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Why Hasn't Apple Released Quicktime For UNIX?
"There are a couple of solutions to this. The Open-Source xanim software already contains support for the QuickTime file format, and has an API for importing CODECs in binary format. If Apple doesn't want to release the source code to the Sorenson CODEC (which is understandable given the competitive market they're in at the moment), and if they don't want the cost and headache of supporting an additional product for the last 15% of so of the market, they can release the Sorenson CODEC in binary form using that API and let the Open Source process go the rest of the way towards enabling Linux to play QuickTime 4.
There's a better solution, though: Darwin is based on BSD UNIX; Apple is now full of UNIX developers. You can't convince me that there isn't already a version of the QT player with an Xwindows GUI compiled and floating around inside Apple; The absence of a UNIX player in that kind of development environment just doesn't make sense. So how close is it to release?
Let's find out: What pressure can we apply to Apple to let them know that there's sufficient demand for them to release the software?"
What people don't get is that QT is now really the Quicktime Media Layer (QTML) and actually encompasses a reasonable fraction of the Mac OS API.
This is why QT doesn't work as good on Windoze. Apple had to map their shit on top of GDI, Direct, and Win32 to make it work.
> Does it kill that fscking popup as well?
To get rid of the popup in Windows, before you run the quicktime player, set your system clock a few years into the future. When the nag screen pops up, click later. Then, set your clock back to the correct date. Works like a charm.
QuickTime Pro is for content developers - it allows people to encode movies, it really has nothing to do with the player. Yes, it does add some more features to the player, but there are plenty of ways to get those features without paying the (measley) $30 for the Pro version. If you intend on making movies with QuickTime, you need Pro, otherwise, it's free.
;)
:) to show them the desire for a *nix version, though I suspect you won't see one until X ships, at which point they'll really have no excuse (since they'll have ported the QT layer to run atop BSD atop Mach).
I imagine they haven't ported it to UNIX because of several factors:
1) Problems with the Sorensen Licence
2) Not enough consumers use UNIX (Remember, Apple's new focus is on consumers, those brainless sheep who use their CD-ROM trays as cup holders)
3) Tux didn't try to muscle them out of the content delivery market in exchange for a less lucrative market
You can send comments to Apple at leadership@apple.com - some of which may actually be read by humans
Another interesting note is the subject of the Win port of QT, which supposedly contains a large portion of MacOS API code. I'm sure getting it to windoze was a job and a half, and devoting the resources to port the current version to another platform (with a smaller marketshare - sorry, but Linux users don't outnumber Mac users) just doesn't make business sense to them. When the OS X version comes out, however, releasing a new version should be relatively easy, and would make more sense.
Most video CODECs are patented. Likely not directly by Apple either. This makes open sourcing video code impossible; our company wanted to to this too, but got bogged down in patent issues.
Of course, Apple could just release a binary for Linux...
I bet if the majority of porno clips were in QuickTime instead of MPEG we would have seen a player by now.
So put up, or shut up.
--
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
Of course, the panorama is only a picture of my studio and "Dog" is a good song (sort of an instrumental groove jam with a happy upbeat feel, tight and gutsy) but that still fits in very nicely with my sense of what these divergent formats are for. I would be dismayed if the Quicktime media was getting all the downloads, as again it's closed and I don't like encouraging that.
Speaking of encouraging, I've been feeding my karma account (no not Slashdot karma, general karma) by making samples to share with other artists at mp3.com, sort of in a musician-style open source spirit. If any slashdotters want them, a highlight is the drum samples I made, those are at http://www.airwindows.com/studio/DrumSounds.zip and could come in handy. Hope people enjoy them, they're darn good samples :)
However, I have the file relegated to a text link, because I'm not about to go embedding it in my page- I don't consider it right to imply that Quicktime is part of the normal web browsing experience, any more than WMP should be. So my 'extended media' sits under a text link like the sideshow it basically is.
For my music I go with mp3, with a vengeance. (and actually it's doing real well- I've been doing some instrumental pieces, and my bouncy rocking instrumental "Dog" is beating Carmine Appice w. Richie Sambora, and another track of Carmine Appice with Brian May, in the charts! www.mp3.com/ChrisJ) So I'm really pushing mp3 hard- and mpeg in general, in fact I had some video clips on my site and pulled the Sorenson Quicktimes leaving only the abbreviated, hacked ASTARTE-demo mpegs up even though they could only run a few seconds.
Speaking of which- thank you Millenium *rejoice rejoice* for tipping me off to Movie2MPEG! Made my day- I really _needed_ that! I'm going to see if I can re-do some of my video stuff using this.
So basically, my position is this: I like Quicktime, I use it for authoring, but I'm very reluctant to publish in it. Why? Not quality, it's better than MPEG and does amazing things many of which I understand and can use. It's that it's not open- and I just can't support that in a format. It's as bad as using Word format....
Video-wise, MS Media Player (at least the current encoding utilities I've looked at from MS themselves) uses the new MPEG-4 standard. Of course, it could be a bastardized MS-only version of MPEG-4 video... But in theory, a player for ASF files could be created for Linux, at least for video.
:(
The WMA codec for audio - that's a different story.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Does anyone know if Quicktime 4.0 for windows runs well in wine?
--
A buddhist walks up to a hot dog stand and says ``Make me one with everything.''
mpeg is spelled out in "Computer Networks A Systems Approach" by Larry Peterson and Bruce Davie, published by Morgan Kaufmann. its not the actuall spec, but an explination of how its done so theoretically you could make your own version of it. but it could help as you go over the source for mpeg codec.
Though not as user grumpy a company as Heuris, they extract a fair amount of cash out of you to encode using it.
But what about decoders? They're free for Sorenson; is Sorenson keeping the internal format secret? Seems like allowing an open source decoder wouldn't hurt Sorenson, although I suppose they could be worried about people making an encoder as well if they had the file specs. Still, I can't imagine people who would buy a professional encoder would use an "underground" version.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Riddle me this then:
Why does Sorenson claim that they are under an agreement with Apple that disallows them from licensing the(ir OWN) codec to anyone else, no matter the terms - they just aren't supposed to provide source access to anyone outside of their own company or Apple. Yet Apple (and you) claim that "it's not theirs, they can't control anything about it". Maybe it's just me, but I'm tending to think that Apple is the one who doesn't want to release the Sorenson codec, because they want an advantage.
Linux people don't care about advantage - we just wanna watch QT videos that are encoded with the Sorenson codec... is that so much to ask?
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Agreed, Apple really does need to release a player, if nothing else. I refuse to boot into Windows or go to a Mac just to view a Quicktime video. Instead, I just mutter, "damned QT" and move on... NOT a way to gain market share. ;>
I'm not at all against paying for authoring or development environments and such. By all means.
But simple players - that should remain free. It's like the old addage, "give away the razor and sell the blades" as it were.
My only complaint is that there's no Linux version, that's all. I like the QT format, personally. It's just a PITA that I can't view them whilst browsing...
On a side note, upgrading Netscape broke "plugger" and Netscape no longer shows .png files properly. Anyone have ideas out there? I'd rather not put xv in as a helper app - that would display the picture outside of the browser.
www.sorenson.com
Sorenson has MPEG-1 quality with better sound support and compression. Take a look at the Star Wars trailers, for instance.
There hasn't been any empircal study contrasting the two approaches AFAIK, but just observing the quality contrasted to file size is an educational experience.
-Stu
Yes, the Star Wars trailer was only released in QuickTime. Some third parties converted it to AVI/MPEG, but the quality often wasn't kept during the conversion...
Sorenson has an exclusive licence with Apple; they can't create an AVI version of their codec.
-Stu
If the company is a monopoly, then I agree exclusive contracts should be a legal no-no. [And at 5pm today I think we'll find out what one judge thinks about this matter]
Otherwise, I think they should be free to do it. It's a relatively short term measure, at best.
-Stu
so it comes down to this, then.
Binary-only is better than nothing. . .
(I'm just funnin wid ya)
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Totally out of character.
.
Holmes didn't give a rat's-ass whether the Earth orbited around the sun or vice-versa. Only things related to solving crimes. (All other information simply "wasted space" in the attic of his mind, he claimed).
So maybe we could put him to better use in coming up with more good evidence that Microsoft abused monopoly power. .
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
porting to UNIX != Open Sourcing, that's true. But it does = incredibly rising support costs. Hire a guy who can troubleshoot QT on Win95, probably $20k a year. Hire a guy who can troubleshoot QT on Unix, and we're talking $50k minimum to hire someone who has ever touched IRIX or Solaris.
It does seem like Open Sourcing = lowering support costs, and increasing support revenue (because the only way you can make money off that model is by charging for support, which anyone can do since the source is open, so you have to open yourself to competition in that market too).
I wouldn't expect them to port QT to unix at all.
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
oooh. How about power-down without asking?
Go back to DOS for that, because Windows and Linux certainly don't like that any better than Mac OS.
Why is that any different now?
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Well, that would be difficult.
Do you count, say, numbers from the Linux Counter Project? (or whatever the hell it's called?) That can be easily spoofed. Do you count sales of Linux distros? Very misleading. Number of sales AND downloads? Misleading as well. Servers running on the 'Net? Misleading, especially considering the fact that some of those machines that report one thing are, in fact, another (I know folks who have set up Linux boxen to look like WinNT & MacOS to the outside world...now, I'm not just talking about Samba and NetaTalk, I'm talking other ways too that non-gurus like myself just smile, nod, and say "what's the fuckin' point" to.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
BTW, if any Apple people are reading this, go to the GNUstep website. They're moving right along on the OpenStep spec, including the new routines introduced by MacOS X. :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
"Elementary, my dear Watson. We simply write our own CODEC, open source of course, and include a copy of the decoder in Netscape. We'll use the top of the line audio CODECS, such as MP4, and derive a new, high-quality video CODEC. Our system will become the de-facto standard, because most people will have a copy. After that, Apple will simply have no choice but to release the source for Quicktime, or risk watching it die."
"But Holmes! Video CODECS are so hard to develop!"
"We've some of the premiere mathematicians from a wide range of Universities and corporations, who could assist us in our quest. None of these corporationshas a vested interest in paying someone else for something they could obtain for essentially nothing. Besides! It would be a good mental exercise for the community."
"Where do you suggest they start, though?"
"Oh, Watson, Watson! Think, man! You're trying to compress natural images. Natural images can be defined as regions of similar colour, and regions of shade. By reducing the image to a grey-scale picture, a set of colour maps, a set of brightness maps, a set of contrast maps and an index of where the maps are overlayed, you've vastly simplified the image. Each of the maps can be compressed using delta shift encoding, because they'll all be very similar. You should be able to run-length what's left. The grey-scale picture could probably be compressed in any number of ways, including MPEG, or some lossless format. A lot of the more important information will already have been extracted, so it doesn't matter if you lose a bit. The locations of where the maps are overlayed won't take any serious amount of space, so that can be ignored."
"Wonderful, Homes! I didn't understand a word of it."
"That's quite alright, Watson. I didn't, either. Computers won't be invented for another 75 years, and computer graphics of this kind will take another 50 years to become of serious interest to the average person. Even with my great intellect, I cannot deduce the requirements of technology 125 years in the future."
