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RealNetworks Releases RealPlayer 11 Beta for Mac
by , 1:20 PM EST, November 15th, 2007
RealNetworks announced on Thursday the availability of RealPlayer 11 Beta for Mac OS X, Tiger and Leopard, in concert with the general release of RealPlayer and RealPlayer Plus for PCs. Because there are four product options, TMO spoke with Ryan Luckin at RealNetworks to sort it out.
1. RealPlayer for PCs allows the user to view video content. If not DRM'd, it can be saved to disk. If it is, then only streaming is allowed. Downloads in Flash, Windows Media, QuickTime and Real are supported. This version is free for PCs.
2. RealPlayer Plus is priced at US$39.95, available now, and adds DVD burning and downloading of non-DRM'd content to iPod nano, iPod video, and iPod classic. Support for the iPod touch and iPhone will come in early 2008.
3. On the Mac side, the RealPlayer 11 is in Beta and is supported in Tiger and Leopard in Safari and Firefox. It is a basic viewer and has the same DRM restrictions as the PC side. The final version is expected in early 2008, according to Ryan Luckin at RealNetworks. Only Flash video and QuickTime are supported at this time.
4. Finally in early 2008, RealNetworks will add the ability of the Mac version to download to the standard video iPods, nano, video, classic, but will not have the DVD burner like its PC counterpart. Once again, support for the iPod touch and iPhone will be phased in later. The pricing of the full featured Mac version of RealPlayer remains TBD.
Observer Comments
Thu Nov 15, 2007 2:40 pm Subject: RealNetworks Releases RealPlayer 11 Beta for Mac...
Thu Nov 15, 2007 6:01 pm Subject: Who are these people?
Sat Nov 17, 2007 5:32 pm Subject: Re: Who are these people?
RealPlayer is one of the most hated products on all platforms. There are a lot of reasons. Some of those reasons don't really apply to the current versions, but old grudges die hard.
On OS X, it's clearly inferior to QuickTime in terms of user experience. Recent versions have been alright, but for most of its life, RealPlayer for Mac was in the same league as Windows Media Player — that is to say, slow, ugly, feature-poor and terribly un-Mac-like.
I think Windows users feel the same way about it in comparison to WMP (which I assume doesn't suck so bad on Windows).
Linux users obviously hate it because it's completely closed and its files are difficult or impossible to convert to anything more useful. Its native file formats have always been the hardest to work with on any platform. Real keeps things closed, which is frustrating, especially these days when fast, high-quality open standards are so prevalent. (To Real's credit, they seem to realize this, and they're supporting other formats now.)
I seem to recall some rather aggressive nags and ads in older versions, too. (Although to be fair, nothing was worse than QuickTime 4.) And as the previous Guest mentioned, older versions were not well-mannered and tried to impose themselves on you.
And of course, nobody likes paying for something when all its competitors are free (and better). I know QuickTime Pro costs money, but really, RealPlayer is more equivalent to non-Pro QuickTime anyway.
Having said all that, I actually think RealPlayer 10 is a decent program. It still feels a little un-Mac-like, but the interface really isn't bad. When I do have to use it, it doesn't get in my way like it used to. It has some nice features, like brightness control (QuickTime used to have that too, but it disappeared in QT7 for some reason). It's not a half-assed port anymore. It's certainly better than Windows Media Player for Mac ever was. Nevertheless, I wouldn't use it for files that are compatible with anything else.
Also, RMVB performance is really bad, at least on OS X.
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