QuickTime 7 Pro to require paid upgrade, new Tiger builds seeded - Page 2

BINGO!

I've always been surprised how out-of-place the QuickTime Pro nag-screen is... ads on their own computers. QuickTime is an amazing technology, and although they do need to recover costs, popup screens advertising Pro isn't the way to do it.

I love the QuickTime Producer idea... that's what the $30 should buy. The added clarity would actually leverage more sales than they probably get with their current nagging model. Consumers just don't understand why they'd need Pro, and hate being nickel'n'dimed for stuff they may use once or twice.

Erm, I think people are screaming at nothing here. The "New Player" menu option (the one that's becoming a Pro feature) is the one that opens up a new empty player window. An empty window is useless without the Cut and Paste functionality that's part of Pro (and always has been). I don't think this has anything to do with opening multiple player windows.

As for the full screen, well yes it sucks that it's a 'pay for' feature but that's always been the case, so there's nothing new there.

I'd be interested in finding out if Quicktime 7 is going to be made available to current versions of OS X and Windows - it must be, surely. I'd also be interested in finding out which bits of the stuff we've seen (the new Cocoa player, QTKit, etc) fall under Quicktime 7 and which fall under Tiger.

Neil.
a.k.a. Arnel

Dagnabbit! Don't you know you're not supposed to instill any logic, common sense, or that type of thing to a forum posting. Its supposted to be full of ranting and blasting!

Of course others would be amazed at the fact of all the whining over something they have no clue about. Where o' where has anyone said you can't open up multiple movies at once. (Of course, I've not quite figured out the point of multiple movies at once, but I'm sure I'm just an idiot or something). Nor technically has Apple specifically stated what features will/won't be in it, but hey, who cares, its a rumor posting. Let's rant anyway!!!

BTW, I'd be shocked if QT7 didn't work on 10.3 and 10.2 systems (maybe not 10.1), and will most likely work under most windows systems (2K, XP, Me, maybe 98).

It has NOT always been a 'pay for' feature. I've got a copy of quicktime player 2.5 on my computer right now and it'll go full screen no problem, with out me paying a dime.

If apple wants to charge for pro features, no problem with me. full screen playback is not a pro feature.

In any case I've stopped using quicktime player ever since they started pulling this bullshit. My favorite at the moment is NicePlayer

Good post. My views on this topic has changed.

Zon

I remember at WWDC 03 there was a QT feedback forum on the last day where developers could get up and ask questions of Frank and the QT team. Almost 100% of the people who spoke bitched about full screen being a Pro feature. The QT team shrugged, and nothing has changed since. I don't understand the logic of the full screen thing, unless there is some long term plan we don't know about...

It seems to me that Quicktime gets more gimped with every release while VLC gets better and better. Screw $30 for QT Player.

My thing is Quicktime is a good $30 program, but not a $120 one, which is what I will have paid cumulatively when the latest update is released. There's little choice but to do so, as is the case with operating systems and so on, since Apple tends to make much of its software (iTunes, etc.) dependent on it. Essentially it's an enforced rent or tax placed on users with profit as the obvious motive, but Apple didn't invent it and is hardly exclusive to it these days. So I'll pay for it grudgingly, but I've also been a student literally unable to pay for such upgrades and I certainly don't have a problem with those who truly can't afford them getting "cracked" versions and codes so they can keep using equipment and software they've paid for any more than I resent their ability to buy academic software for a fraction of the retail price. Not real PC, but neither is the industry's practice. No, I don't have any useful solutions, since I know even big computer companies need to make money too...

My concern is the reaction of the new Mac Mini owners. QT should blow them away right from the start without having to pay extra. It should put Win Media to shame. It should make people happy and SURPRISED at the actual extra value for getting and staying with a Mac.

I bought QT5 Pro and QT6 Pro. I was willing to pay for it as I had to set some start/finish points, I can't remember what for anymore. Unfortunately I bought QT5 Pro just 2 days before QT 6 was released, and had to pay full price for QT 6 Pro. This PISSED me off, though I did do it.

When I watch a trailer I click on "Large", wait for it to download, save it, open it full screen in QT and watch it (I find the size of "Large" in my browser window is far too small). I also may show a friend of mine - you see I'd rather not re-download the QT clip again.

I think saving it is a pretty basic feature, still if necessary I'll drag it off Apple's servers each time, I have enough GB download that it's free for me, I just think it's a bandwidth waste for everyone, including Apple's servers.

Apple has a right to make money. I just hate to start thinking of them like I think of the tax man - hitting us wherever they can. I've 'switched' 5 users to Mac but Apple has a few practices I don't like and which make me wonder if I should do that - this is one of them.

Thanks for that tip - it's briliant. For simple viewing of movies it's replaced Quicktime for me! Excellent!