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Ummm... RealMedia and QuickTime are direct competitors. The chances of Real agreeing to licence their codec to Apple are somewhat less than zero. Out in the real world, competition exists and commercial organizations actually protect their intellectual property.
Don't be so sure about those odds. Already MS and Real have licensed each other's codecs for the next releases of their respective software. Why, then, would Apple's chances be any less?
MPEG playback in software has become possible with the hardware of the last six months or so. MPEG encode (to any decent quality) still really require dedicated hardware. I imagine this is one of the reasons Apple has not gone down this path yet.
Strange... I've been doing both of those just fine with a 2-year-old G3. QuickTime has supported software MPEG playback since version 2.5, which is at least three years old.
QUICKTIME IS NOT A CODEC.
QUICKTIME IS NOT A CODEC.
Go write that on the chalkboard five thousand times. If I see one more post mistaking QuickTime for a codec....
Now, what is QuickTime, since it's not a codec? The answer is that it's a media layer. Video is what it's famous for, but that's only one part of it. It also does sound, images, and a fair amount of other cool stuff.
Apple could Open-Source this with little trouble, actually. It actually has to a small extent; the open MPEG4 standard has a file format based on QuickTIme's. What gives QuickTime its "IP value" are the codecs involved. I'd like to see those Open-Sourced, but let's be realistic; Apple isn't do that. But they could still release these as binary plug-ins (they already do this with the Intel codecs on MacOS and Windows, so it's certainly possible and wouldn't even disrupt the current QuickTime structure). One would think they might be convinced to even Open-Source some of their older codecs, like the Animation and Video ones, though that isn't as certain.
An Open-Source QuickTime would be a Very Good Thing for Unix/Linux/whatever. It would provide the DE's (Gnome, KDE, and whatever else might come up in the future) with a very versatile and proven media layer. It would also help to create an open standard for such things.
Oh, and for those who gripe about the QT4 interface, three points...
- Yes, the current interface does suck. Talk about form without function.
- The OSX version is much-improved; check out this page for a screenshot of the OSX player (basically, QT4 minus the fluff and with the volume thumbwheel replaced by a slider again).
- QuickTime is only an API; it's not hard to code a new player. If you use QuickTime's default controls, in fact, you have the old QT3 interface.
But anyway, that's enough of my rant. There are really only a few more things I'd like to see in QuickTime anyway...- MPEG2 and MPEG4 support. There's particularly no excuse not to have MPEG4, seeing as it's based off of QuickTime's file format for crying out loud.
- RealMedia support. Real's servers use RTSP, which QuickTime already supports, so it's just a matter of licensing the codec.
- MPEG (and hopefully MPEG2/MPEG4) export. As it is, the only reason I can think of for it not being in there would be if Astarte and HEURIS are paying Apple not to put it in, so they can keep charging obscene prices for their own encoders ($400 for Astarte's M.PACK). Still, there's always Movie2MPEG (an OSS encoder for MacOS). It's very slow but it gets the job done.
Those, plus the Open-Sourcing of at least the layer (if not the codecs) would just be icing on the cake.Don't think so. From the xanim homepage:
I have contacted Sorenson about licensing their codec. They responded that Apple won't allow them to license it to others.
It's currently fashionable to think of Apple as the anti-Microsoft, and thus the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Unfortunately, I see little evidence that that's the case.
Would xanim binary plugins be cross platform? Could I run them on LinuxPPC? Could I run them on Linux-sparc? Linux-m68k? Could Microsoft come up with an interpreter to suddenly add Sorenson support to MediaPlayer with such binaries?
There are annoying ways around this. Poke around the QT site and you can find licensing arrangements by which you can get the real installer and not the stupid dl application.
not optimal, but it's something.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Mac OS X is related to BSD and NeXT (the latter of which was bought by Apple and which then proceeded to assimilate it ;)
/. are about OS X, and there's been some good stuff on Ars as well. Just do some searches, you'll find something.
Half the Apple stories around
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Xerox didn't sue Apple because Apple gave Xerox 10% (?) of the company in exchange for access to PARCs technologies. Xerox made a lot of money on this deal.
What's wrong with PR ? Everytime you say Linux rOO1z, that's PR. Where would RedHat, Transmeta, Andover.net et.al. be without PR ?
Without PR a company will think. THANK GOD Steve Jobs reminded Apple of this. We're better off with Apple than without them.
We do this sort of software well. What is holding us back here seems to be patent and trade-secret issues.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
It can be argued that Apple already HAS said marketshare if you only consider the video market.
--
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
Then go away. If you have such dislike for Slashdot, and Slashdot obviously has a major dislike toward you, why are you still here?
Trolling, perhaps?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Apple is not the anti-Microsoft in that they are both companies, and not charities. It's within the realm of capitalism that Apple should be judged. From that aspect, they're very much not Microsoft.
They'd have to gain around 8X the marketshare for that to happen.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
---
Anyone ever find themselves wondering why Xerox didint flat out sue the shit out of Apple in the 80's?
---
Um, Xerox got paid with Apple stock.
And I recall that Xerox did sue them - it had something to do with not getting as much money as they wanted or something.
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Embrace OSS? Apple has sued for Look and Feel issues several times
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Spend a few million developing a unique user interface and see how much you like someone copying it bit for bit. If Apple releases something to the open-source community, it should be on their terms. It is a gift, nothing more.
I just don't see why people think free code is a right, when it is very much a privilege. When a company gives something like that away, they are basically providing thousands of man-hours of work free to the community. It's their technology, and their right to keep some of it for themselves.
That's how companies stay in business, you know. Don't blame Apple if they've finally learned how not to make stupid business decisions.
---
AppleII4VR
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Ahh, yes. Now I see why you posted this...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Quite possibly in video production, but I highly doubt that they do in video playback/consumption. RealPlayer and MS Media Player together put up quite a bit of challenge when it comes to marketshare.
Apple may edge them out somewhat, but certainly not by 8X.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Why bother with Quicktime? This is a serious question...what is preventing us from using MPEG? Is there a qt2mpeg converter? What's stopping someone from writing one? Or for that matter why not just develop our OWN codec, free to the public and make /it/ the standard?
Open sourcing QuickTime would not affect Apple greatly. For the most part, QuickTime is free. The Pro version they charge for, but it's irrelevant to most people (those who just want to view QuickTime media).
What would Apple gain from open sourcing QuickTime? Not much. QuickTime is simply libraries that allow for time based media. There are little to no bugs in the QuickTime libraries. It's remarkably robust. QuickTime apps, on the other hand, might benefit from open sourcing, but for the most part are controlled by Other Companies.
The good part about QuickTime is the ability to plug in new codecs. Like Sorenson. Sorenson is a for-profit company, who's revenue depends on the Sorenson codec. They will not open source their codec, at least not until they've replaced it with something better. However, it is in their favor to freely distribute the codec so that people can view their codec-compressed files. So Sorenson can release the codec for Linux.
Some character stated how simple it is to make your own codec. I seriously doubt it. Compression is hard -- good compression of images is harder yet. Sorenson spent many, many man-hours developing their codec. Think you can do better? I guarantee its more than separating the signal into luminance and chromiance and run-length encoding it. You have to consider speed of decompression (this is why a lot of media is still distributed in Cinepak -- a low end 486 can decompress it real-time), perceptual anomalies (some people can see the compression in DirecTV broadcasts, some can't), recoverability (do you pause playback when your pipe is congested, vis a vis Real, or drop frame rate, or use a more robust caching mechanism so congestion is reduced as a failure point).
In addition, I think Apple isn't terribly interested in the Unix market right now partially because X sucks. There's no gamma control, no consistancy, and not so nice to look at. Windows is the same, but the marketshare of Windows makes for a powerful argument to ignore such problems. Linux users? We're left out in the cold, cause who cares about us?
QuickTime is Apple's baby. It will be released for MacOSX, which is BSD. It will come over to our side. You want to make it come quicker? Show some support for Apple's efforts, and help with the Darwin effort, or the QuickTime Streaming Server. You can't expect a big corporation to just give, give, give, just because it's right. Show them the advantage of open source by helping, rather than sniping from the sidelines.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Reading the A/UX FAQ, A/UX isn't based on a Mach kernel (which is good or bad depending on your personal viewpoint on microkernels). Also, A/UX wasn't intended to replace Mac OS. Mac OS X (10) is a replacement for Mac OS and therefore the integration with the Mac OS world is far more complete. A/UX was pretty much SVR2 UNIX heavily extended with a Mac OS shell. It doesn't have Cocoa or Carbon apps - Photoshop, Freehand, etc. aren't full blown UNIX tasks in A/UX, but the Carbon versions of these will enjoy the virtual memory and pre-emptive multitasking features right on the Mach/UNIX layers in Mac OS X. This will be a UNIX derivative that is intended for your computer newbie to use.
Apple may have the highest shipping volume desktop UNIX-like system in rather short order. Apple has stated that they intend to completely convert over to Mac OS X by the beginning of next year... all shipping Macs will come with Mac OS X then.
Open sourcing a codec and/or streaming video application is a touchy situation. Not only do companies such as Apple and Real Networks not want to loose possible revenues due to lack of licensing fees, but having an open source client allows the end user to do what he wishes with the content... (e.g., save it to disk)
And we all know what large corporations think about allowing the customer to do what he wants to with content. (e.g., MPAA, RIAA)
You could see the issue when RealNetworks sued Streambox for making applications that allowed you to save RealAudio streams to disk. There would be no way to assure that the end user cannot save the data to disk, or convert it to another (possibly technically better) format.
Personally, not allowing the user to do what he wants with the data being streamed is against the general open-source philosophy, IMHO.
Really, in all reality, even though Slashdot has become a forum for Linux advocacy, the world does not revolve around Linux.
A port to Unix would involve a large number different flavors to maintain. One of the nice things about open-source is that it makes it a bit easier to port to a large number of architectures... In particular, because other people will usually do it for you when they want your software to run on thier machine.
For example, when enlightenment first came out, it was the coolest thing around... I bet you everyone and his brother was trying to port it to the particular flavor of Unix that they were using... Solaris, SunOS, BSD, IRIX...etc.
Porting at this time usually means linux... But not everyone uses linux... There are a lot of poeple that want to have the choice to use Solaris or their cool SGI machines. Its almost sacreligious to not give SGI machines every codec, considering their long history of top notch graphics and media performance.
Oh well....
Its a shame I cant run Civilization CTP on my Sparc Linux or Sparc Solaris boxen.
The specs for the quicktime format are available to the public.
The part we need is the sorenson codec.
I don't understand what the big stink is about. I would personally be happy with a binary-only codec. Anyway, I think this matter is not with apple, but rather with the folks that make the sorenson codec.
-- Thrakkerzog
Late comment, but have a look at Ogg Vorbis, an impressive sounding audio codec that is open source and patent free:
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/index.html
As we all know, apple is a hardware company which [Mostly] makes money from selling boxes, not licenses. Linux is a strange product in that it doesn t promote one form of hardware over another. Linux is not more helpful for one group then it is for another. (I can run the same dist on Alpha, Sparc, i386, and perhaps PPC) If I don't need apple hardware to run my programs, I have less reasons to use it. In many ways, Linux can hurt Apple more then MS, since the same people who like the Tech Aspects of Mac OS X could get similar results with different hardware. If there was the same Linux under PPC and Alpha, what incentive do I have to buy Mac?.
