I'm back on the Mac! My PC misadventure lasted less than 4 months...

[lmalave]

Ahh...life is good again..

Tired of waiting for the MacBook, I had purchased an HP Windows Media laptop. I was happy with it for about the first 2 weeks, but then things just started breaking with Windows. Granted, I download and install a lot of apps, but WTF?

Anyway, life is good again. I just got a White MacBook. Love the trackpad with 2-finger scrolling and right-clicking. Love the overall performance, too.

Question, though:

What is the best Office replacement for Intel Mac?
How do I play WMV files on Intel Mac?
Are there any music subscription services that work on the Mac (a la Napster or Rhapsody)?

 

[x86]

For office you can use iWork or OpenOffice.org
For WMV you can use FlipForMac
For Music you can use iTunes Music Store

[edit] NM on iTunes as it is not subsription based...

 

[livingfortoday]

You can still use Office, though under emulation. You could always use Apple's Pages and whatnot. Or, openoffice.org makes a nice free alternative - it's ok, I run it on my Powerbook.

You can play WMV files with Windows Media Player. Flip4Mac isn't universal yet, I don't think.

The rest - I don't know.

 

[Pressure]

Welcome back to the world of MacDom!

Not sure about the Office replacement as I still use Windows Office 2004 for mac.

So far I haven't found a codec that will let me play WMV files.

iTunes have a built-in music store, easy to use.

 

[gammamonk]

... So far I haven't found a codec that will let me play WMV files. ...

A lot of WMV's just don't play on mac. I have the newest Flip4Mac, Windows Media Player, MPlayer, VLC-- They don't play.

 

[Pressure]

A lot of WMV's just don't play on mac. I have the newest Flip4Mac, Windows Media Player, MPlayer, VLC-- They don't play.

That explains a lot

Guess we have to wait for the Universal Binary version of Flip4mac, as I am on MacBook Pro here.

 

[japanime]

I like emusic.com. It's subscription-based, Mac-compatible, and a great source for alternative music, plus some older jazz.

You can get a free trial good for 50 downloads or something like that. Definintely worth checking out.

 

[Chrispy]

I was in the exact same boat as you! I used a windows PC for about 4 months and it was fine and all, but it is great to be back on the mac again!

FlipForMac is not universal yet so I use windows media player 9 for mac. However, a lot of windows media stuff does not play for me if it has DRM crap imbedded.

I am about to upgrade from 512MB ram to 1GB in my mini as soon as I finish this post Should be an adventure!

 

[MisterMe]

....
How do I play WMV files on Intel Mac?
....

The Popwire WMV-9 Component QuickTime codec is Universal Binary.

 

[mduser63]

Rhapsody is Mac-compatible. The standalone app isn't, but their web-based service is. $9.99 a month I believe. You can get a free membership too, but it only allows 25 songs per month.

 

[Maxwell183]

flip4mac

I just got a 17 inch MacBook Pro, I've been trying to install windows media player 9 but it doesn't work, anyone know how to install it right because microsoft is not help at all.

 

[lmalave]

I just got a 17 inch MacBook Pro, I've been trying to install windows media player 9 but it doesn't work, anyone know how to install it right because microsoft is not help at all.

Original poster here. I gave up on trying to install WMP 9. I ended up just installing VLC, which has already been ported to Universal Binary format. VLC plays WMV files just fine, and you can configure your browser to launch VLC when you click on a WMV file...

 

[lmalave]

Rhapsody is Mac-compatible. The standalone app isn't, but their web-based service is. $9.99 a month I believe. You can get a free membership too, but it only allows 25 songs per month.

The web-based interface is no substitute for the desktop app. The web plug in only lets you stream music (not save locally). Actually, Rhapsody is the best app I've used to play music on any platform. It beats iTunes hands-down. I hope that Real ports Rhapsody to the Mac. Or at least that iTunes adopts some of its features (especially the subscription service and the custom radio stations).

 

[Makosuke]

I just got a 17 inch MacBook Pro, I've been trying to install windows media player 9 but it doesn't work, anyone know how to install it right because microsoft is not help at all.

MS's Windows Media Player for the Mac is utterly useless, and has been for years. Even Microsoft realized what a piece of junk it was a little while ago, and started offering free Flip4Mac licences instead. How's that for admission of failure?

But as said, Flip4Mac isn't Universal yet, so the Popwire codec linked above is your best alternative. It's not nearly as good as Flip4Mac (doesn't handle streaming well), but between it and VLC, I've been able to play pretty much every saved video I've run across. Worth noting that while the Popwire plug-in has better codec support than VLC, VLC is more forgiving with some file formats that Popwire just doesn't seem to want to play. They're both free, so you might as well install both and try the other if one doesn't work.

Certainly looking forward to the Flip4Mac universal version, though.

Oh, and none of these solutions will play DRM'd Windows Media, but then neither will the old Microsoft player for the Mac. Those are 100% Windows only at this point, sad as that is.

Oh, and on the topic of Office replacements, nobody seems to have mentioned http://neooffice.org/ -- it's a "native" version of OpenOffice that bypasses all the X11 ugliness. They haven't QUITE released an Intel version yet, but claim it'll be ready next week. I tried the PPC one a little while ago, and it seemed nice enough. (Although personally, if it's just for word processing, I usually just use TextEdit; Mellel is quite nice if you want more features, and iWork if you want a beefier package.)

 

[lmalave]

I like emusic.com. It's subscription-based, Mac-compatible, and a great source for alternative music, plus some older jazz.

You can get a free trial good for 50 downloads or something like that. Definintely worth checking out.

Thanks for the tip! I might check it out, but it's definitely not a subscripton-based service in the way that Rhapsody is. Rhapsody (and Napster, and Yahoo, and Urge) have *unlimited* downloads. It's hard to overstate how cool unlimited downloads are. It basically means you can download just about any album that pops into your head, in its entirety. Once you get used to having any music you want on demand, it's hard to give up (which is what I'm experiencing now).

 

[lmalave]

You can still use Office, though under emulation. You could always use Apple's Pages and whatnot. Or, openoffice.org makes a nice free alternative - it's ok, I run it on my Powerbook.

You can play WMV files with Windows Media Player. Flip4Mac isn't universal yet, I don't think.

The rest - I don't know.

Thanks, OpenOffice is exactly what I was looking for. So far it seems to render correctly any Word document I've thrown at it. It's quite impressive considering it's free and all!

 

[lmalave]

Oh, and on the topic of Office replacements, nobody seems to have mentioned http://neooffice.org/ -- it's a "native" version of OpenOffice that bypasses all the X11 ugliness. They haven't QUITE released an Intel version yet, but claim it'll be ready next week. I tried the PPC one a little while ago, and it seemed nice enough. (Although personally, if it's just for word processing, I usually just use TextEdit; Mellel is quite nice if you want more features, and iWork if you want a beefier package.)

Hmm...I'll be waiting to see how the new Intel version of NeoOffice runs. I installed the PPC version my old iBook before, and its interface just seemed really sluggish compared to the regular OpenOffice. So far I haven't minded using the regular X11 version - it does the job quite admirably considering it's free software.