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QuickTime 7 Disappointments

It’s not a secret that I’m an Apple Zealot. I was eagerly looking forward to QuickTime 7 since its announcement. I installed Tiger on my Mac mini, and was impressed with the H.264 codec, despite it not really supporting my mac mini (not enough CPU apparently, even though it’s rather new) and still working fairly well. When the Windows preview came out, I naturally installed it and gave it a go. At about 2:30 today I uninstalled it. In my opinion it was either released way to early (even for a preview), or a very poor upgrade. It didn’t meet the quality I expect of a public preview by a long shot. I had several issues that led me to remove it and revert to 6.5:

  • iTunes reports no CD driver is installed when QuickTime 7 is installed. Go back to 6.5 and it’s having no problems. Why an incompatibility with a fellow Apple product (and a very popular one)?
  • Sllooowww. It was significantly slower when opening QuickTime compared to 6.5. Not to mention viewing a movie in my browser was much slower thanks to the plugin needing so long to load. I want thinks fast and simple. Not slow.
  • Marketing mania. If I don’t have the pro version, just hide the menu’s and go with that minimal UI stuff that made Apple great. Don’t gray them out and shove them in my face. I like Apple products because they don’t fall for this Microsoft like marketing push. QuickTime 7 broke that trend.

Media Players stink. The big 3 are now bloated garbage. Real Player was first to become so bloated it’s useless. Then came Windows Media Player. QuickTime was my last safe haven of clean simple media. Yes I know there are other products out there, but lets face it, they aren’t as good at handling video and have their issues (especially in regards to browser plugins).

I know some Apple employees read blogs, hopefully from the QuickTime team takes a moment to realize this and look at their product from the customers point of view. It’s a great platform, great video quality, but their player is becoming bloated and slow. It doesn’t feel like a normal Apple product.

Come on Apple. Think Different. Think simple. Think clean, fast, usable applications. Go back to your roots with great Applications. QuickTime 7 isn’t the best you can do. The only good thing in there is H.264. That’s it.

18 replies on “QuickTime 7 Disappointments”

“Marketing mania. If I don’t have the pro version, just hide the menu’s and go with that minimal UI stuff that made Apple great. Don’t grey them out and shove them in my face. I like Apple products because they don’t fall for this Microsoft like marketing push.”

I have to take issue with that, I know you say you’re a Mac Zealot, but have you ever seen/used quicktime on windows?

Every single damn time “You don’t have pro, click here to upgrade, click here to continue”. I gave in in the end, I’ll never want the pro version, I don’t want the free version any longer either.

Yea. They are very similar in that respect.

My beef is mainly on the PC version. The performance and compatibility was bad enough for even me to uninstall it.

You’re supposed to read the warning that all alphas/betas/previews come with. They’ll tell you that you’re not supposed to complain about the product because it’s not finished yet. If that’s not ok with you, don’t install it, n00b!

Good thing there’s still the VLC player. It plays anything and everything you can throw at it, including h.264. If the Big 3’s bloatedness upsets you that much, then just go to videolan.org and stop complaining.

VLC Player is rather good, but it isn’t a slick clean app. It’s somewhat bloated in the UI as well.

Not to mention it doesn’t do the job of the QuickTime Plugin for my web browser.

“Don’t grey them out and shove them in my face. I like Apple products because they don’t fall for this Microsoft like marketing push.”

Now, I am not saying that I like Microsoft at all, but how is this Microsoft-like? I can’t think of a single piece of Microsoft created cripple-ware. Sure, there’s plenty of cripple-ware for Windows, but there’s a decent amount for Mac as well.

Like homer said i’d recommend an alternate player, like VLC or my personal favorite Media Player Classic. You can also find the quicktime and realplayer codecs to download so you don’t even have to install them to use MPC. Do a google search for “quicktime alternative.”

Greying out may not be that stupid; if you’re looking for a function (say, fullscreen in QT) and you can’t find it, you’ll wonder whether you’re the stupid one (because you can’t find it) or if it’s not implemented (because it should be somewhere). If it’s there, but greyed out, you’ll know that it’s just a crippled function.

I have the mac pro version of QT7. We use QT for simple, fast editing. It was the best way for us to edit our small movies, that is until 7 came out. This thing was not ready to be released in the pro version. You can’t do any audio volume adjustments. It will not save. Extremely disappointing. ❗

For David Parrott;

If you get sick of Quicktime Basic/NotPro bugging you about upgrading, set the date of your computer a year in advance, then run quicktime and choose “Later” when it bugs you.

Then when you change your date back to normal it won’t bug you until later – one year + 1 day from now. 😎

you say try Divx well it does work with Tiger so if you have 10.4x then you are outta luck.. QT7 is just an alround disaster in my opinion 6 was and is way better and like the apple saying goes.. it just works.. QT7 is the exact opposite

H.264 is a disaster too, if you don’t have a Mac powerful enough to decode it. I still haven’t seen all of the WWDC Keynote because of that. Sure. Post H2.64 content, but for the short term, put up an MPEG2 alternative, too.

This is not sour grapes. I have occasional access to a iMac G5 1.8 gHz, and was playing the Keynote on it, with it’s usual complement of programs open (about 20, depending on how you count), but not doing anything, in the background.

Choppy. Aweful aliasing and other gunge. Very poor. Yes, the picture is spectacular when it is working, by that is simply not often enough.

I just don’t understand how H.264 is supposed to scale from cell phones (which have processors weaker than my computer).

“I installed Tiger on my Mac mini, and was impressed with the H.264 codec, despite it not really supporting my mac mini (not enough CPU apparently, even though it’s rather new) and still working fairly well.”

I know how you feel. I downloaded BBC’s HD 1080p video from the HD Gallery
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/hdgallery/
and my iMac G5 wouldn’t play it smoothly. Not only that, but it wouldn’t even fit on the 20 screen! 😉

I think perhaps it’s less about QT7 and more about codecs. True, you probably need some power to play large format H.264, but then my large format 3ivx movies that played fine on a G4 would also crash out a G3. (Large format = 1024 by whatever). Compression means you can have smaller file sizes without losing quality if you pay the price in processing power. Check the rather humbling specs:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime.....tions.html

On a very positive note: I couldn’t output 20 minute videos to QT viewering copies without losing audio sync. QuickTime Mpeg2 wouldn’t do it; 3ivx wouldn’t do it; and burning to DVD would do one project but not another (due to rather extreme quick cuts from light to dark and sound to silence). With *this* project, even the DVD dramatically lost sync as soon as it hit this section. And yet, QT7 and H.264 did the job perfectly.

The QuickTime 7 Pro seems to be a rip – I enter the key but none of the features work.

That’s big corporate for you.

[…] When the Windows preview came out, I naturally installed it and gave it a go. At about 2:30 today I uninstalled it. In my opinion it was either released way to early, or a very poor upgrade. I had several issues that led me to remove it and revert to 6.5:read more | digg story […]

I i want is a slide show program that can change slides rapidly so my son can learn his math faster can you steer me in the right direction ( gonna make flash cards like we had in school)

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