This might or might not be the reason. I would just suggest we take Apple with the same grain of salt we take Sun.
Could you provide the comparison from which you have drawn this conclusion please?
Very simple method. I fired up my roommates Windows box and watched the star wars trailer (the highest quality copy I could find) in Quicktime format and then in RealVideo, MPEG and AVI format. The RealVideo file was smaller than quicktime, but the quality sucked. MPEG was slightly bigger than the quicktime format, but looked just as good. The AVI looked as good as the Quicktime, but was absolutely huge.
0 1 - just my two bits
Yes, sad but true, Apple fanatics fade in the wake of the litigious arms of Apple.
Embrace OSS? Apple has sued for Look and Feel issues several times, starting with Steve Jobs help in ruining Gem back in the 80's. Way to go with the open spirit Steve0. In recent days we have seen them do the same for thier new Gui.
Anyone ever find themselves wondering why Xerox didint flat out sue the shit out of Apple in the 80's? Of course given Parcs tract record at bringing anyof thier wonderous gifts to the public the Gui may have well died in the closet along with other Parc goodies.
Pound for Pound Apple is still today the legal beagle it has always been.
SteveO and his multicolored jack booted goons are more than likely to close down on things than not, or to open it just enough to keep MAC in the News. Where once the ratio of PR to tech in apple was far in favor of tech, its been obvious that Apple needs PR to stay relevant in a age that needs them less than ever.
For those who are quick to jump on Apple for OSS goodness, do some research. Its a shame to see OSS be tainted with this sort of misguided cheerleaderism.
AppleII4VR
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
Well, as far as I know, it's possible to use the QuickTime on the SGI platforms. And, when the Mr. Jobs demonstrated the skill which the NeXT people had, they demoed the QuickDraw 3D and the QuickTime on the NeXTStep. So, I think the Apple Computer Inc. have the source codes for Unix platform. So, I assume the reason the QuickTime-Official for any Unix for free is not available is business strategy.
At least on the Mac side, the v3 Movie Player allows some additional features not available in the free version of the QT4 Player. Copy+Paste, seperate the audio track, things like that.
There's a number of alternate players available on the Mac side. I don't know of any for Windows, but perhaps I should go look...
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Last I checked, wasn't Quicktime a Closed Format?
.asf files into .mpegs?
Am I the only one using a lone Windows machine and VirtualDub to "recover" data from
Why yes, it would be nice to have a quicktime player. But wouldn't it be -nicer- to have the file format specifications?
I'm hesitant to install the RealPlayer 7 for Linux on my FreeBSD box. Because I know that when RealPlayer 8 or the "Newest Bell and Whistle" comes along, it'll be obsolete.
Why support and cheer on a Closed Format? I'd rather know what a Quicktime is internally, and have the ability to build my own player.
Of course, if QT4 is currently an open format, my post is invalid, and I need to get out of my cave more often, I'd look like a right todger eh?
Well, it would be nice to open source those codecs, but that's entirely beyond Apple's control. Most of those codecs are third party and closed. Apple has to pay to license those codecs for use in quicktime player. The owners of the codecs are going to decide for/against(most likely against) on thier own schedules.
These developers may decide not to port their codecs to unix/linux. Apple wants all platforms quicktime runs on to have the same codec support as much as possible. So until the vast majority of the codecs needed by quicktime are ported to a given platform, there will not be Apple branded quicktime players for that platform.
Making a player for linux or any other X/unix system would be a mixed ordeal. MacOS X is based on BSD, but it doesn't use X windows, it has it's own neat-o windowing system based on vector graphics, so all the graphics processing is going to be different...a major port since this IS a media API and graphics might come into play.
Apple has a lot invested in staying ahead in the media layer space. I'm sure they won't blindly allow microsoft and real to just pull it out from under them. I think they want to crete a linux player, but they have to wait until the codec support arrives. Also, remember that microsoft stole and used quicktime code in media player several years ago (there was a lawsuit and everything). Some MS internal docs surfaced, the suit was dropped, and MS bought $150m of Apple stock.....I don't think Apple is going to open up quicktime and let microsoft do it again.
tack
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Yeah, I'm pretty annoyed that they would name their product after the dolphin on SeaQuest DSV too. I couldn't stand that piece of crap passed off as entertainment. Roy Schneider is a whore.
Quicktime is a very large bundle of toys all wrapped up in a chrome box. Not only is it the Sorensen CODEC, it is also a suite of scripting tools akin to Flash. AFAIK the scripting utilities could feasibly be as extensible as Flash is so you could create cool interactive sessions and games with it. Porting this would require a nice wad of cash because they also need to port a bunch of API calls that exist on MacOS to said OS. As someone else said, if VA or Redhat paid Apple to do the port I believe that they would. I think it would really be in Apple's best interest to do the port though, look at Adobe, they've ported Acrobat reader to a slew of operating systems and now PDFs are everywhere. The Quicktime scripting would get real popular really quickly if you could view it on any OS you wanted. The Sorensen CODEC is something you need to ask the Sorenson people to port (maybe in plug-in form to xanim). Redhat or VA ought to spend their mighty millions purchasing a Sorensen license for xanim, they could build a player/plug-in by themselves.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Here's Steve Jobs email address:
jobs@pixar.com
Email him with your insightful analysis which postulates that all apple zealots and mac users (zealots) are idiots. As a HUGE apple fan, I'm sure he'd be amused.
More seriously, you've just made a rather silly assumption in your post. Perhaps your data sample was insufficiently random. Could be that you've just been hanging out with idiots, some of whom use Macs. Worse, it could be the case that how you took your data and analyzed it was corrupted. Something to think about.
BTW, if you're going to call someone an idiot, would it not be polite to at least be up-front as to who you are?
Let us go to the stars, dream new dreams, and renew the embers of hope that have long since grown cold.
Otherwise, isn't this likely to damage the Sorenson codec, or at least the functionality of it within QT?
If it's not damaging, it sounds great. Does it kill that fscking popup as well?
This isn't true. Originally and for initial release, version of QuickTime are web installed, however they have always released a binary archive of the entire software later for people without internet connections or organizations using firewalls. I think internet downloads do make it easy to insure that customers always have the latest version of the software, be it QuickTime or other. Of course the paranoid among us see the obvious issues associated with internet only installs...
-Jon
The truth will set you free.
Eject a floppy from a Mac? What's a floppy? :-) That being said, just keep your trusty paperclip handy...
-Jon
The truth will set you free.
First, Linux is certainly not "the last 15% of the market". I love it, but let's not start lying.
Second, OS X doesn't use X. It uses Quartz. QT being a highly graphical thing, most of the code that would need to be ported would probably deal with the video setup, which is completely different in Windows, Mac, and Unix. That's the biggest reason there's no QT for UNIX, I'm sure.
_________________
rooooar
As I understand it, Apple and Sorenson have an exclusive license agreement regarding the Sorenson codec. If this is the case (which makes sense, otherwise we'd see somebody else with the codec by now) I don't see how petitioning will do anything. Apple and Sorenson are bound by their contracts. And I'm sure Apple will pay any amount to keep that exclusive agreement.
_________________
rooooar
You are quite right about increasing support costs, which is why I think that open sourcing components is a wonderful idea.
/.ers want to believe. It's simply a financial reality.
Perhaps I should clarify my position re: expect them to port it.
I meant that it is reasonable for users to expect Apple to port, as opposed to Open Source it. As you noted, development and support costs are likely prohbitive. It's not the evil Apple empire wanting to suppress Linux as some
I don't expect to see QT for Unix in the next 6 months. I do expect it to appear eventually. That was the gist of what I was saying: it's unreasonable to expect that when a company does port something, they should open source it in the process.
I think there is a bit of confusion here. Asking Apple to port QuickTime to UNIX is **NOT** the same as asking them to Open Source it.
Let's get real. Expecting Apple to Open Source QuickTime is pretty far fetched. WHY Would a company want to OpenSource such a lucrative revenue stream (particularly, one that lets them make money from Windows users; ie, ones that already tied into the Apple platform.)
It IS reasonable to expect them to PORT it to UNIX. It's simply more money for them to make by increasing their market share.
The fact is, Porting to UNIX != Open Sourcing. You can port something to UNIX without opening the source. See Q3A and the other Loki Games efforts if you don't believe me.
Note that this does not take into account the ideological reasons for opening the source to QuickTime. I'm sure there are some benefits to be had by doing so (some have noted the poor interface for the player could be improved.) I'm jsut speaking to the practical considerations, as well as to the mistaken concept that Porting = Open Sourcing.
In short, expect them to Port QuickTime, not Open Source it. That sort of confusion has to stop.
Most Mac users own several boxen, whenever the old ones go obsolete, they just buy a new one. I wouldn't be surprised if the average number of Mac's a Mac user has purchased was something like five or six.
I don't see why measuring the sales of Linux distros isn't a valid measurement of use. Its possible that you might miss some users, but who would pay for more then one distro of Linux in the time they would buy only one Mac?
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
One of things I hate about quicktime is that it rapes your system if your on windows. It really pisses me off, I mean they have a system set up that lets you set your filetypes yourself. I guess Apple peple thought PC users were to stupid to handle that themselves.
Anyway, now IE can't even show PNGs in non inline form. They work fine as inlines, but not as individual URLs. Its retarded. I need to use Mozilla to view them. Quite irritating. I wish apple would die, and take there propritary BS codecs with them.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The ones that have a hardwired on/off switch. FAT32 dosn't really seem to have much of a problem with sudden powerloss that the fragile ass e2fs does. I've turned my win31/95/98 box off hundreds of times from the powerswitch, and I've only messed up a hard drive once (I stopped doing it after that :P).
On the other hand, hard resseting a linux box after an X-lockup caused some loss on the HD. It was quite annoying.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
No, Apple won't release a binary Sorenson codec for one reason: Apple doesn't own the codec! Sorenson does, and their pre-existing licence prevents them from distributing their codec for anything other than QT.
and QT is whatever apple wants, correct?
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
You know that?
MPEG is an open standard defined by the motion picture exsperts group.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Just like the Mexican railroad in Atlas Shrugged, it's a way to potentially lose a lot of money.
You managed to make a post about the free market and include an Ayn Rand Reference!
Posting content like that is a great way to prove a point. That is, if your point is that you an idiot.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Is that they can't put their annoying ad on the desktop in X. Too many different window managers, so how bloated would their binary be by the time they figure out how to add an icon to Ice, BlackBox, Enlightenment, AfterStep, FVWM, etc, etc, etc.
Or maybe they just want to force us onto Darwin. Ha! Like that will happen.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Certainly, everyone hopes they will pay attention and release this. Frankly, it wouldn't be tough to do, since they had to port it to MacOS X already.
