Adobe scrambles to untangle itself from QuickTime after Apple throws it over a cliff Apple has finally informed its customers that it is no longer supporting QuickTime for Windows. Adobe, whose code is intertwined with QuickTime, is having to do a rapid reworking of its software to avoid putting users at risk. Last week, Trend Micro went public with the news that Apple had dumped support QuickTime for Windows …
Big Apple fan here. I am not happy with this decision.
Ditto. The correct way of doing this would have been an announcement and then a migration time (6 months or so). That way, migration would at least be a bit safer. They dropped the ball on this one IMHO.
On the plus side, that's yet another argument to avoid Adobe code. Cloud services with a silver lining, as it were..
"They dropped the ball on this one IMHO."
I'm not aware of Apple ever announcing EOL dates for OSX, IOS or other stuff. As far as I know, Apple doesn't promise any sort of updates for any of their stuff when they release new hardware/software.
They don't have to - Apple users are vocal supporters but don't raise fuss over EOL dates for some reason.
since when do Apple fans give a rat's ass about anything happening on the Windows platform? I sure as hell don't care if the beige beancounter boxes with the horridly dysfuntional operating system that is somehow supposedly on par with the media capabilities of the Mac except when it can't use Apple software, is able to play video, or just spreadsheets. Windows users have been tirelessly harping on about how Quicktime sucks, how teh WiMP is much better and Miultimedia was invented by IBM. If they want to watch video they can buy a TV, or use their UggsBox. Decades of pissing on Apple and Quicktime finally paid off, and they are on their own now.
Let them go and figure out how great their platform is without. I'll just sit here and grin at their fruitless efforts.*
As for Adobe, they stopped trying so long ago, they deserve whatever they get.
*) -
...wow. Just... wow
In my professional life as a Windows support engineer who runs his own business, I am often asked my opinion about whether to get a Mac, and I try to answer in as balanced a way as possible - eg, I often say yes for various use cases. What I never do is start frothing at the mouth in pointless fury.
QuickTime was only ever a virus anyway. They made iphones record in a proprietary format, forced users to install QuickTime that bundled iTunes and bonjour and other unrelated crap.
QuickTime did its job, as far as apple were concerned, it got their virus installed on windows by clueless idiots everywhere.
It's not just Adobe. I have an older version of Sony Vegas that still depends on Quicktime - even recent versions use Quicktime for reading and writing Quicktime files.
Quicktime provided a convenient API for video-handling and a bunch of useful codecs and was widely used in video applications, particularly those with pretensions to work on both Windows and Mac, some of them very high end.
Many products will be affected and many of them will have cost a fair amount of cash.
As far as I'm aware, the list of video editing programs requiring the Quicktime codecs is quite extensive: Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, Avid Media, Grass Valley Edius at least.
Thats a large chunk of the industry. You're going to have a lot of pissed off film makers.
I'm sure glad I've had Adobe in my portfolio for years.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/stockdetails/fi-126.1.ADBE.NAS?ocid=edgsp
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstories/looking-for-a-top-momentum-stock-3-reasons-why-adobe-systems-adbe-is-a-great-choice/ar-BBrtGeJ?ocid=edgsp
No, that happens every time you rely on someone else code for your product, especially if those who write it don't have an economic incentive to keep on.
It may go away any time, and if you don't have the skills to maintain it yourself, and nobody maintains it, you're in troubled waters. I've see also a lot of open source package become abandonware, and while the most used one have a chance to find new maintainers - but look at what happened to OpenSSL, millions of users, very few contributors - after all some products requires very specific skills to be worked on, a generic programmer can't really work proficiently and without causing damages on a security library or a video codecs one.
Agreed. To work on any Adobe product you'd certainly need to work on your ability to wade through faeces whilst telling everyone how beautiful the roses smelled.
Adobe is in the same league as IBM, SAP, Yahoo(!), HP, Oracle and Microsoft for hazardous levels of soul-destroying corporate toxicity and I feel for any developer working there.
