Mac help needed

I recommended my dad an Apple Mac after some positive comments on here and other places as well as the promise of less spyware and viruses. Well its delivered on the latter point, but we are having a few difficulties with it.

Main one I'm having at the moment is getting Windows media player stuff to work. He tried to download Windows media player 9 for the mac, and it comes down as a BIN file, but when you double click it to open it, it tries to open in what appears to be Quicktime for some reason.

A little more research suggests that this is an old program and is recommended, instead recommending flip4mac or something like that, but it appears you have to pay for it.

He is using firefox, is there anything i can install that will allow all videos to work whatever the site? He seems to be having a few problems with these.

Also, he used to like irfanview on the PC. Is there a mac alternative? He doesnt like iphoto (and neither do I, truth be known).

I would appreciate constructive comments on these problems rather than a "you need to get used to the mac way of working" unhelpful comments, that would be grand ta!

 

do you need media player? or could you use something like
vlc ?

 

Dont need media player really, just need my dad to be able to play videos off the likes of youtube, bbc, etc... if that will do the job, then i will give it a go

I'm an IT techie and in some ways now i wish he bought a PC, because although i'm sure the macs nice enough when your used to it, he asks me for help, and I know bot all about it. Mind you it was me that suggested it, so i gotta do what i gotta do...

 

Microsoft stopped development of media player about a year ago it will only run in the rosetta mode of OSX that is to say under emulation.

What you downloaded is probably a .sit file, Microsoft are a bit behind the times most downloads for macs are DMG files.

Anyhow you want stuffit expander, available from Macupdate. this will at least allow you to install it and it will run just fine. But as you have discovered MS bought out 'Flip For' which is a pluggin for quicktime to allow you to play windows media files.

As for youtube vids they play in the browser as you know so I do not know why you want WMP, in fact the format will not play natively in quicktime, WMP or Real, there are of course ways around it.

Installing flip for will and real player will pretty much cover you for most web site things.

As for photo viewing, it might be worth persevering with iPhoto, if you could explain what it is you don't like I might be able to offer advice further. iPhoto is tightly integrated with all the ilife apps so not using it will cut some of your options, not the end of the world, but you get me.

 

Cheers gary... he just wants to be able to click on a video in any web page and for it to work.

I initially thought you have to pay for the flip4 plugin? As the first thing i noticed was the bit on the page that said "BUY" which of course i would rather not do.

As for iphoto i seem to remember one thing i didnt like about it was the lack of Back / Forward buttons. These can be added it seems, but are ghosted out.... in irfanview these let you move to the next pic / previous pic in the directory you are browsing. Not sure what other issues he's having, i shall ask next time i see him.

 

Don't you just use the cursor keys to go back and forth or up and down?

 

Just press left and right keys, or better still select some images and click slide show.

Flip for mac is free:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/17787/flip4mac-wmv-player