:-)
However, I'd like to point out that Linux people aren't the only ones suffering from poor or absent support for various Web add-ons. *Java*, Flash and Shockwave on the Mac are incredibly buggy, to the point of being unusable. Plug-ins like Third Voice, same deal. We've been living with this stuff for years. In a way, it's nice to finally be a first-class platform for a high-demand technology.
I still insist that every Web technology should work on every platform, period. Guess that's why my web page is kinda boring.
There is source code that reads and writes QT movies available at
http://web.interval.com/papers/1999-066/
You are right.... this doesn't solve the codec problem (it uses JPEG). But this should get people started. (IMHO, it's easier to read this code then the xanim code.)
And it is also in Matlab. But the code is straightfoward enough that it should be easy to translate. The code runs on any platform (PC, Mac, Unix) that runs Matlab.
-- Malcolm
QuickTime is an entire media layer (it supports several dozen media formats, and every media type you can image; images, sound, video, 3D, panoramas, Flash, it's own vector image formats, sprite animation, dynamically applied effects (fire, ripples, transitions) any number of tracks of any of the of the above all combined in one file and turned interactive with scripting) , and is certainly an Apple product. The file format and the streaming protocol are open, so the only thing stopping someone from writing an open source player for QuickTime is access to codecs. QuickTime supports quite a few of them, including some open ones, like MPEG. But everyone uses the Sorenson codec for downloadable or streaming stuff, because it offers the best quality for your byte.
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
First, Quicktime is not a codec, it is a multimedia component container format with synchronization information built-in and set of libraries for displaying the info contained in that format. Components can be video, audio, vector graphics, text, MIDI music, 3D models, and other things. A codec, or "compressor-decompressor", is an algorithm to encode/decode components of this format such as sound or audio, usually for compression purposes.
Second, the fact that Quicktime runs on Windows, which will never run on a Macintosh, is a problem in that it provides users with Quicktime without having to buy Apple hardware. Windows Quicktime not running on Apple hardware is a downside of making it for Windows. Them losing OS share on their own hardware is insignificant in terms of monetary loss to losing hardware AND OS sales.
Third, open sourcing Mac OS X is a BIG deal. It would mean that you might no longer need to buy a Mac to get the advantages of the Mac OS. Mac OS X is not "just another Unix" -- it's a competitor desktop OS that if ported to Intel could devour Windows sales (though still kill Apple due to a loss of hardware sales). Opensourcing Darwin on Intel isn't a big deal, though.
Apple does like Linux -- at least on their PPC machines. Otherwise, how would you explain MkLinux, which started out as an internal Apple project and this Apple site which hosts the latest versions of the kernel to run on G4 systems? I'm sure they could care less about who takes over their hardware as long as they can keep making money selling it.
As I've mentioned before. Porting Quicktime to UNIX is probably a technical issue of getting it to run inside X and with the non-standard sound APIs on various UNIXes.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Apple won't release Sorenson for money reasons. The Sorenson codec is one of the primary advantages of Quicktime 4 that allows it to compete with other formats. If they free up Sorenson to everyone else, then they lose that competitive advantage. That's one reason it won't be freed up for xanim anytime soon.
BTW, the topic IS: "Why Hasn't Apple Released Quicktime for UNIX?"
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
It's not the Darwin layer that's the problem. The problem is that Quicktime is an application heavily dependent on graphics and sound APIs. Quicktime relies pretty heavily on the QuickDraw and Quartz APIs AFAIK. Porting from those to X is NOT a trivial task. I remember reading somewhere that you could sort of port Mac apps to Windows taking advantage of all the Mac OS calls they basically reimplemented on top of Windows to get Quicktime to get Quicktime to work on Windows.
This is thorny enough, but at least X is a graphics standard. The bigger problem is the total lack of sound standards for Unix. While Loki's little API in development is a nice idea, it's hardly universal across Unix platforms. It's also not proven to be reliable.
These are probably the primary reasons against porting to Unix.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Hi -
One of the main problems is that Apple isn't infinitely rich like some companies (M$), so they can't develop for all platforms. So they're strategic. The only reason there is a free Windows QT player is that unless there wasn't, the only streaming/multimedia available would be Windows format. And if M$ controls the streaming protocols, then they'll control the production equipment software, and that's the piece of the (apple) pie that Apple wants to control.
Remember that M$ offered a huge piece of the pie to Apple if it would just get rid of QuickTime, that's how valuable MS realizes it is in blocking their domination of the multimedia environment.
Now why wouldn't Apple open source QT? Why should they? There's already a Linux based QT streamer engine, so there's no motivation there. QT is full of all sorts of neat programming tricks, so there's no reason why Apple should make it easier for the next version of Windows Media Player to leap frog them.
Just come up with a valid money-making reason for Apple to do this. Remember, Windows is the enemy but just because Mac and Linux share enemies doesn't mean they are allies. People running Linux are still not running MacOS.
Karen
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GAT d-- a? C++ UX+ L++ P++ E--- W+++$ N++ o-- !K !w O---- M++$ !V PS++
I totally agree.
BUT, we are talking 1.5 Mb/s here. That's not trivial. I think the Sorenson codec works better for lower bitrates.
I've never seen Quicktime stuff that matched 1.5Mb/s MPEG-1 in quality, but that's probably because it's all lower bitrate stuff.
It would be nice to know at which bitrate there is a cross-over point, e.g. when Sorenson becomes better quality than MPEG-1.
For example, I think MPEG-2 becomes better quality than MPEG-1 for bitrates higher then around 3 Mb/s.
With regards to tools: MPEG-1 is a shitty standard to work with, that's why almost all editing packages use MPEG-2,- it's easier to deal with, editing wise.
Breace.
If Apple doesn't want to release the source code to the Sorenson CODEC
It's not their codec, and they can't legally release the source. (How many times does one have to tell people this before they get it in their heads? Quicktime is an (open) format. Sorensen et al are codecs. The codecs are what won't be released.
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
It's currently fashionable to think of Apple as the anti-Microsoft, and thus the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Unfortunately, I see little evidence that that's the case.
Funny, to me it seems that it's currently fashionable to think of any company with business interests and shareholders as equivalent to Microsoft.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I see someone forgot their Prozac(TM) again today. But really, Bill, couldn't you make it less obvious who it is posting? And shouldn't you get back to your tremendously important sleeping, I mean job as Chief Software Architect?
Brazil has decided you're cute.
- Drag it to the trashcan
- use a menu or keyboard shortcut to dismount it
- use a menu or keyboard shortcut to eject it
- hold down the mouse button while booting
Seems like plenty of ways to eject a disk to me.And a lot easier on the fingers than having to push something on the front of a pc (after you've umount'd it).
!offtopic! - does anyone remember the power-inject disk drives? The ones that sucked the floppy in? Ahh - those were the days !offtopic!
slashdot username - at - email.domain.name
At the beginning, the complaint was simply "Macs suck." Then Apple bought NeXT, started bringing itself back from the "dead," etc. The /. response? "They're not Open Source!"
Then Apple Open Sourced Darwin, the basis for Mac OS X. They also brought out related projects, including the Quicktime Streaming Server. This time, the complaint was "The License is Bad!"
So they revised the APSL, satisfying some but not others. So people started complaining that the Quicktime client wasn't available for Linux. And that's where we are right now.
So what's the response going to be if there is a Quicktime for Linux? That it or some of its codecs (which Apple mostly doesn't own) aren't Open Source? That the license still sucks? That [insert rant here]? Will people finally respect the company? Or is the truth that they just don't like the name "Apple?"
There are those who think that complaining will get them far in life. I'm not saying that everyone should just be satisfied and never ask for more than they have (although it is good to count your blessings), but Apple's not the type of company that can be "pushed around." Neither are its customers who are still somewhat defensive after years of being bashed by the rest of the computing world. So tone it down a bit, I have far more respect for a debate than a shouting match.
By the way, I think it's interesting to note that the Quicktime format is the basis for MPEG-4, which like all the other MPEGs is a standard for everyone to adopt. At the very least, MPEG-4 players for Linux won't even be a question.
-Rafi Remove the Spanish to email me.
that they licensed some component of quicktime , a codec or a technology or whatever from some other company who is not as opensource friendly as apple ..
Apple won't release a binary Sorenson codec for one reason: Apple believes in ruthless control of the user experience. If they can't make you deal with their RealThings-inspired QuickTime player (a bad idea if there ever was one), they won't let you watch their format. I mean xanim's no great prize either in terms of usability, but the QT4 interface is just confusing.
I'm not ordinarily an Apple critic, but they have to let go of this kind of jealous guarding of the UI. If their UI is really superior, it will win (all other things being equal, which I grant they are not). It's the same principle as security through obscurity - it gets proven time and time again that it's a Bad Idea, but nobody buys a clue.
Right...
Take the appropriate DLLs from the Windoze codecs and write an xanim wrapper pluggable codec around the (original) codec? If we're really lucky, somebody forgot to strip out the symbol table and then things should be quite easy.
Of course, it might be much easier to just to get Wine to run it instead.
Cyano
Don't like my sig? I don't either.
It is only a wrapper around the native QT support on the platform. You don't get a 100% pure java implementation.
One of the things I /really/ don't like about QT is that you don't download the actual product from their anonymous sites. You can only download an "installer" executable. They won't be opensourcing it for this reason, I'll bet.
:-)
Running the installer then prompts you for what extras you want, connects you to Apple, retrieves what you've asked for, uploads fsck-only-knows what kinds of information, and drops the programs and registry entries directly in place.
If you have a dozen machines to install, you have to download it from Apple each time. If you're behind a firewall or completely isolated, you can't put your favorite utilities on a CD and take them with you. Wherever you go, you must always connect to Apple's sites to re-download the same thing.
(If anyone knows of a way to capture the real installation binary (you know, a setup.exe), I'd love to hear about it. I doubt that they'll be opensourcing QT because then we'd immediately disable this and Apple couldn't keep as close a tab on us.)
Just my paranoid two timeslices.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Select the disk and hit Cmd-e, out it pops.
So, you're saying that the primary reason for not porting a Quicktime player to Linux is to preserve OS-X sales? Just because I can't play .MOV files on Linux, I am going to choose OS-X over Linux?
C'mon, thats crazy. I could just boot into the included MacOS to play my movies, and boot right back into Linux when I'm done.
Apple gives away its Quicktime player and plugin for free, it obviously doesn't make money on that. It makes its money on the compression and authoring tools, and don't you think they'd want to try and develop as large a user base as possible for it?
At first blush this sounds like a really cool idea!
Until a new form of monetary exchange is invented however, this isn't really feasible. Once his credit charge is converted into cash (or some non-corporeal form thereof) there is no way of enforcing his restrictions.
There's another problem; can you imagine billions upon billions of dollars simply disappearing into the unknown? This would happen if the collective restrictions of each person who uses them along the way pile up... Eventually there would be no permissible use for the money. Example: Bob gives Sally a dollar that must be spent on research and development. Sally spends it at lsl.com buying the latest copy of her favorite Linux distribution, but forces them to spend it on food. Presto! The intersection of R&D and food is null. The dollar has vaporized.
People might also just set up clearinghouses to exchange restricted dollars for non-restricted ones. You have a "food" dollar, Kim needs food. She gives you her "computer hardware" dollar in exchange for your "food" dollar.