Per the repeated story that QuickTime for Windows branched off a sanitised version of the Classic OS APIs that was backported to create Carbon for the OS X transition and was the central thing that caused QuickTime X to be a compatibility-breaking rewrite (which quite possibly still doesn't have a codec plug-in API?), I guess this is goodbye. And Win32 becomes the new Father of the House?
Apple abandoned QuickTime some time around 2009 when it became clear that its infinitely complex innards would be impossible to upgrade. QuickTime X, the promised modernization, stalled as soon as it could play H.264/AAC with moderate quality. Support for AVCHD files was eventually added but without the performance upgrades needed for its high bitrates.
@MartinB105, that's practicaly my experience of the video player too, it was atrocious to use and it really didn't make me want to buy any Apple products if they couldn't even get a simple video player working well.
I do have to deal with .MOV files these days though, because for some reason it's a preferred choice of video container for various sportcams/dashcams, but most recent video players & editors handle a huge variety of formats so it's not really an issue anymore.
Thinking about it now. QuickTime for Windows on the one occasion I ever wasted my time with it, on an early Pentium PC I expect, was such an unpleasant, buggy, lagging experience it coloured my views on Apple irremovably. I have never gone near any other Apple product ever. I expect QT did more to maintain PC sales than almost anything else. Well done Apple!
QuickTime is an excellent piece of software - and always has been. But QuickTime on Windows isn't really QuickTime. It's merely a player for QuickTime formats.
Real QuickTime, the sort you get on a Mac, is a complete API for handling media - whether graphic (still and video) or audio. It's flexible, and as far removed from QTfW as a jet fighter is from a hot air balloon.
Apple has behaved badly by not warning software developers of the imminent demise of QuickTime for Windows - but, really, The writing was on the wall when iTunes stopped using QTfW - it's just that Adobe chose not to read it. More fool them.
So kill the developmentally challenged embarrassment now. QTfW is not worth the candle.
@phuzz
I didn't say that it was an excellent piece of software on Windows. On the contrary, I pointed out that it's an abomination. A piece of crap.
As to whether the player is any good on Mac OS X, well I use VLC too. But on Mac OS X, the player is merely the visible tip of the iceberg - it isn't QuickTime. It's merely QuickTime Player. On Mac OS X, QuickTime is an entire API that can handle media based tasks, such as compression and decompression, very quickly and efficiently. It would appear that most people here are conflating the Player with QuickTime 'proper'. I believe that the QuickTime API on Windows, such as it is, is a shadow of its Mac OS equivalent.
This makes no sense. As a company, you are not obligated to release code. To be more specific, you are not obligated to release media-playing code. You can always rely on other companies' media formats.
If you do make a decision to develop your own media formats, with corresponding players and codecs, you are still not obligated to release them on competing platforms. Apple could have chosen not to release QuickTime on Windows at all. I suspect that, at the time, it did so because of its rather tiny mind and market share. i.e. QuickTime for Mac only would have had no users.
If they killed QuickTime overall (on Mac OSX too), no problem. If they had never published QuickTime on Windows, no problem either. Either way, I really won't miss it much.
What is truly unpleasant from Apple in this case is that they took the step to publish QuickTime on Windows, but they are quietly walking away from it with big fat holes in it. And they know full well that if they don't kill QuickTime everywhere then users will try to view their contents on Windows, at least some of the time.
Shady "install needed new codecs" tricks used to be a fairly common infection vectors for booby-trapped (pun intended) media files on porn sites. Which do include QuickTime files. Now, you don't even have to play the new codecs needed trick, you can just rely on some idiot running your honeypot with what he assumes to be a fit-for-purpose, issued-by-Apple, QuickTime player.
Once you do publish code, you assume reasonable responsibility for it, within your means. If you stop supporting it, you announce that loud and clear. And you take your users' safety seriously.
I think we all agree Apple's financial means aren't an excuse here.
