Finally, Windows Media Player for the Mac is dead. DEAD, I tell you!

WMP may be the most ill-conceived, poorly-executed, unattractive, bug-filled, feature-starved piece of crap Microsoft ever foisted on Mac users. And if you ever used Word 6.0, you know that's saying something. Imagine, if you can, a video player that you can't fast-forward, rewind or even scrub through. It's literally an insult to people accustomed to the elegance of OS X.

Now if we could somehow convince Real to stop assaulting us with their craptacular RealPlayer and take the entire .rm format behind the barn for the Old Yeller treatment, we could perhaps get on with the business of recognizing Quicktime as the common-sense default for audio and video content.

Microsoft also recently announced it was abandoning Explorer for the Mac, which was something of a surprise since most people assumed it had been abandoned five years ago. Their Office suite for the Mac will continue to be made at least until 2010, according to an agreement announced at MacWorld a few days back. This is Good News For The Mac, I'm told, since it maintains Apple's credibility in business environments. It's also great news for Mac users that want bloated hackware to make even their simplest documents look like abortions mounted on popsicle sticks.

Microsoft Quietly Ditches WMP for Mac