Moreover, this actually makes the value of money mutable. Certainly a "food" dollar is worth more than a "spinach" dollar! Imagine the confusion this would breed!
I like the idea, though... Perhaps there are more practical applications for it...
I have the full length of this music video on my HD in QT4 using Sorenson Video and Qdesign-2 for the audio. As far as frame quality, they are very similar. I have to look carefully to see the difference. The biggest difference is the QT4 version is 12fps, however, it does it in 30kBytes/sec. Looks like the Sorenson does a good job as well when it is done right.
You see? It's like I've always said. You can get more with a kind word and a 2x4 than you can with just a kind word.
I think we could say the same about the Microsoft Media Player as well. More and more sites are using Media player as their streaming media of choice and I feel that the UNIX users are getting left out because of this trend....but I did hear that Realnetworks licensed the format from Microsoft. How long before we get to see a RealPlayer streaming Microsoft Media format on Linux?
...
.movs, and streaming Quicktime in real time.
IIRC, Apple does not own ALL of Quicktime. The Sorensen codec (the most important one, BTW), is a private, propietary codec that Apple LICENSES from the Sorenson people.
Sorenson is the codec that gives us the astounding quality of the recent Star Wars trailer
Quicktime without Sorenson? May as well settle for realplayer... that'd be going back to Qutcktime version 2 or something.
We need to petition Sorenson to open the codec, *NOT* Apple! If Apple DID release the QT source, they'd either have to exclude Sorenson (a waste, really), OR they'd expose themselves to tremendous lawsuits (don't count on them being this stupid). This will not change until Sorenson changes the terms of THEIR license.
So, until Sorenson opens up.... don't count on Quicktime for Linux, Unix, or anything else.
BTW:
All of the above applies ONLY to the QT MoviePlayer. Quicktime as a whole constitutes a LOT more than just the player. Read the developer guides sometime. It's really quite nifty.
I doubt, even if Sorenson DOES open their codec, that we'll EVER see ALL of Quicktime open sourced. In doing so, Apple would essentially be handing a tremendous amout of technology to gates and his cronies, free of charge. I doubt that'll ever happen.
john
Imagine all the people...
MacOS X, Apple's next OS, is basically Apple's APIs and GUI on top of BSD Unix, with a Mach microkernel. Apple has already released as open course the Mach and BSD core of OS X, calling it Darwin. You can start here for more information.
Apple does not have to port Quicktime to Linux. All they have to do is allow the code to become open source and you know someone will pick up the project.
People have been waiting a long time for a *nix version of Quicktime, they'll jump at the chance. hell if I had the time I would take on the project aswell.
Quicktime is actually a great format, small and more compact then AVI.
Just have one suggestion, please someone come out with a Full Screen, that works like Media Player! Right now it sucks.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
<analogy>I take a liter of air (which is free), and offer to give it to you free. Does this make me a wonderful guy, or just a huckster?</analogy>
As far as I can tell, Apple is taking the sweat of the open source movement, and profiting from it without returning anything. Times like this I feel that RMS is right about the BSD license.
As for Sorensen saying Apple prevents them from releasing the codec: this just sounds like standard run-around to me: "Apple says we can't release this, sorry, talk to them." "It's Sorensen's codec, talk to them!"
Sorry, but I'll beleive Apple really supports open source when they start walking the walk, not just talking the talk.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Apple sues developers for implementing a stripped down version of mpeg compression? I don't particularly think that will happen.
So is Quicktime not Apples product? So in other words an email campaign to Apple may not really do anything. Also, is it against the license to use a Win/Mac machine to play the stream, record it to VHS, and then recapture it as an MPEG or something else?
Windows Media is avialable on more than just Windows. There is a Windows Media Player for Macintosh (by Microsoft) that works fairly well, but it only plays streaming Windows Media and can not play a locally saved file. I have it installed on my G4, but I rarely use it.
Why is it that the PC way is the "intuitive" way? After all, we've had Macintosh computers around almost as long as IBM-based PC's.
You want to read up on MacOS X, due to ship sometime this summer. http://www.apple.com/macosx
--
Donald Roeber
Donald Roeber
Generating 2048 Bits of Randomness...
From someone who's hacked his way through the jungle of QT4 for Windows, it just seems like Apple is trying to figure out how far to go and when.
Apple didn't give QT to Windows users for free, they got Bill to pay them for it plus guarantee Office for the Mac. But the other side of the coin is that Quicktime for Windows includes a huge part of the MacOS. You can execute a ton of toolbox calls inside Windows programs, up to where Windows' inferiority just makes it ridiculous to push farther (which is how far we got). Thousands and thousands of pages of Apple's CD based encyclopedic documentation was required reading. Needless to say it is an extremely broad media layer, basically all the semantic structure you need to describe most any kind of media.
If Apple wants to bring a broader Unix development community in they at least have to provide player binaries. But this wouldn't make much sense since it would just be slaking the end-user's thirst without providing any meat.. Yet providing QT libraries for Linux would probably enable anything based on QT to be developed without Apple hardware.
My guess is they definitely wouldn't want to do anything before making a big splash with their own BSD system, after which they will do their best to attract serious developers to their platform and focus first on building more tools to ensure their platform remains the ideal one for development and serving. Apple will never open source all of Quicktime. But there might be a percentage in it for them if Apple does release binaries of the libraries at the same time as the Unix player app.. that is, you have to have *all* the libraries to run the movie player. It might drag a bunch of momentum away from people involved in other graphic and music oriented Linux projects for one thing, build tons of good will, and possibly make Apple hardware and code an important basis for future Linux development.
That said do people think Apple finds RedHat an enemy or would they be willing to build a RedHat-only binary QT distro ofr say $150M like they did for Gates?
Oh yeah forgot to say, there's a bit more to video compression than delta encoding.. anyway last two cents Apple would profit by getting more developers into QT than non-QT projects if Linux libraries were released asap.
You need some valium.
The abovementioned link to "Quicktime for Linux" is nothing more than a reverse-engineered application wrapper that duplicates the functionality of Quicktime -- minus the Sorenson, and all other proprietary, non-Open Source codecs. Cool thought, but no banana...
sorensen, fwih, requiers 2d hardware accell, which xanim doesn't support. also, it isn't apple's to give away. they're licensing it from someone else. intel also has their own closed codecs (i263, etc), despite their influx of $$$ into the linux world.
What idiot marked this up as informative?
There is nothing that even comes close to Quicktime4 for streaming video. Also, avi is much closer to a gif. Mpg is more like a jpg. it's a good compressed format, but pretty much requires hardware compression.
Also the MPEG-4 standard is quicktime 4.
Repeat after me: I will not moderate as informative if I don't know shit about the subject.
---CONFLICT!!---
Apple can't open-source Sorenson; it's not Apple's product. Also, the Windoze version of Quicktime required porting a major subset of the MacOS toolbox to Windoze.
The best solution is probably to release the codecs in binary form (precompiled for many platforms) as suggested.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
God dammit I forgot to my tag.... sorry.
Actually, I meant more that any way to port QT to linux would be good for Aple... not necessarily open source, a binary player would be equally good.
If Apple released a QuickTime viewer under any license/method, it would drastically improve their market share. Consider the following: we all know the problems Real has beeen having lately (a-la-privacy), and the MSFT player ONLY runs on Windows. With a *NIX port QuickTime would perhaps re-gain some of its market--share lost to the Windows Media PLayer platform.
My gripe is still with QuickTime for making this stupid "stream-only" option possible. My gripe is also with QuickTime for providing horribly inadequate buffering options. There is no "download entire file, then watch" option anymore because pausing no longer pauses playback (allowing stream to continue caching), pausing now pauses the stream itself.
.ASX files?) and RealMedia (standalone player, locked up nice and tight) are not. Sooner or later QT is bound to go that direction just so there will be something stopping someone from writing something like Streambox VCR.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
And, while QT may use RTSP and RTP, I'm pretty sure Windows Media (that mms:// crap you see inside
In the meantime, any brilliant media buffs want to write a utility that can intercept a media stream and re-direct it to disk, so that it can later be converted into MPEG-1?
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
...the way QT4 now forces this streaming-only policy on you. Same with Windows Media player. It used to be you could watch the file in choppy fashion while it downloads, then save it locally and watch it without skips.
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
Gone are those days. Now both QT4 and ASF files will only stream live from the site. So if you have a cable modem connection (fast, but goes in bursts) and you want to watch the 300K stream...you can't because it skips the whole time. You can't just download the whole damn file and play it locally. Instead, you have to make do with the 128K stream.
Sick, sick, sick. There used to be a program that could intercept the video information (either from some cache file somewhere or perhaps watching the video buffers?) and reroute it to a local file in your choice of format. This mean that any streaming media (RM, QT, ASF) could be saved locally as whatever you want (namely MPG).
The program was Streambox VCR. I reinstalled Windows for the umpteenth million time last year and discovered that Streambox had been sued by RealMedia and stopped offering their products, including VCR. So no more VCR.
Then, most puzzling of all, three months after winning the lawsuit, there is STILL no Streambox VCR.
Does anyone still have the installer file for this most-valuable tool? Please mirror it or put it in your sig or something. I hate streaming media and plus, as a consumer, my fair use rights are in question. What's the biggest advantage that MPG has over QT, ASF, and RM? The fact that it is the standard for VCDs. Which means it is the ONLY format that I can watch on my spiffy 50"/DSS home entertainment system instead of the crappy 17"/CompUSA speakers computer setup.
Until some company can pressure ISO into declaring a book format based around their QT/ASF/RM formats so I can watch it on a home entertainment player, MPG is all I'm interested in.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
There's a good reason why Apple won't want to port QT to Linux -- Linux the biggest threat to them, and other small market share OSes. Linux is arguably a bigger threat to MacOS than to Windows, because Windows has the advantage of widespread compatibility.
If a Windows developer is thinking about porting to a new platform, Apple desperately wants them to port it to MacOS, but lately a lot of ports have been made to Linux instead, and Apple must be steaming mad. The FreeBSD-ish MacOS X may help that I suppose, but it's still a major problem for Apple. I don't really think that there is much more room in the world for two platforms -- it's too much work for developers. And I think Apple sees Linux as a serious threat to their #2 spot.
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
And here's why: 1) Its a video codec, codex scream licence, licence screams proprietary (in this case). 2) The macintosh is bathed in quicktime enhancements. In fact that is really one of the HUGE selling points of the macintosh.. quicktime. Why would it give up its homecourt advantage to a rogue like linux? No real advantage 3) There are certain things by which opening the code of a previously closed source app would expose major segments of information. (The code perhaps is really crappy.) The paradigm shift would be hard across the board. Why not open source MacOS? Why not open source sherlock technologies? Its not in their best interest. At ALL. 4) Apple is short on manpower now, from what i hear. my .02 --jay
Where do you get your numbers when you state that there are more than twice as many Linux users as there are Mac users? I would like to read that with my own eyes cheers sternn
I think Apple is already thinking about how to get QT on other platforms (besides Mac OS and Windows). I think their answer will be QuickTime for Java. With QT 4.1, Java applets can now make calls to the QuickTime sub-system. I don't know how much of the API is available through Java, but this will most likely be how Apple achieves true cross-platform support. Check out the QuickTime for Java book for more info..
