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Apple Deprecating Quicktime For Windows, Micro Trends Urges Users To Uninstall (trendmicro.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the shhh-don't-tell-anyone dept.

harryjohnston writes: Usually when a vendor deprecates a software product and stops releasing security updates, they provide some sort of advance notice that they're intending to do so. The least we would expect is for them to announce an unexpected end-of-life themselves. However, Trend Micro released a security advisory today describing two zero-day vulnerabilities for Quicktime for Windows, and according to them, Apple told Trend Micro -- but apparently nobody else -- that they have deprecated Quicktime for Windows and will not be releasing a patch. The Register has an article on the announcement. Apple did not respond to their request for comment.

27 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Not the first time... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apple simply stopped updating Safari for Windows, no announcement or notice, just quietly stopped releasing updates.

    1. Re:Not the first time... by freeze128 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What's next, iTunes?

      Oh please, oh please, oh pleeeeease.....

    2. Re:Not the first time... by Overzeetop · · Score: 2

      Don't throw me into that brier patch!

      --
      Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    3. Re:Not the first time... by TheReaperD · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Flash is being depreciated and Adobe has already given a timeline for the discontinuation of the product so that companies that currently rely on it will be able to migrate to a different product with a minimum of hassle. Of course, many will still wait until after it is discontinued and they get hit by a horrendous attack to try and migrate. I have no sympathy for them.

      --
      "Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
    4. Re:Not the first time... by phishybongwaters · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Honestly, I wouldn't stop at their win apps, below the bells and whistles they layer ontop of the same OS they release every damn year, you'll see a trend of half-assed-ness that's beyond disgraceful. And I'm talking about their products on their platforms here. I'm not even talking about them purposefully gimping non apple software on apple devices (when MS did this, it was pure evil remember) and I'm not even mentioning the nasty certificate authority that was handing out forged certs for a bunch of google services that Apple decided to keep allowing while every other responsible company blocked the shit out of that CA. At this point, without a fundamental shift inside the company, I wouldn't even trust them with slapping skins on other peoples software.

    5. Re:Not the first time... by CrankyFool · · Score: 2, Informative

      Technically, Flash was first a Macromedia product. Adobe got Flash when it purchased Macromedia in the early 2000s.

      (Possibly few people will care about the distinction -- I worked at Macromedia at the time, and Adobe was considered our singular nemesis, so I ... kinda like to remind people Adobe didn't come up with Flash. Of course Flash being what it is, I'm not sure that's a good thing :) )

    6. Re:Not the first time... by Stormwatch · · Score: 4, Informative

      Technically, Flash - or FutureSplash Animator - was first a FutureWave product.

      --
      Circumcision is child abuse.
    7. Re: Not the first time... by neilo_1701D · · Score: 2

      And don't forget, Microsoft's video standards and players were originally based on STOLEN QuickTime Source Code

      Did you read that website? The claims and timeline are completely totally wrong for DOS; why would you trust it for Quicktime?

      From the page:

      Course 1: the Desktop OS Monopoly
      Microsoft snared CP/M code to sell as DOS, then blocked Digital Research from competing with its own product.
      Microsoft partnered with IBM to use it as a vehicle for establishing its purloined MS-DOS as a standard.
      After Compaq cloned IBM's hardware, Microsoft dumped IBM to court PC clone makers.
      Microsoft used its remaining charms to get IBM to develop OS/2 as its DOS replacement.
      After hiring away VMS engineers, Microsoft used that company's technology in NT, and dumped IBM's OS/2.
      NeXTSTEP, Solaris/Intel, and BeOS were all prevented from competing through exclusive OEM contracts.

      The first point is wrong; the second point occurred before the first AND was the other way around; the third point never happened, the fourth point is the wrong way around; the fifth point has seeds of truth, and the sixth point only has seeds of truth. You can refute all of the above with just two books "Hard Drive" and "Showstopper!".

      Parts of Quicktime may have indeed been "stolen" from Apple, but I wouldn't trust that site to supply meaningful facts.

  2. DUH! by freeze128 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Do you know the difference between "Trend Micro" and "Micro Trends"?

    Neither does the submitter.

  3. Editors? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How do you manage to get the name of the company issuing the advisory wrong in the TITLE? You've got it right in the summary? Where did "Micro Trends" come from?

