One for fans of IT problems now. Microsoft have issued a technical bulletin that admits that three recent Windows updates may cause performance problems for Windows Media Player 10. The problems associated with the updates may disable rewind, fast forward or search functions or, more simply I suppose, might just freeze up the whole player. Wonderful. Two of the updates were released last October, the third last month. The problems only seem to relate to content streamed to the Windows Media Player in a certain way - and as such the IT firm's solution is for the companies streaming the content to make some alterations at their end - news that the said content companies are sure to relish.
This report shows one of the problems faced by content companies who rely on the technology of another (mainly Microsoft) to deliver their product. Napster boss Chris Gorog surprised some at a recent Reuters event when he admitted some frustrations in having a download service that relied to a certain extent on Microsoft technologies - he told the conference: "There is no question that their execution has been less than brilliant over the last twelve months".
Of course the solution to those kind of problems, as I'm sure Apple boss Steve Jobs would like me to point out, is to have one company providing the software, hardware and content service. Because we all love that scenario, don't we?