As to Apple having a QT player with an X (as in X Window, not Mac OS X) interface floating around, that is very unlikely. Apple's GUI for OS X will be there own vector based Quartz. Apple will not officially be supporting X Windows on Mac OS X (although John Carmak has ported XFree86 to Mac OS X).
One last thing, the Sorenson codec is not Apple's to Open Source, it is licensed from a third-party, as are many parts of QuickTime. This of course, would be a major hinderance to Open Sourcing QuickTime.
My understanding was that A/UX was Apple's first experiment with the Mach kernel. Predating MkLinux by quite a bit.
Yep thats right. An A/UX home page has all you'd want to know about this 'Mac compatible' UNIX... Someday I'd love to try it out... The FAQ also mentions that MachTen (A UNIX running on top of the MacOS as opposed to Mac emulation on UNIX a la A/UX) utilized the Mach kernel, but it was published by Tenon not by Apple. Interesting. Well, to me anyway. :)
I agree -- a few well-spaced - er, placed -
's would have allowed me to actually read the comment without just scrolling down.
If they do put together a player for linux can they please use a better UI? I'm sorry but I really can't stand the way quicktime for windows looks. The thumbwheel for volume, the pull down thing, its so anti-intuitive. I'd much rather have a simple easy interface that isn't so cluttered and silly.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Perhaps it is time to switch to decaf?
There ia a lot more to Quicktime than the Sorenson codec. However it is an important element that it cannot function without. It is rather expensive to license which could be what's delaying cross platform development.
For all we know, Apple has a long term deal with them dating back several years when the number of prospective users was less. If they try to renegotiate now, it could cost them big bucks.
Sorta like what happens when a TV network hires a cast for a show that becomes a hit and the contract is up for renewal or renegotiation.
BTW- QT4 for OS X is not written as a POSIX app, but rather Carbon, which does not make it any easier to portm as I have seen mentioned.
Are you sure it's Carbon? I thought it was Cocoa/YellowBox... (Isn't QT running on OSX Server right now?)
I don't know about OS X Server, but the OS X version will be done in Carbon. It will save development time since it will work on MacOS 9 equipped systems as well.
I am not sure about the QT capabilities of OS X Server, the last time I checked you <b>needed</b> a seperate Mac to do development work. I believe it supplies only rudimentary features other than serving.
In the "Client" version of OS X, <B>Server 2.0</B> will be supplied as an add-on pack which will provide services for Web/FPT/Quicktime/WebObjects serving running on the base "consumer" OS as <B>Appleshare IP</B> is now. I assume they will remain Cocca apps. There isn't any problem with half of QT being Carbon and the other half being Cocca. Apparently the two environments communicate quite well with each other in the DPs and probably much better in the final version.
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
OK, Apple owns the exclusive rights to Sorenson codec. Why should they support a Linux version? It would cost them big to support it (if they just released a crud filled binary to the community they would be shat upon). Open source it you ask?? They don't own the codec! Third note, Apple is about to release their own version of unix in OSX and they are busting their butts to debug QT for that. Hopefully once they have a solution to the former problem (OSX compatibility) the linux port will soon follow. Before that I see no chance of QT for linux/unix.
no sig.
My complaint about Apple Computers I realize that everyone is entitled to his opinion, and I respect this. I also hope that you will all respect mine as you read this letter. There are a number of reasons Apple Computers isn't telling us as to why it wants to parlay personal and political conspiracy theories into a multimillion-dollar financial empire. In this letter, I will expose those reasons one-by-one, on the principle that as commonly encountered, unruly boeotians lack any of the qualities that mark the civilized person, like courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, and confidence. None but the hideous can deny that Apple Computers seems to think that it is right and everybody else is wrong. What conclusion should we draw from Apple Computers's proposed social programs? How about that the long-term consequences of Apple Computers's comments are rarely examined, let alone subjected to scientific scrutiny? What if we collectively just told Apple Computers's cronies, "Sure, go ahead and inject its lethal poison into our children's minds and souls. Have fun!"? That would be worse than vainglorious; it would descend to character assassination and name calling. By the same token, Apple Computers's method (or school, or ideology -- it is hard to know exactly what to call it) goes by the name of "Apple Computers-ism". It is a lackadaisical and avowedly power-hungry philosophy that aims to undermine serious institutional and economic analyses and replace them with a diverting soap opera of paltry unstable conspiracies. When a political condition of greed, massive corruption, and diversity of objective is coupled to a social condition of drugs, violence, and discontent, therein exists the perfect environment for Apple Computers to gain a respectable foothold for its prissy claims. It is better to be a little old-fashioned, but honest and loyal, than enlightened and modern, but shiftless and incomprehensible. However much Apple Computers may deny it, we've all heard it yammer and whine about how it's being scapegoated again, the poor dear. As we organize our campaigns against unsympathetic snobs and formulate responses to their rhetoric, it is critical that we supply the missing ingredient that could stop the worldwide slide into materialism. This conviction of mine is as firm as a rock. If you understand that the first casualty of Apple Computers's agendas is justice, then you can comprehend that Apple Computers wants nothing less than to limit the terms of debate by declaring certain subjects beyond discussion, hence its repeated, almost hypnotic, insistence on the importance of its phlegmatic tirades. Apple Computers's lackeys are often caught trying to adopt approaches that have not been tested to try to solve problems that have not been well-defined. Of course, they deny this, but we all know full well that the last time Apple Computers reached into its bag of dirty tricks, it pulled out a scheme to cast the world into nuclear holocaust. Apple Computers does not desire to benefit humanity, but rather to intensify or perpetuate frotteurism. While some information provided by Apple Computers's henchmen may be factual, other material is unsubstantiated rumor or evil rodomontades. I don't have time to go into this in as much detail as I should, but when Apple Computers was first found trying to make bargains with the devil, I was scared. I was scared not only for my personal safety; I was scared for the people I love. And now that Apple Computers is planning to twist the truth, I'm downright terrified. I almost forgot: It's a sad world where power-drunk poltroons have the power to denigrate and discard all of Western culture. Perhaps Apple Computers received its information (or rather, misinformation) from late-night television programs and "B" movies. Would we, as thinking people, believe ignoramuses who tried to tell us we're all putrid? I say "no." This screams of the old belief that uninformed deadheads are merely bitter diabolic slanderers. This implies that a critical reevaluation of some of Apple Computers's quips would be beneficial. Sometimes, what you don't know can hurt you. I am not making a generalization when I say that for the time being, this is not a major issue. The dynamics of the situation are such that Apple Computers is against everything and for nothing. The cardinal rule of Apple Computers's doctrines is that catty irresponsible revisionism is the only thing that matters. Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of superficial Apple Computers clones. Here, too, the exception proves the rule: It's considerations of this sort that make it worth our while to learn about the irascible things Apple Computers is up to. Better, far better, that Man were without the gift of speech than that he use it as Apple Computers does. Better that Man could neither read nor write than have his head and heart perverted by the militant and loathsome tommyrot that oozes from Apple Computers's pen. And better that the cut of Man's coat and the number of his buttons were fixed by statute and enforced by penalties than that Apple Computers should block streets and traffic to the extent that ambulances can't get through. Because of Apple Computers's screeds, our schools simply do not teach the basics anymore. Instead, they preach the theology of ruthless clericalism. To those readers who believe that two wrongs make a right, you have not been paying attention. Apple Computers believes that freedom must be abolished in order for people to be more secure and comfortable. Wrong again! The pragmatist position is that everyone knows of the lust and driving passion that has caused this problem. Please let me explain that questionable statistics, pseudo-scientific studies, and biased reports paint pictures of virulent worlds inhabited by the most raucous hermits you'll ever see. Apple Computers's offhand remarks reflect an era in which cultures or attitudes different from one's own were dealt with through violence and mistrust. History offers innumerable examples for the truth of this assertion. Apple Computers's assistants carry out orders like puppets obeying the puppeteer. The most libidinous hooligans I've ever seen don't really want me to make Apple Computers's biased modes of thought understood, resisted, and made the object of deserved contempt by young and old alike, although, of course, they all have to pay lip service to the idea. Apple Computers's writings are one of those things that will turn over our country to officious junkies (especially the dangerous type). A number of arrogant desperados have succumbed to excessive drug use, alcoholism, and other addictive behavior indicating maladaptive mechanisms. Apple Computers says it's not insolent, but it's decisively soporific, and that's essentially the same thing. There are two main flaws with Apple Computers's tricks: 1) Apple Computers's helpers suspect that the masses are empty-headed and unfit for citizenship, and 2) under the label of "abusive" are those who, like Apple Computers, disguise the complexity of color, the brutality of class, and the importance of religion and sexual identity in the construction and practice of chauvinism. You may not understand this now, and I don't fault you for that, but I didn't want to talk about this. I really didn't. But there should be a law against this. Where does the line get drawn? It is deeply unfortunate that Apple Computers and its toadies are wolves in sheep's clothing who will treat anyone who doesn't agree with Apple Computers to a torrent of vitriol and vilification by the next full moon, since I call this phenomenon "Apple Computers-ism". Might I suggest that Apple Computers search for a hobby? It seems it has entirely too much time on its hands, given how often it tries to violate the basic tenets of journalism and scholarship. Let me leave you with one last thought: Apple Computers's wheelings and dealings are nothing shy of a slap in the face to all those who have fought and fallen in war for this country.
This is almost humorous to me as to why this article is posted. As a long time user of OS/2 I remember when people were lobbying Apple to make a QuickTime player for OS/2. IBM sanctioned a port and then *poof* it disappeared. This happened because Apple isn't completely stupid. Quicktime is an awesome CODEC and it's technology SHOULD be highly guarded and its intellectual property protected. This is very, very simple business. People will buy Macintoshes because of technology like this.
The point is that Apple will never port Quicktime to Linux because Linux+Quicktime would eliminate the need to run OS/X+QuickTime. Having Quicktime on Windows is not a problem on two fronts. First of all, Windows will never run on a Macintosh so Apple's hardware is safe. And secondly Apple will be able to gain marketshare without the worry of having Microsoft "absorb" there Quicktime technology into Windows Media player as long as it is not opensourced and available to everyone. Opensourcing OS/X is not a very big deal at all. I mean, who cares? Not Microsoft sonce there are already tons of OS's that run on both Intel and PowerPC so what's another version of Unix to them? Opensourcing Quicktime is something completely different all together. This is Apple's ONLY stronghold left in the market. Plus, once Apple lets out a binary on Linux some jackass would try to reverse engineer it in the name of "OSS" and the whole free world and then Apple would never, ever try it again and it would ruin it for us all. So, let's stop complaining to Apple about Quicktime. It's not going to happen. Apple doesn't like us, period. Unless their intellectual property can be preserved and it makes really, really good business sense to them and it's not going to help Linux to take over OS/X on their own hardware then just maybe we'll see Quicktime on Linux. Good luck.
Funny -- MPEG-4 is based on Quicktime.