What $30 are you talking about for, people? Have you ever seen what Apple does in Europe? No? Well, for example check out the QuickTime price in the the Belgian Store. 42.35 Euros. That is $55.5. When it should be (with taxes 21%) only 27.6 Euros. If anyone can explain this I-don't-want-to-tell-what-it-is thing, I am all ears to listen.

okay, pardon if this has been mentioned, but why doesn't apple throw a bone in here like "free qt7 license with the purchase of" various pro machines or apps? at least you would get it out there, and god knows those who are paying for those pro materials sure are shelling out handsomely for the privilege.

but itunes DOES seems to be angling more and more towards the "quicktime viewing" interface -- which, i will say again, WHY does apple do this??? "hmmm... let's let iphoto catalog movies. now let's let itunes display movies..."

what happened to a bunch of specialized apps doing what they individually do very well but working together even better? i think a lot of what they are trying to split off multimedia-wise could have been put into imovie, and therefore the price of qt7, along with all of this movie organization and playback hoo-haa could have been placed under and umbrella that was a.) being distributed already hand-over-fist and b.) had a convenient place where the added cost could have been diguised better under the promise of other items int he same package (i.e. the rest of ilife).

but what do i know... maybe this would make more sense if i was a busines major with a marketing degree.

Excuse me for butting in here, but I don't think this is complete BS at all. The definition of "basic functionality" in a software program comes from what users expect and what the marketplace wants. It is not dictated by the history of one piece of software, which is what you seem to imply.

Consider word processors. Once upon a time, spell checking was a "pro" feature. You had to shell out big bucks to get this feature, as it required significant effort to develop the algorithms that could efficiently find sound-alike words and perform on-the-fly decompression of the word list. It also required lots of disk space and memory, which only "pro" users were likely to have. The dictionary alone took up as much space as the word processor itself!

Flash forward to today, and you will find that spell checking algorithms have matured and are published openly. Disk space and memory are now cheap. As a result, so many word processors have incorporated spell checking that it has lost its "pro" status. Users have come to expect that their word processors, even free open-source ones, include spell checking. This is "basic functionality".

Now imagine what would happen if Apple released two versions of Pages: one for basic users without spell checking and "Pages Pro" for $30 extra which included spell checking. Would you say that this is perfectly fine, or would you say that spell checking is basic functionality that should be included in a basic word processor? I would expect you to say the latter, not because of some history of Apple charging for spell checking functionality (as there is none), but because all other word processors in the market now have it, and therefore you expect it.

So, to bring this back to the QT discussion, you cannot look to QT's history for a definition of what "basic functionality" is. You have to look at the marketplace. Are most other movie players providing full screen free of charge? Do users expect it? If so, then it is a basic feature, not pro.

From a hardware point of view and from the original iApps view, Apple has made many "pro" features standard. Thus the BMW analogy. It just seems that for something as integral to Apple's and the Mac's history and future success, such as QT, it makes no sense for Apple to do anything except push those standards more!

Apple won't lose a dime on making Full Screen and multiple windows standard. Editing and such should remain pro since those are pro functions. Watching videos are not pro functions.

I have never bought Quicktime Pro, but was planning on doing so for version 7. But I have a question. I have two Macs at home, an iBook and a Powerbook. If I buy a Quicktime Pro key, will I be able to enable the pro features on both Macs or just one?

You can use it on both, but I think you're only supposed to use one key per computer.

Oh

I believe the other answer is correct - it's supposed to be on just one computer. I'm not sure though.

But if you have your computer and a friend also has a login on your computer, when you put in the QT Pro key on your login it will only activate QT Pro for your username. You have to enter it separately for your friend.

So I guess there are 2 interpretations. One is that you enter it only for your username, on your computer and your friends computer. The other is you enter it only for your computer, with your username and your friend's username.

Annyoing popups,charging for full windows or opening a window is silly but if that what thinks will help increase QT share in the world of media that is fine with me.

I will just continue using the free player provided by Microsoft.

Apple has had a history of coming out with compelling ideas/technologies but they always seem to do something down the line that hurts them in the longrun. QT marketshare is just going to shrink and when its too late they will offer fullscreen etc.. for free.

ok lets clear some things up.

Quicktime is a whole bunch of codecs, quicktime itself is not a codec.

Apple has to "play" with a lot of companies for the rights to us ethe codecs.

The way its been established is that for basic playback, the user, and Apple doesnt pay the software companies.

If the end user wants to be able to mess around with video, re-encode into H.264 with an Indeo audio track (just pulling out random codecs) then you buy a license code and Apple then pays the various companies some royalties.

I'm pretty sure 90% of people that use Quicktime do NOT use any advnaced features that vouch for them needing Pro. So imagine if Apple had decided they would pay for every codec in full and multiply by, what, how many copies out there? 150 MILLION copies? Apple would be pretty bankrupt.

Yes, there ARE contracts that could allow Apple to pay once for all (2 million dollars for a lifetime usage of Codec X) and other various schemes, but this way Apple doesnt have to pay as much for giving us all so many codecs.

