Microsoft quietly released Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X today.
- Introducing Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X. Sporting a new brushed steel skin for Apple's newest operating system, this new version of our player opens the world of Windows Media 9 content to Macintosh users, enabling them to access the best audio and video on the Web. New plug-in support added for Internet Explorer, Netscape and Safari enables playback of Windows Media files right from the browser.
Hints at this release appeared in September on Microsoft's site.
Windows Media Player 9 represents the most advanced version of Microsoft's audio/video codec and has been unavailable on the Macintosh platform until now. WMP9 media is being positioned by Microsoft against the MPEG4 video codec.
It's not clear if WMP9 OS X is able to play Napster/MusicMatch/BuyMusic encoded song files.