Not quite the whole story. Apple and Sorenson entered into a mutually beneficial exclusive licensing agreement. Therefore the contract between the companies won't let them, not Apple. And it's not like Sorenson is itching to get out of the contract; in fact, they could hardly ask for a better deal..
Pros:
Apple: gets a monopoly on the best codec out there.
Sorenson: gets their codec installed on most of computers in the world.
Cons:
Apple: licensing fees.
Sorenson: can't use codec outside of Quicktime.
Seems like a pretty sweet deal to me.
So the only way to get Sorenson is to have Apple commit to Quicktime for Linux. In this discussion people have already laid out why this is highly unlikely (Quicktime is a LOT more than just the silly player app).
You're probably right - I forgot about A/UX.
Every Mac ever built with a floppy drive will attempt to boot from a floppy if there is one in there first. If the floppy is non-bootable, it auto-ejects it and looks for something else to boot from, usually whatever has been set as the boot-device in PRAM.
While I agree that dragging the disk into the trash is not the best way to impliment the metaphor, I have not known any people who have trouble with this concept once it is explained to them. (And I have tought many people how to use MacOS.)
Yes. MacOS X (pronounced "ten" not "ex") is based on BSD running on top of the Mach microkernel. Apple's first major experiment with Mach was MkLinux, which Apple has since abandoned. The Mach+BSD part is called Darwin. It's free an open source. Darwin is a complete OS in its own right, and can run by itself. It has no GUI, though John Carmack has written a port of XFree to work with it. The rest of MacOS X is closed-source. It includes Quartz, which is a way-cool completely vector-based display engine for the GUI. It has Cocoa, a native Java API, Carbon, really left over from Rhapsody, which allows classic apps to quickly take advantage of OS X features. The classic MacOS 9 environment can boot in a window as a single process, and you can run classic apps side by side with OS X apps (rootless, as it were.) More info about the higher-level stuff is available at Apple's MacOS X site.
Are you insane? Its pretty simple. If Bob doesnt like some of the restrictions in the products then he shouldnt buy it, buy a competitors, or not by any ebook at all.
The US's entire economy is comprised of something called 'free' enterprise. A company can do whatever it wants with the money it 'earns' froms its products. Ironically what you are proposing is probably the worst possible outcome for the customer. If companies spend their money how customers would want them to spend it, then there would be no innvocation, no pride, or dedication to their work. This is digusting Ill top now.
Could you provide the comparison from which you have drawn this conclusion please? Also, I would be interested to find out how you define "picture quality". I've never tried Sorenson, but I've played around with Indeo5 and MPEG-1, and I think I've come to the conclusion that MPEG-1 is better than Indeo5 for most purposes, Indeo5 is at least not good enough to justify its existence. First of all, MPEG-1 has parameters to adjust, which Indeo5 doesn't (does Sorenson?). Also, Indeo5 always has irritating artifacts. MPEG-1 can get artifacts if you choose good compression parameters, but you can also remove them. Could you tell me more about Sorenson, so I can see why MPEG-1 is not good enough, especially since its open? Maybe we can decide on some data, and you (or someone else) get to encode it with Sorenson, and I with MPEG-1, and then we can make some comparisons.
Thanks for the info. Some of the relevant information is here. The Sorenson codec seems to use the same methodology as MPEG-1, with some slight detail differences. It would be very interesting to see some experimental results though. It seems a lot of companies are deliberately choosing proprietary codecs, even though MPEG-1 is much better (the early AVI and QuickTime codecs for example, and maybe even the later codecs as well), so I think some suspicion is healthy. For example, I think Sorenson is only available for QuickTime and not AVI, thus Apple can leverage this proprietary codec to use their player, and push the QuickTime name. Wasn't some version of the Star Wars trailer only available as Sorenson/QuickTime?
As many others have pointed out, most of these codecs are not Apple's to give away. Sorenson is one of the best ones. A truly amazing codec. But Apple does not have the power to do anything they may want with it. I do, however, truly hope that things turn around and they find a way of putting out Linux versions of their software. Also, as others have pointed out: I think it's going to happen. :) Your "crusade" is a very good effort, though. Keep up the good work. :)
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
Open source can bring great software from the big corporations too - and from the individual who sacrifices his valuable time to make a small project and later, maybe become a bigtime project. Hey, I'm sure the GNOME project started like that too!
Open Source has the potential of bringing better software and a better knowledge share.
Also, nothing stops these companies of making closed-source binaries..
But what does Apple get out of open-sourcing QuickTime?
--
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Quicktime is an Apple product, but there are a number of codecs that can live in it Motion-Jpeg, DV, Cinepack, Sorenson, etc. etc, even Indeo. The best of these for the vast majority of folks (and the one I use when I do a quicktime movie for distribution) is the Sorenson 2.1 codec.
I have a feeling that the problem lies more with Sorenson than with Apple. Sorenson regards their product as proprietary and thus not open source. Though not as user grumpy a company as Heuris, they extract a fair amount of cash out of you to encode using it. Its the best on the block for video of this sort so I guess I can't blame them.
While it would be trivial to put out a binary, they would then have to answer questions about it, and given the Linux marketshare (and revenue potential added to offset the work), Apple can't justify it economically.
Perhaps we can get an unsupported "Beta" binary ALA RealPlayer out of them, but I suspect even that would be tough. I've been using Apple since the ][+, but they seem to have a knack for ignoring customer demands for as long as possible.
It was thought that playing VQFs on Linux couldn't be done. Now there is a plugin that runs the windows DLLs using Wine, and all this as a plugion for XMMS. There is already Xanim (which would act as XMMS did in the VQF senario). We have quicktime for windows and Wine just might be able to run the important part of it. They onlything lacking is people that are trying to do it. We don't need no stinking Apples. I'm not going to try and force feed them the concept of opensource. If they don't want to make a QuickTime player for Linux, we'll all use the competition: RealPlayer. I dual boot Windows and Linux, so if there's a quicktime movie I want, I rip it to AVI then encode it using RealProducer+. Don't complain about no Windows Media support either. I can rip an ASF file into MPEG, then encode it to REALPLAYER format as well (or you can keep it as MPEG). If you would like more info on doing this, email me for the URL of the Howto site.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Maybe I need to get out less, but whats this Mac Unix stuff? Is the new MAC os somehow related to a un*x flavor? Can someone post a link to where I can read about it? The more detailed/tech. the better.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For those of you who don't like the stub installer, there is a standalone version available:
/
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/support
re: qt for unix/linux, I would bet that we'll see it eventually, but probably not until OS X is under control.
-- "" - Harpo Marx
QuickTime 4 still supports the ability to create and play back normal movies. If certain Web sites are only offering streaming then your gripe is with those sites, not with QuickTime.
Also, QuickTime uses the IETF standard RTSP and RTP protocols for streaming, so there's nothing stopping someone from writing something like Streambox VCR for QuickTime.
MPEG-4 uses the QuickTime file format (or maybe a modified version of it), but the audio and video coding layers are new.
Q: So to eject a floppy, you reboot your machine?
Surely there is an easier way?
A: yes In fact, there is. You drop it on the trashcan.
Q: But, um. wouldn't that DELETE ALL OF THE FILES?
A: No.
Q: Why not?
A: Because it doesn't.
Oh, yeah, I want QuickTime 4 for linux, also.
The neuter pronoun in English is "he"; get over it.
How many people have to suffer a harsh punishment before "cruel and unusual" returns zero?
Real Networks' real (pun intended) revenue stream is the server side. Quicktime could run at a loss, since its existence benefits the rest of Apple (MacOS market share, etc). A company will tolerate a loss in one area if it causes a greater gain in another. Heck they can also use the loss as a tax writeoff perhaps.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
If they can get a Unix server to stream the video and OS X is based on Unix, then certainly a Unix player can't be too far behind. I'g guessing a Linux version wouldn't be much further behind that.
_________________________________________
MPEG-1 isn't any more of less 'shitty' to work with then MPEG-2 file format wise. MPEG-2 is strikingly similar to MPEG-1 when it comes to a *non-constrained*, all things being equal type of encoding. Where MPEG-2 goes above and beyond are its ability for interlacing and some extensions in the system stream for more flexibility. It isn't, however radically different. The two streams byte for byte just have 'extensions' here and there for some added features. To keep somewhat focused you were referring to video editors and what they perfer to work with. Well both mpeg formats are still I, P, and B frames. And the seek method within an MPEG stream is very similar between the two so I don't think either is more efficient then the other.. *from a video editing standpoint* vect0rx
If only it were so easy to find that standard in detail on the web. That is merely an overview of MPEG-4. The actual in depth standard specification you have to buy from International Standards Organization. In the last two months I have been SCOURING the internet for MPEG specs. The closest I have come to attaining the information I was looking for was in berkeley's mpeg code. and other sources like Cornell's DALI Multimedia Virtual Machine. But you simply cannot find a page that tells you BIT-by-BIT MPEG-1 formatting. Try it. You might find a page of source code that you could cryptically intepret it. But ISO or someone has gone through great trouble to make online referrences dissapear I would imagine. The closest nitty gritty you can get to on MPEGs are a block-by-block diagram of how the stream is composed. But not header sizes or anything to that effect. Another good example which somewhat relates to MPEG is VideoCD. Sony and Philips hold the licenese to just about all of these specs (White Book being the one at handle). You can find information on what data/sector mode a VCD is written in. What time tracks the special first track ISO is written in. But someone find me a like to how the 'ENTRIES.VCD' file is laid out byte-by-byte. or INFO.VCD.. of Overlay graphic text.. or how to implement any of these features of VCD 2.0. Its not there.. your options: buy White Book for 200$ and sign an NDA -- which kills the prospect of opensource. vect0rx
They might have to release the sources to the Quicktime, because isn't Mac OS X going to have the ability to cross-compile things like tcsh from Unix, so might it be possible that they might release the source for it when OS X hits the shelves?
Yowza! That's the best digital video I've seen - and I've seen a lot. Got more?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Very un-shabby as a good MP3 stream is only half that. Good sound AND good video with only twice the bit rate...can't ask for more!
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Oops, cancel that. You meant BYTES per second, not BITS. Still, 16x the rate of MP3 isn't bad considering the good video.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Nah, all you need is a paperclip and you can screw up floppies on Macs too...
Besides, how many times have you shut off one machine and realized that there was a CD in the CD-ROM drive that you need for a different machine? (Or better, what I've done twice now - upgraded the CD-ROM drive and neglect to first remove the CD...)
Also, on PC's, where often the BIOS is set up to boot off floppy then harddrives, it can be very annoying if you can't eject the disk until after the boot process...
I honestly can't remember whether or not I had to be told how to eject a floppy from a Mac though... I never would have guessed dumping in the trash can though!
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Well, someone has to buy the stocks when they're high, otherwise you can't sell them and their price goes down... That just means he helped someone get some good IPO money!
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
They plan on riding QT's proprietary features to glory, leverage-wise. I don't think they'll open-source it, because they're so afraid of their competitors getting ahold of some of their coolest technologies and copying them.
.mov files, without penalty? Right now, QT is pretty much the only way to get high quality, relatively compact video, so they can fight the "Default" guys.
