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10th Anniversary of Quicktime

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the something-to-think-about dept.

An anonymous reader submitted a story about the 10th anniversary of QuickTime which might not seem like such a big deal unless you set your mental wayback machine to 1991 and remember what we didn't have back then. Bits from Brian Eno and others. Worth reading.

3 of 412 comments (clear)

  1. 10 years and still no Open Source implementation by burtonator · · Score: 1, Troll

    OK.

    It has been 10 years since quicktime, most other codecs have been around for a while (MPEG, etc).

    There are a lot of misc implementations of quicktime, mpeg, etc. Most are mediocre at best. Certainly none are of the quality I expect from Open Source software.

    I mean even DVD support for Linux isn't that great (hi MPAA!).

    So what is the problem? Why can't we get a stable Open Source project that handles video, supports multiple codes, and is Open Source?

    Do I have to rely on the crossover plugin and the proprietary QuickTime on Linux? I hope not?

    Kevin

  2. An Article With Real Substance^H^H^H^H^H Bullshit by Lethyos · · Score: 2, Troll

    ``The amazing thing about Quicktime is that there was nothing like it before, and everything has been like it since,'' notes PBS commentator Robert X. Cringley. ``Look at the guts of Real Player or Windows Media Player, and you'll see structural copies of QuickTime.''

    Aside from the overblown technological utopianism in this article that would make Theodore Roszak (The Cult of Information) physically ill, we have this man's opinion. Robert X. Cringley, self declared cyber evangelist telling us that QuickTime is the end-all, be-all of ALL multimedia formats. Aside from the fact that he's always prone to blow things out of proportion, Cringley has very little technical knowledge, let alone an understanding of software strucutre (or "guts" as he puts it). (Note he completely ignores that most features found in QuickTime today such as streaming capability and portal functionality were derived from RealMedia's software.) Oh yes, QuickTime has brought about a revolution in digital media! It brought democracy to the web! And nobody has ever duplicated it or surpassed it since! Nonsense.

    This is all just foolishness and people need to calm down. It's a media format wrapper (not a codec like MPEG as most of these Slashfools are contending). That's all. QuickTime didn't start a revolution. It didn't change the world. And it certainly isn't the greatest thing in multimedia today. Similar technologies were being developed by a number of groups at the same time and we have equivalent if not better tools for producing and converging digital media today.

    --
    Why bother.
  3. Quicktime is such a pain because of its player by brunes69 · · Score: 1, Troll

    I mean, c'mon. How come we can run something as tightly tied into windows as Windows Media Player in wine with no problems, but we can't run QuickTime? It's mainly because Apple decided to design QT base don a non-standard toolkit, and make it's user interface a living hell. Not only that, but in windows it takes 3x as long to load as Windows media Player. I don't hate it as much as Real (Hello, bloatware / spyware!), but Apple really messed up awhile back, IMO.