What's in Store For The Future of QuickTime?
Monday, October 5, 2009 at 8:17AM 
Image: TheLogoFactory.comWhen you're as big as Apple, with hit products like the iPhone and iPod, inevitably, some smaller, less sexier projects are going to fall through the cracks. But does QuickTime (the technology, not the player) deserve to be in this category?
Once upon a time, QuickTime led the horse race for online video playback, not to mention bringing video to the desktop in the first place. And, more people use QuickTime today than ever before thanks to it being the underlying engine for iTunes. However, QuickTime has certainly fallen far behind Flash as a delivery method for online video. Is Apple content to let Flash be king? It might simply be a matter of having to many other major projects right now.
Beyond use as a simple video plug-in, (and in theory, Flash and QT should be equal here as more and more video is h.264/mp4 and therefore playable by both) QuickTime has had several interactive hooks/calls that could create a more immersive, interactive experience. Unfortunately, compared to Flash, the effort and difficulty (and end-user numbers) have all tilted strongly to Flash.
It would make sense that the format that powers the largest online music retailer in the world would dominate online streaming and video playback. Perhaps with the iPhone 3Gs and Snow Leopard out the door, some time can be spent on this key Apple technology. That is, if a tablet doesn't get in the way.
What do you think? Should Apple be content using QuickTime as the engine for iTunes, or should they give Flash a run for its money? Or, do new standards make the whole argument moot?
Reader Comments (5)
Quicktime needs much work. It should play everything, including flash. It should work so easily and powerfully with h.264 that h.264 becomes the default format for all Internet video. It also should work intuitively with HTML 5, so that it is extremely eash to use to build Web pages.
These changes, plus adding capability to play older formats, such as AVI, will make Quicktime indispensable and much preferred. The idea of including older codecs may bother some folks. But thousands of must-use videos exist only in these older codecs. For example, one widely used medical anatomy program uses only a .avi format that won't play in Quicktime 7 as it is distributed. Medical students with Macs are having to use MPlayer or add codecs to Quicktime to use these videos.
I don't think Apple much cares about Quicktime as a delivery system. For Apple, Quicktime is a foundation framework that provides services for other programs such as iTunes, Quicktime player, etc. In terms of content delivery, all proprietary frameworks, including Flash, will be displaced in favor of standards based solutions like HTML 5, WebGL, etc. The rules of the game are changing. Don't look at where the ball has been, look at where the ball is moving to.l
What are you all talking about? Quicktime is built around H.264 and Apple is seriously pushing HTML 5 so that we don't need proprietary codecs like Flash. From the Apple website:
"QuickTime 7 features a state-of-the-art video codec called H.264, which delivers stunning quality at remarkably low data rates. Ratified as part of the MPEG-4 standard (MPEG-4 Part 10),...."
and
"The first browser to support HTML 5 audio and video tags, Safari helps developers create media-rich sites that don’t require additional plug-ins. "
Finally, Apple just completely overhauled the guts of Quicktime with Snow Leopard. It is now called Quicktime X. Completely overhauling Quicktime will be a long process as Quicktime is also the guts of iTunes AND FinalCut. It will be a while until Final Cut is completely free of the old Quicktime.
perian.org will let quicktime play alot of other formats. I install it on every machine I touch and it comes in very handy! I hope Quicktime X will have the functionality of QT 7 at some point. X has been stripped clean.
QuickTime Pro is the first and best investment I make on any new Mac due to its amazing editing capabilities for a few dollars. I have to use older codecs for our older Macs. I wish Apple would release an OSX version of QuickTime VR but that won't happen so why not give the project out to the open source community? The only reason for not upgrading Leopard to Snow Leopard is the 'new' Quicktime. Oh yes.. Applescript/ Automator support is crucial for Quicktime too. I save so much time.