One of the few third-party add-ons to OS X that is considered by many as essential as the operating system itself, Telestream's free Flip4Mac WMV Player (also distributed by Microsoft as Windows Media Components for QuickTime) has for years given Mac users the ability to play WMV format video and audio in QuickTime and on the web without having to think about codecs. The company has now officially inaugurated version 3.0 of the utility, which still offers free translation of Windows media formats, but now also includes a free player and new abilities.