It's like "trust us (just kidding)".
Apple needs to make a clean transition to either have QuickTime nowhere or safe QuickTime everywhere.
p.s. don't read any of this as any sign of sympathy towards Adobe. It isn't.
" QuickTime nowhere"
problem is, that's not an option near-term
Quicktime videos are so common as instructional / demo / introductory videos on setup disks for software and games. Its not so common now, but until maybe four years ago nearly every commercial software disk included Quicktime videos. Use one of those on a modern machine and its either going to install the (old) Quicktime player for you, or attempt to download it - with all the consequencces that JLV mentions
"Safety vids & preliminary exam questions for basic UK building site regs are offered on a CD in Quicktime.. but that's guvverment for you"
That won't be government.
The Cabinet Information Office has made it clear that all levels of uk.gov _must_ use portable, open, _documented_ formats. They've made it clear to a number of councils and other outfits who felt that "Word" was a standard that it's not. This applies to video formats too.
If you receive _anything_ that's not a proprietary format (and mov is proprietary) then a few complaints to the CIO are in order. They _will_ take action. (Most recent one for me was an order to the DfT to stop using some unreadable proprietary apple format in email attachments.)
This isn't a decision Apple just made one weekend - "oh well, here's another two bugs we need to fix but screw it, I don't feel like it, let's ask the boss to ask Tim Cook if we can end support for Quicktime"
Adobe was probably sitting on their hands hoping pressure from their customers would cause Apple to change their mind so they wouldn't have to fix their code. Adobe's bread and butter is video, and they have all sorts of video conversion technology. You can't tell me that use of a different format would be that difficult for them.
"I have a hard time believing Apple hadn't notified Adobe of this long ago "
Ha! This is arrogant Apple you're talking about here.
Arrogant sums them up so nicely - "unpleasantly proud and behaving as if you are more important than, or know more than, other people"
I had back in the noughties for running QuickTime was for playing Myst.
And then one had to have the correct version installed. Have the latest version and then it would bork and then later on I tried to use, and gave up, on a pile of astronomy software because it required a different version of QuickTime and each and every time it was either not quick or it just made things worse.
I've never liked QuickTime and each time I revisited the Isle of Myst I would install, and have nightmares installing, QuickTime and then removing it from the machine when I was done with.
A cracking game which needs a properly written port to the modern day machines. But QuickTime should have been taken outside and shot sometime last century.
Quicktime for Windows has run it's course. HTML5 with H264 is the future of web video delivery, but it was hardly a smooth and timely depreciation.
I support a load of Adobe CC and I feel that incompetence on the part of Apple or Adobe - or both, has exposed us to potential harm unnecessarily.
I wonder if there is more to this. Has Adobe told Apple that they intend to pull CC from Mac platform? It's the ind of knee-jerk reaction that Apple is known for. Remember when they were close to using Sun ZFS and dropped it when Sun let it slip in an interview.
"windows users are forced to either accept the security hole or not watch programs they've bought on windows"
Don't worry about - lawyers are really nice people, and the ones that wrote the content licences would never have left you in that position. (Can I stop laughing now? Really hard to type that and keep a straight face).
So now Adobe need to rework their current software so that it will not need Quicktime. But also anyone still running version 6 of their software, pre subscription model, won't get an update so will be at risk.
A nice way to pile the pressure on people who until now have been unwilling to pay for a subscription.
Not necessarily - I have an old version of Première, but no Quicktime - sometimes I get a prompt "To do X you'll need to install Quicktime", so I do something else instead.
Quicktime was assigned to /dev/null (or the nearest equivalent) long ago - I used Media Player Classic and Quicktime Alternative, and then came VLC...which appealed to the inner lazy bastard.
Apple's refusal to publish a product lifecycle and stick to it is why sysadmins like me are queasy about it in the enterprise. It is ridiculous to have to guess whether an product will be patched or not, and for the "not" only to become clear when a third party outs them on it.
