With the recent announcement that Microsoft will no longer be developing future versions of Windows Media Player for Mac (nor will they support current versions), it's an even more apparent that they no longer have their finger on the pulse of technology. That's a story for another day, but the question remains... how will we play those darn WMV files if there is no Windows Media Player for Mac?

An application called "Flip4Mac" saves the day. What Flip4Mac allows you to do is to play those WMV files right inside of QuickTime. How does it work? It's simply a collection of codecs. These codecs are what translates the video file into something that we can watch, and without these codecs, the player would be confused. You can think of Flip4Mac as a translator between two people who can't speak the same language.

As you can see from the screenshot below, this WMV file looks virtually the same in QuickTime as it does in Windows Media Player.

Cost of this utility is free, and available for download here. After you have installed Flip4Mac, you will need to change the default application for the file extension WMV. For more information on doing this, click here.