Now, under normal circumstances, this wouldn't be such a bad thing, but when was the last time you changed your player for some media type when you didn't have to? What would be the incentive to use QT if all the other folks out there could decode
Now, one might say that open-sourceing the code will give them all of open-source's advantages - but those won't even begin to matter because of the reasons above. No one on the client side cares about anything except playing that Halo trailer without having to go try and find a translation utility or swapping players.
That said, I do expect that BSD and Linux flavored QT players might be coming in the not-too-distant future - shortly after OS X, I predict. They want leverage on the authoring and server side - they know they can't move clients from Win or Linux to Apple just by withholding players.
At least, I hope they're not that stupid.
-N
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
http://freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/02/15/919133076 .html
Talk is cheap. Supply exceeds demand.
First of all, Apple doesn't own the codec, Sorensen Vision right here in Logan Utah does. Now the really interesting thing is, the codec is developed on linux/unix machines cross platform. Why they don't release the codec, even in binary format, is beyond me. Even if we simply had a library we could link to, that would be something!!!
IANAL... But I play one on
I think you're refering to the default Quicktime 4 Movie Player interface, and yeah. it's a pretty confusing and wasteful UI. Quicktime is a whole media layer, not just an app. I personally use Movie Player 3.0 from the Quicktime 3.0 distribution (atop an install of Quicktime 4.1). It's not the kludge it sounds to be, I just copied the app off of a machine of mine running 3.0. Works great, clean simple interface.
MPEG-1, when properlly compressed, looks just fine for me, and I can play it all over. Don't let some hax0r3d home-brew Video CD let you think that MPEG-1 is pure crud... take a look at an example of /good/ MPEG-1:
http://209.237.24.132/Onli neVideos/Myst/MystxM1M2264.mpg
Now the question is, what are the best Linux tools for working with MPEG-1?
I use a variety of platforms on a regular basis, and Flash/Shockwave on Windows isn't without its own problems. I swear Macromedia updates it hourly, so it's hard to pinpoint certain exact problem areas.
/long/ way, the latest version of Apple's MRJ Java VM, 2.2, is almost rock-solid, MUCH faster, and is even certified by Oracle for use with its Java developer tools.
MacOS Java has come a
Seeing how Apple is pushing Java as a lanuage for use for writting native Cococa MacOS X apps, I'd imagine future Java support won't be too much of a slouch, either.
... and yep, Simple Text still plays Quicktime movies, all Quicktime movies (provided Quicktime 4 is installed). Maybe everyone needs a lesson about how Quicktime 4 is a framework and an engine, not a simple all-in-one-decoder-player app (kinda like Real Player).
http://209.237.24.132/OnlineVideos/Myst/MystxM1M22 64.mpg
As long as you have the rest of Quicktime 4 installed (the CODECs, the support files, libs, etc), just run some older app that supports Quicktime. I don't know how easy this is to do under Windows, but on the MacOS one can even use SimpleText to play Quicktime movies.
I'm not saying "install Quicktime 2.5/3.0 atop 4". You see, Quicktime is a media layer, an engine, a framework. The default included Movie Player 4 is not the -end all, must use it- player. You can use any recent application that supports Quicktime (think Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, MovieShop, etc). What you need to do if you want to play Quicktime movies on Quicktime 4 without /the application/ Movie Player 4 is to find the "Movie Player 3" application and just run it rather than Movie Player 4.
Maybe I wasn't too clear. You certainly want to have all of the guts of 4 installed, but rather than use Movie Player 4 to play your files, use some other application. In this case, Movie Player 3.
By the way, you don't need any special files to run Movie Player 3 atop Quicktime 4. Just be sure you have Quicktime 4 installed, then just bring over the single Movie Player 3 app.
As far as the popups, it should get rid of those. The "Pro" version of Quicktime 4 just means "Pro" features for the Movie Player, image viewer, and Netscape/Internet Explorer plugins. There are no added features to the engine.
I never really understood why folks did that. One of the lab administrators here at my university does just that, he keeps the "Installer Cache" file. There's really no need for that, as Apple has always had "stand-alone" installers available (though sometimes a week behind the 'interactive install' version). I recently updated to Quicktime 4.1 on my PC and PowerBook, adds a few features, not much else. Here's a trick for Mac users (may work for Windows, but I haven't tried it): get a copy of the Quicktime Player from Quicktime 2.5 or 3.0 if you don't like the big, brushed-steel look of 4.0's default player. Works like a charm.
Huh? Apple has always had a stand-alone installer available. Qucktime 4.1 for Windows and MacOS is available here:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/dow nload/support/
You still have to fill out some information first, but it'll let you download the full, "real" installer (one that doesn't require an internet connection to install). This download is web-based, however... I'm not sure if they have it on their FTP site, I'll look into it.
>> Looks like somebody is upset 'cuz >>they lost out on buying stock for $200 a share >>before it dropped to $80. > It's a lot better to buy at $80 and >sell at $200. Your grasp of finance appears to be >shaky. This from someone who can't seem to tell they were implying you lost money?? That and the idea that shareholder value is the only value worth considering in any moral calculus make you a pitiful excuse for a human being. And another thing why do you insist on misspelling Torvald[e]s?
Everything's been downhill since the TRS-80
There was once a time when Quicktime as well as MPEG were cross platform, now we only have MPEG without the advantages of the advances made in the newer CODECs.
Don't confuse "cross-platform" with "runs on Linux". QuickTime is cross-platform, it just happens that the platforms involved are classic Mac OS, Mac OS X and Windows.
Now that Apple has embraced Open Source, could Quicktime be on its way... if they don't want the cost and headache of supporting an additional product for the last 15% of so of the market
In this context, Linux is very far from 15% of the market. This context is the market of desktop machines. The majority of machines running Linux are still servers. This is not the market for QuickTime (client). Has anyone seen reliable figures for the Linux desktop installed base? I'd guess its 1-2% Macintosh desktop installed base (not market share) is closer to 10%
For servers, the QuickTime Streaming Server is an open source project that has been ported to Linux.
They can release the Sorenson CODEC in binary form using that API and let the Open Source process go the rest of the way towards enabling Linux to play QuickTime 4.
QuickTime is much more than just a single codec. It is a complete architecture for playing back a wide variety of multimedia. It has feature like QuickTimeVR. It has the QuickTime sprites format that allows complex scripted interactivity. It has a complete MIDI-based music architecture. It has a full runtime visual effects architecture. It is a huge and powerful visual and temporal processing engine. A lot of web sites use QuickTime in the place of, for example, Flash. Porting QuickTime to Linux is very far from a trivial task.
There's a better solution, though: Darwin is based on BSD UNIX; Apple is now full of UNIX developers. You can't convince me that there isn't already a version of the QT player with an Xwindows GUI compiled and floating around inside Apple;
I may not be able to convince you, because you clearly have made up your mind already, but its true. Mac OS X does not have an X Windows component. It uses its own graphics/windowing layer called Quartz. Apple does not have an X-based QuickTime player.
Note as well, that the QuickTime Player is just one application that uses QuickTime. It is not QuickTime. QuickTime is an extensive system-level library that includes all the functionality described above. QT Player is just a small app. that Apple includes with the standard QuickTime install.
The absence of a UNIX player in that kind of development environment just doesn't make sense. So how close is it to release?
Apple have already shown a Mac OS X QuickTime Player. It is a Carbon app. Carbon is Apple's classic Mac OS 9 system libraries running on top of Quartz and Darwin. A carbonized application has no relationship to an X application. There really isn't any X-related development work happening on the QuickTime team.
The complete QuickTime architecture cost Apple hundreds of millions of dollars to develop. There is a huge team of engineers at Apple working full time (and more) on this technology. It is way more than just video playback. Apple have already ported this once to another platform (Windows) and that was a task that took many hundreds of engineer-years to complete.
The chances of Apple spending similar efforts to port it to Linux, while Linux's share of the desktop market is so small, are very low. The chances of Apple open sourcing QuickTime are, in my opinion, even lower.
Sailing over the event horizon
They should moderate your post up for being funny.
/never/ makes /any/ representations of having a product worth buying in Linux. He's not part of the aforementioned companies, he just produces free software under the GPL, which clearly states there is no warranty of any kind, including the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a purpose. (to the extent permissable by applicable law, of course) For a living he works for chip manufacturer Transmeta. He doesn't sell Linux or make claims that it will necessarily do anything.
What does belong in server rooms?
Notice he refers to the companies only as LNUX and RHAT. Evidently there is nothing more to a Linux company than its ticker symbol. And apparently the value of technology is entirely the money it makes to investors.
Looks like somebody is upset 'cuz they lost out on buying stock for $200 a share before it dropped to $80. Yeah, you usually buy before it goes up and sell before it goes down. Don't blame the company.
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Oh, and Torvalds
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
By not releasing Quicktime for Linux, Apple
has (probably unintentionally) controlled
the method by which people can access their
product.
Along the lines of the earlier copyright
article (and 'fair use' laws), I say we
re-define what it means to be a product.
Today, a product or service
is typically composed of:
1 - Something that is desired by the consumer
2 - Resrictions on how that 'something' may
be used.
If we, as consumers, can't get companies to
stop including #2 as part of the 'product',
then we should at least be able to
place restrictions on how the companies use
our money (half tongue-in-cheek). Since customers
usually don't know what the restrictions will
be until they PURCHASE the product (a major
problem, imho), we should likewise be
able to place 'money usage' restrictions on
the companies from which we buy products.
Imagine this scenario:
- Bob buys an electronic book from
Barnes & Noble, along with the restriction
that he can only view it with certain
software and cannot print it out and
share it with his friends.
- Bob enters his 'encoded' credit card
information to pay for the book.
Barnes & Noble will be allowed to use
the money obtained ONLY in ways that
Bob has specifically encoded into
his credit card info.
Actually, refining this idea further
could be very interesting...hmmmm...
sgi IRIX boxes have been able to stream out quicktime 4 for quite a while using Kasenna MediaBase software. There is already a beta for Linux, scheduled to ship this summer. Problem is, neither IRIX or Linux can play the media, they can only stream it out! Believe me, sgi is interested to see Quicktime 4 playing on both IRIX/Linux.
I contacted s-vision (the people who make sorensen) about what would be required for a port of the codec (ie, to xanim, xmovie, etc) and this is what they sent back: [quote] Thank you for your question about Sorenson Video on unsupported OS platforms. Sorenson Vision has chosen to team up with Apple and their QuickTime product. Because of this, Sorenson Video is only available on supported QuickTime OS platforms. QuickTime is available for Mac OS , Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4. According to Apple, the next platform to be supported will be Mac OS X (including Mac OS X Server), which is Mach/BSD-based. If you're interested in QuickTime for platforms other than Mac or Windows, please contact your platform vendor and let them know that you would like them to license QuickTime from Apple. Once QuickTime is available on a platform, Sorenson Video will be there as well. Maybe you could talk Netscape into working with QuickTime on a simple player plugin? Alvin K. Ogles [unqote] as you can see, they aren't too enthusiastic about releasing sorensen to anyone unless they see pretty substantial support from apple first... perhaps a petition to RedHat or VALinux to license quicktime from Apple would yield results and prove that these companies are really not just here to make lots of money :)
`which fortune`