The Précis Microsoft Alternatives FAQ

Microsoft is committed to developing Office for the Macintosh for the five years but has ended development of both Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player for the Mac.

Internet Explorer
Microsoft stopped developing MSIE for the Mac when Safari became available. Recently they dropped support and at the end of January will remove downloads of Internet Explorer for Mac from the mactopia.com web site. Regardless, as we pointed out in a service bulletin to customers recently, Internet Explorer is an unsafe browser even in its Windows supported versions. If you are on a Mac you should be using the built-in Safari browser. Another good alternative is Mozilla.org's FireFox browser which is gaining support in the Windows world and is also available for the Mac.
Download FireFox from getfirefox.com.

Windows Media Player
Microsoft has announced it will no longer develop Windows Media Player for the Mac. Instead, the company has posted a link to a third party plug-in for Apple's QuickTime that will allow you to play WMV files within QuickTime Player.
The Flip4Mac Player plug-in is free. The company also sells the ability to import and export WMV files to QuickTime Pro and Final Cut Pro in a variety of packages.
Check out the full product chart at www.flip4mac.com.

Virtual PC
Microsoft has announced it is committed to developing Virtual PC for the new Intel Macs. Nevertheless, we are in a certain limbo right now because VPC 7.0 requires the PowerPC chip and the new Intel chip will not be able to boot Windows natively until Microsoft's Vista operating system makes its appearance.
Microsoft's Mac Business Unit runs the www.mactopia.com web site.