When you buy a Pro key, that money goes to the people that made the codecs, hardly any (if any at all) to Apple. So, to tell the truth, I dont think Apple gives a damn about the looseness of Pro keys and the ease of use to acquire them.

BTW, so far QT7 is for 10.3 and Windoze only.

Hope 10.2 will get a foot in.

Also, it could be that Apple, to get people to download and use iTunes even more, will offer certian functionailty we are used to if you play/view video through it.

Just a thought

No, it won't be for 10.3. It will be for 10.4.

huh?

QuickTime 7 will be introduced as part of MacOS X 10.4.

QT7 will play in 10.3 as well. Maybe even 10.2. Basically, logic dictates this (OK, logic and apple don't go together well, but let's try, huh). If Apple limited QT 7 to just 10.4, then they've just minimized the use of their software to the 10% of the Mac population that'll upgrade in the early months. And because of that, no one will use it (this is why the likes of CoreVideo and CoreAudio aren't going to be used in most mainstream apps, because the code isn't cross-platform nor backward compatible).

Now Qt7 pro may only work in 10.4.

QT7 will be available for 10.3 as well.

I'm willing to bet a Mac Mini if you want

A lot of the new features of QT7 rely on underlying changes to the system architecture introduced in Tiger. So Apple may make the H.264 codec available for Panther and below, they won't be giving them the new player, or any of the new features of that player. I'm mostly interested in how they'll implement the QT7 features on Windows, since it seems like that would take even more work than getting it to work on older versions of OS X.

QuickTime 7... will... be... fully... available... for... 10.3

And Windows

And they have made a LOT of changes in it.

Its really really slick

I don't see how that's possible, unless they're back porting all of the changes they made to CoreAudio and other audio systems to enable true multichannel sound. And considering QT7 is entirely based on the new QTKit in Tiger, they'd have to use the old player for Panther, which would be a major pain to match the features in QT7.

I'm using the latest builds of QT7 in 10.3 and Windows and I'm under NDA... thats how I know

I know yer under NDA, zo, but can you describe whether there seems to be any GUI clues to how QT may converge with the iApps? QT was Media Player before there was the idea of Media Player, but it seems to be fading to the background in the public eye behind the glare of iTunes and iPhoto and iMovie, etc.

Web-based media of course will always use it, but to the consumer, I wonder how it will be presented to switchers and their ilk. Just a player window?

Quicktime per se (the app that with the blue Q) has a couple new functions that may get people to actually use it as an app per se.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/quicktime.html shows you that if you have QT Pro you will be able to record a movie on the fly.

Lets say you have an iSight and just want to make a small recording. Instead of loading up iMovie or other, just select in Quicktime menu and record. Start. stop. done. same with the audio recording.

aside from that, there isnt much else to do with QTPro unless you're a prosumer and try to modify some movies/clips with QT Pro's builtin filters, etc etc that have been available since... well.. forever.

Just for the record.. H.264 is AWESOME

Otherwise, no, QT remains the media layer upon which all iApps are dependent and is transparent to the enduser (as it should be). Imagine getting consumers educated about Quicktime... and one time some poor joe says "its encoded in quicktime" or "I want to encode it in quicktime". There are dozens of audio and video codecs that make up qt... its just a mess.

Agreed. IMO, QuickTime should fade into the background to be an 'underlying technology'. QuickTime Player should be renamed to something else, in my mind. Get the word 'QuickTime' out of the consumer's face, except as a *brand*. It *could* come to mean 'best of breed video and audio, no matter where it came from or where it's going'. Instead, most consumers think that the *player* is QuickTime, and that's it. They don't understand the depth and richness of the underlying technology, and here's the kicker... *they shouldn't have to*.

In an optimal world, people would just look for the Blue Q as a mark of quality and interoperability, and not worry about it otherwise.

Thanks, that's a great thumbnail. I figured that is what the future would hold, but it would be hard to say good-bye to QT, just like hypercard. My main concern is for QT to be still prominent while Media Player and Real Player are such prominent front ends too.

Instead of like now, where it is the crappy video player that you cannot resize without paying money. I curse when video is only available in quicktime format, because it means that it will be postage stamp sized.

The problem with Quicktime fading into the background is that web-based media now doesn't use it very often. Clients usually want Real or Windows Media when they need video. Usually I try and push them toward using Macromedia Flash based flv video these days--but Apple is loosing the underlying format war on the web. Other than Apple itself, most folks aren't using quicktime on the web.

You can resize the window all you want, including stretching it to full Desktop.

What you can't do is view it fullscreen where the menu bar and window frame go away.

But plenty are interested in MPEG-4 as a distribution mechanism... and suddenly QT becomes the only serious game in town.

I'll never understand why a company would go with Real or WMV when QT and QT Streaming are free. Not first 100 streams, not first 1000 downloads, just free. 100%, utterly free. No licenses. Ubiquitous formats to select from. Did I mention free?

I'm not sure in my experience that is true. I find lots of QT on the web, but maybe in science and education that is mostly true.