I'm sorry, mac users, but -

[sheramil]

i hate QUICKTIME.

i apologised in the subject because i know a lot of mac users are a little sensitive about people who seem to be criticising their way of life. please understand - i'm not saying i hate you, or even the mac operating system. my problem is with the windows implementations of quicktime.

any games, or CDs included with books, or applications or even websites which use quicktime will say "you need version x", or "version y" - and nobody uses the same version. an example: i have this way cool university level book on astronomy: "Discovering the Universe", by Kaufmann and Comins. it comes with a CD, with some short videos. in quicktime format. you are required to install version 2.0, which comes with the CD. earlier or even later versions won't work.

the uninstallers usually fail ("Uninstall failed due to: Error -0". MINUS ZERO?), so you end up with pieces of several different versions lying around, in different directories, all conflicting with each other. if you desperately need one to work you usually have to reinstall that version over the top of the others and hope for the best.

the windows quicktime players show jerky, poor quality video, often without sound (and that's not due to the quality or size of the file, either - a sixty megabyte .MOV will look just as shitty as a 2 meg .AVI).

if you want to watch quicktime videos embedded in a webpage these days you have to install quicktime 7[1]. what irritates me is that it also installs several services which run on startup - things like "connect to the apple i-store", and unless you've got an iPod, or you're too dumb to find online music anywhere else, a windows user is not going to need this.

you'll see the little icon down next to the time display. you can't close the program (it doesn't have an "exit" option) short of uninstalling quicktime completely. you aren't given a choice of not installing the i-store thing; it's like getting cable TV and having the installer kick several large holes in your living room wall.

there are a couple of windows programs which claim to be able to convert .MOV to, say, .AVI; some of them crash on startup, some don't do anything and some just say "please install quicktime 7".

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing frequently complains about not being able to play windows .WMV videos on his mac. i feel his pain. truly.

[1] unless you want to mess with the Satanic and mysterious Quicktime Alternative Project. needless to say, the quicktime player it includes doesn't do anything at all.

[sheramil]

just did a brief google search on "i hate quicktime".. it's not just me, either.

[Agent Vicious Vivaldi]

I absolutely hate quicktime too. It's stupid and it saps up system resources. I think you can download just the codec, "quicktime alternative." All the negatives don't make the supposed quality boost worth it either. I only think it works for Windows Media player though...er...actually not even that...whatever the hacked version of Windows Media player is called.

[sheramil]

with a bit of fiddling and registry-editing you can fool quicktime alternative into working with Media Player Classic, but the quality is just as bad: the sound drops out for seconds at a time, the image is choppy and every edge has fringes like it was poorly-interlaced.. the video even stops now and then as if it were being downloaded over a 1200 baud modem.

searching "i hate quicktime" provided a link to apple where you can get the standalone quicktime 7 - it doesn't install iTunes or any of the unwanted services. the quality is STILL garbage. if anyone cares to contradict me with a link to a good quality quicktime video that's less than 600 megabytes, i'll download it and watch it.

or at least try to.

[sheramil]

actually, i did find one that's watchable - the demo reel from Andy Murdock's "Lots of Robots" (imagine if Brian "Dark Crystal" Froud was working for Pixar). i can only suppose it was encoded sensibly.

http://www.lotsofrobots.com/

[Agent Vicious Vivaldi]

Why are you bothering watching quicktime videos? If something is only in quicktime I usually won't bother with it.

[Black Spiral Dancer]

I'm not too fond of Quicktime. Almost everytime I try to load something up on Quicktime, it ususally either locks up, or it doesn't work at all.

[Mindgames]

Agreed - we officially hate the format, and always have done (despite Apple having us on speed-dial), and everything we put online these days is FLV. Hugely better quality per kb, platform-independent (except if you're on Linux, but heck.. free is what free gets) and the player doesn't try to sell you a Britney Spears CD and a subscription to ESPN. However, being the people they are, Apple will always serve their content in QT and insist that those factoring their content (like Yahoo etc) have to do the same. It won't last, but you're certainly stuck with QT-only content for the next 2 years if the video started life inside iCompany.

mG

[mmmcherry]

quicktime should die. seriously... i get a horrible feeling everytime i see that little Q symbol theyve got... and i think... damn now this isnt gonna work...
but once in awhile it does... rarely!

[Pull~My~Hair]

if anything requires QT I just dont watch it, play it, listen to it, I wont even fuck with it. Im with ya

[sheramil]

yes, ordinaily i wouldn't have anything to do with it, but someone sent me a file named Taylor_st_claire_tf_handjob.mov, and i'm a little curious.

sigh

i once took a class in Short Story with a teacher that looked very much like Ms St Claire. it was rather distracting.

[TheQuietPlace]

yes, ordinaily i wouldn't have anything to do with it, but someone sent me a file named Taylor_st_claire_tf_handjob.mov, and i'm a little curious.

sigh

i once took a class in Short Story with a teacher that looked very much like Ms St Claire. it was rather distracting.

[funkatron]

I very much enjoy using my macs, but the QT *player* is crap. It's not a bad architecture, but you have good reasons to think QT sucks from a pure user point of view.

[KilLAtomiK]

still better than the real player, i hate that thing with evry cell of my body but Qt is still up there in the crap o meter

[sheramil]

having the back of your head repeatedly pounded with a sock full of sand is better than the real player.

[Lady Alias]

Aye, I have to agree completely with all yehs.

[scaramanga]

i have no problems with quicktime, as long as you have an old windows player. if you download the latest player, quicktime just won't work on that box anymore. i think it's a bit of sabotage by bill gates and co.

[Rockwulf]

I don't know what you people are all crying about.

I run a windows machine and watch/encode shit on QT all the time. I never have a problem.

[sheramil]

I run a windows machine and watch/encode shit on QT all the time. I never have a problem.

i was about to say "can i have a peek at your Registry", but WOW that sounds gay.