  4. People still use Quicktime? by advocate_one · · Score: 4, Insightful

    n/t

    --
    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
    1. Re:People still use Quicktime? by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Interestingly yes. Major camera makers still use the Quicktime container to store MP4 video. Major editing vendors still require Quicktime installed to play videos.

      As for people using Quicktime to play videos... I don't think this was ever the case.

    2. Re: People still use Quicktime? by Gavagai80 · · Score: 2

      You're not really testing Safari if you're testing the deceased Windows version of it. It's not the version that any users are using.

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      This space intentionally left blank
  5. I hope there is a misunderstanding by Ilgaz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    QuickTime does power a lot of professional video workload, perhaps Apple tried to say that they are dropping the browser plugin via removing it in an update which is seriously overdue. Apple wasted a great technology but whatever, days of plugins are long gone.

    If there is no misunderstanding, that should be a final wakeup call to creative professionals.

    1. Re:I hope there is a misunderstanding by myid · · Score: 5, Informative

      Regarding browser plug-ins, this article on Apple's website tells you how to remove QuickTime 7 for Windows. The article states,

      Uninstalling QuickTime 7 also removes the legacy QuickTime 7 web plug-in, if present. Websites increasingly use the HTML5 web standard for a better video-playback experience across a wide range of browsers and devices, without additional software or plug-ins. Removing legacy browser plug-ins enhances the security of your PC.

    2. Re:I hope there is a misunderstanding by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Informative

      There is. The summary and the story is completely freaking wrong.

      It's the browser plugin only that is discontinued. Quicktime is still supported as it is a big part of video editing on both platforms. Hell my latest canon 4K pro camera writes video in MOV format natively.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    3. Re:I hope there is a misunderstanding by Solandri · · Score: 5, Informative

      MOV is just a container format (as are MP4 and AVI and MKV and a bunch of others) . Containers wrap up separate video, audio, subtitles, chapter lists, etc. files into one package so it's easier to move them around. The actual video file is usually h.264 (almost everything new) or MPEG4, the sound usually AAC or AC3 or MP3, subtitles are .srt or .sub, chapter lists are usually just a text file, etc. There are a bunch of other supported formats as well. Read all about them here.

      When your computer "plays" a container file, it first demuxes (de-multiplexes, or separates out) the individual files, then uses the appropriate codec to play each one. That's why sometimes one MOV or AVI file will play fine while another does not - you are probably missing a required codec for the latter file, or your codec is out of date. "Support" for a container format is trivial, as it just amounts to what types of files are supported, what order you're putting the actual files in the container, and what kind of padding and indexing is added. Some containers add more features though, which is where you start getting into trouble with vulnerabilities. If you give your container format the ability to change the kitchen sink, then a browser extension which supports your container will allow a website to change the user's kitchen sink.

      A long, long time ago, back in the RealPlayer days, Quicktime was an actual video format. But it's long since been superseded (it was rolled into MPEG4).

  6. Micro Trends, Trend Micro, same thing, right? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apple Deprecating Quicktime For Windows, Micro Trends Urges Users To Uninstall

    However, Trend Micro released a security advisory today describing two zero-day vulnerabilities for Quicktime for Windows

    Is Slashdot now running on one of those "not always right" chips? Micro Trends, Trend Micro, close enough.

    Fasttime for Windoes deprecated by Pear.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:Micro Trends, Trend Micro, same thing, right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Is it really any different from when CmdrTaco ran Slashdot?

      There were always plenty of dupes. Stories were full of misspellings and awful grammar. Some of the summaries had significant problems with them. Taco wrote a rant and posted it as a story one time saying that he wanted Slashdot to be that way. He defended the story selection in another rant.

      And people always complained about Slashdot sucking and said it used to be better. They hated user accounts, moderation, Slash 2.0, the friends/foes system, D2, and so many other things. Most of the comments in any JonKatz story were complaining about JonKatz. They complained the quality of comments had declined. One person in particular, Bruce Perens, threw a huge fit saying that there were too many user IDs with names similar to his, which is why Slashdot shows the user ID numbers in comments to this day.

      There have been some changes to how stories get posted. For one, there haven't been any Forbes links posted in a long time. This seems to be an editorial policy in response to the demands of users.

