer base, but since it started beefing up its desktop line four years ago, its broadened its reach to the point where one-third of its customers are desktop users — users like Marshall Clow, a programmer in San Diego, Calif.

Telestream Screenflow

A common problem facing online video viewers drew Clow to Flip4Mac.

“There were a bunch of videos out there, including some of my niece, that were put out on Web pages in Windows media, and I wanted to watch them,” he told MacNewsWorld.

“I have a niece that plays basketball and some online news sites showed some of her games and interviewed her a couple of times,” he explained.

“This was an easy solution,” he added. “The only hassle was every now and then when I tried to use it, I’d get a little pop-up saying, ‘Your copy of Flip4Mac is out of date. Go here to update it.’”

Microsoft Builds Good Will

As the company’s market matured, it became apparent that there was a crying need for compatibility of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) More about Microsoft technologies directly on the Mac platform, according to Telestream CTO and co-founder Shawn Carnahan.

“The Mac has always been very relevant in the creative and video production space,” he told MacNewsWorld, “and at the time, there was a lot of usage of Windows media for things like digital dailies. A lot of people consuming that media were on Mac platforms, but they didn’t have good support for Windows media.”

Microsoft, too, recognized the value of Telestream’s Mac application, and in 2006, it began distributing Flip4Mac Windows Media Components for QuickTime More about QuickTime. That quickly grew the user base for the program into the millions, and to date, downloads of the application have exceeded 15 million.

Microsoft’s move appears to have kindled some good will among Apple stalwarts who ordinarily have nothing but the opposite for the folks in Redmond.

“Since Microsoft is depending on a third party product to provide Windows Media functionality to the Mac, it reduces the likelihood of Microsoft doing funky proprietary things with their file formats,” Flip4Mac user Jon Gardner, a consultant in Bryan, Texas, told MacNewsWorld.

Microsoft is “more likely to stick with ‘open’ formats, or at least published formats — which is a good thing,” he reasoned.

“Microsoft’s need for Flip4Mac also underscores the fact that QuickTime provides the better cross-platform media solution — it works the same on Mac or Windows,” he added. “As an Apple professional, I appreciate that.”
Adding Apps Through Acquisition

Telestream has expanded its Mac presence through both home-grown applications and by buying other companies.

In 2006, it bought Popwire. That firm’s technology was leveraged to create Telestream’s Episode line of applications. They permit a user to import and export a wide range of file formats and repurpose them for viewing on the Web, DVDs and on mobile and portable devices.

In 2008, it bought Vara Software. That added to the Telestream lineup three new products—Wirecast, ScreenFlow and VideoCue—which support webcasting, screencasting and rich media presentations.

“As our last two acquisitions show, the Mac community is very important to us, and we’re investing a lot of development dollars on products that address Mac-centric workflows and will continue to do so,” CEO Castles observed.

The company, he maintained, will continue to be important to Macophiles because it provides them with important tools for dealing with heterogeneous content.

“We provide all the tools to make the creative work that Mac users do reach a wider audience,” he added. “So much of the audience that they’re trying to reach is in Windows and other environments and we help bridge that gap.”

http://www.macnewsworld.com/rsstory/67409.html