What it will do is provide much better support for streaming video on the Internet, especially Windows Media 11 files. The bottom line is this: Silverlight isn't going to be a newer, standalone Windows Media Player, and I doubt we'll ever see another one of those. The MacBU is quite excited about it and is busily pimping the cross-platform nature of the product, as well as all the nifty features it will bring to neglected Mac users. It also has support for Ruby, Python, and all the other usual languages. If you're not familiar with Silverlight, it's being billed as a 'rich internet application platform' with XAML graphics and JavaScript or. Since the majority of troublesome files are streaming Windows Media files, Microsoft's Silverlight is looking more and more like a solution for at least some of the woes that Mac users have. And don't even get me started about the lack of Windows Media DRM support. Sure, Microsoft has provided Flip4Mac to give Mac users a bit more Windows Media support, but even Flip4Mac can't handle everything, and Microsoft's kindly gesture is more of a band-aid than a permanent solution. Windows Media Player for the Mac stopped at version 9, two releases and three years behind the current Windows edition, and sometimes the old version just won't play nice with streaming videos. There's one moment when Mac users almost universally cringe in fear: finding a dreaded streaming Windows Media file on the Internet.

No silverlight on mac