      The single biggest issue I have is that Slashdot's CMS should be open source like it used to be. I firmly believe the new management could do that right now if they desired it. As a show of good faith, release the source and put it back on Sourceforge. That's the one thing that really irks me.

      Otherwise, I think most of the complaints are BS. If you don't like the stories being posted, vote them down in Firehose and submit better ones. Fix the grammar and resubmit the story to Firehose before it gets posted. Grow some stones and do something instead of bitching about stuff that actually is in your power to change.

    2. Re:Micro Trends, Trend Micro, same thing, right? by phishybongwaters · · Score: 2

      While I agree that complaining about dupe posts and horrific grammar/spelling as well as blatantly wrong or misleading summaries has always been a part of slash dot... I disagree at the proportion of non-geek news articles that have been hitting the site, this has been on a steady increase, but the truth is, that started before the change of hands. Let us not forget this is a community driven site, if you are not seeing articles on the topics you want, there's an easy fix.

  7. Re:What Else To Use? by UnsignedInt32 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    VLC actually "plays" QuickTime (well, mostly MP4 these days?) files just fine.

    The problem is creating the file. I work in a video game industry, and for things like trailers, sometimes clients/partners requires use of certain settings which assumes QuickTime is in use. I have tried some alternative software to do this task, but I have often observed them often creates non-satisfactory result, especially when it deals with non-PC consoles.

    Having said that recently, software like blender, start to be able to produce fairly consistent/reliable results, it has been very messy to generate appropriately formatted results, and I can see there still may be edge cases where lack of access to QuickTime can be an issue. (Though, I'd say, 90% of them, it no longer is a problem.)

  8. Re:What Else To Use? by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 2

    I am on a Mac and rarely find myself using Quicktime. It had its day, but the MPEG4 container has for the most-part taken its place. The Quicktime player is even less used. Its a shame clients/partners haven't made the shift.

    There are indeed edge cases, like when Apple uses an atom that the MPEG4 specification doesn't yet support, such as TimedMetadata.

    BTW For the most part, converting a recent .mov to an .mp4 is as simple as specifying ffmpeg with 'copy' for vcodec and acodec, since it has the benefit of simply copying the audio and video atoms, rather than transcoding them.

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  9. Re: What Else To Use? by UnsignedInt32 · · Score: 2

    Yes, except some of those places would actually specify for QuickTime format itself rather than MP4. Granted most of places happily accept something other than that, but some sectors of video game industries are very conservative on things!

  10. iTunes and Quicktime by Mr_Silver · · Score: 2

    If Apple really have deprecated Quicktime then it would be nice if, in their next iTunes update, they remove the nag screen that keeps popping up telling you to install Quicktime.

    I ended up installing it to stop the damn thing appearing.

    --
    Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
  11. Re:Drop Apple by phishybongwaters · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now I have to call you on your BS here, the phone Apple refused to unlock was a government issued phone, there was no need to force unlock it, it was not a secure phone to begin with (from a terrorist stand point). And lets ignore the fact that all of the other attacks used straight up sms, no encryption, no magic whatsapp and no bullet codes on walls inside call of duty. And the next BS I have to call you on is "Linux" Linux isn't a company, linux isn't even an Operation System. Linux is an ECOSYSTEM of operating systems. Comparing an open community to a closed company highlights your bias. Apple sucks, Microsoft sucks, and to an extent, blatant linux fan boys suck worse.

  12. Deprecating on Mac, too? by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    It seems like people don't really use Quicktime any more. Thankfully, I haven't actually seen a mov file in literally years. Are they going to stop pushing their stupid proprietary video format on their own platform as well? It seems like not bothering with the Windows software can only be part of recognizing that no one uses it, and that it's dead. If your format isn't cross-platform, nobody should care about it...

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  13. Knife the Baby by Rob+Lister · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Blast from the past ...

    According to Tevanian, Apple executive Peter Hoddie asked Microsoft officials, "'Are you asking us to kill playback? Are you asking us to knife the baby?'" He said Microsoft official Christopher Phillips responded, "'Yes, we want you to knife the baby.' It was very clear."

    http://www.businessweek.com/mi...
    So the baby has finally been knifed, some 18 years later.