They said the security hole is if you play a malicious video. I honestly can't remember the last time I used QuickTime Player to play a video. MPC is my chosen video player.
I guess in the future there may be other exploits but by then it looks like Adobe will have sorted out their software to run without Quicktime.
Does seem odd on Apple's part mind you. It's not like they can't afford to get it fixed. Adobe brings in a lot of business for them. Is this bug so great that it can't be fixed?
I suppose nobody should be remotely surprised with Apple's arrogance. The only reason that QuickTime for Windows ever existed on my systems was to provide a codec for Apple PrRes encoded mov files. This simply justifies the elimination of any codec or utilities based on Apple proprietary garbage.
That's the end of the line for ProRes in my workflows and we will cease accepting this rubbish from contractors.
Eat shit Apple!
...you dare to use non-Apple software for your work? Think again, motherfuckers. We have the levers to make your life difficult, and we just chose to pull them.
"Windows is a bad platform for dealing with media" is an important piece of disinformation that continues to propagate despite its evident untruthiness. However, in pulling this plug without warning, Apple can certainly reinforce this perception.
Hey Tim Cook, let me congratulate you with a Linus Torvalds one finger salute. I'm sick of Windows and Nadella's spyware ridden Fisher Price operating systems. You too can flippy tile off.
I really liked Windows 7, but every week some corporate knob end breaks it for their own political gain. I work with video and for the last three months patch Tuesday = Microsoft shafts my machine and the video software stops working. DON'T YOU TEST YOUR PATCHES????
Now, Apple is at it. I can be secure and have a doorstop or I can work and get hacked to bits - thanks a bunch Apple! I'll just rush out and buy your over priced, under powered i-thingy (hey I'm different and look, shiny!). Maybe you want a shot of my wife while you're at it?
Thanks to all this BS I'm now running Linux Mint Rosa Cinnamon edition. I have more control of my workflow than most so I can be flexible when changing software packages. To be perfectly honest I was expecting a lot worse than what I found and trying them out in real life workflows has meant trial and error, but on the whole I have managed to find successful solutions. I can't say that they live up to the Adobe suite (Pantone would be nice) but they're getting pretty close. Personally I would say try them and see how you get on:
First, enable your firewall first in terminal:
sudo ufw enable && sudo ufw default deny
GUFW - Nice front end GUI for UFW
GNU Image Manipulation Program - similar to Photoshop
Inkscape - similar to Illustrator
Scribus - similar to Indesign
Darktable / Lightzone / Picasa - photo workflow
Imagination - slideshows from photos
Hugin - panoramic stitcher
Batch Purifier from Colour Confidence - works in WINE
PosteRazor - print one image over many
Pixelize - make one picture from lots of small pictures
Photo Print - tile up lots of photos on one page
Kdenlive / Lightworks / Cinelerra - video editing similar to Premier
Bombono - similar to Nero video burning
K3B - similar to Nero DVD burning
Acetone - Burn ISO's
Media Info - Similar to GSpot identify codecs in video
GSpot - works with WINE
Good transcoders : Handbrake, WinFF, Transmageddon
Video Redo - works in WINE
K-Lite codec pack - works in WINE
ImgBurn - works in WINE
Blender - 3D production
If you prefer to see exif info and are missing pixel sizes, media lengths etc. then this will add them in:
sudo apt-get install nemo-media-columns
You can also customise Nemo in edit, preferences (add buttons / renaming files etc.)
Codecs (Software Manager):
libavcodec-extra-54
libk3b6-extracodecs
h264enc
ubuntu-restricted-extras
libmpeg3-1
ffmpeg - you can compile the latest version. You'll need Yasm from the software manager:
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make install
VLC
Spotify
Banshee media player
Audacity - edit audio
LMMS - digital music
Ardour - midi projects
All the Libre Office suite is compatible with Microsoft Office - you can open, change and save in either and it will be fine providing you have the correct fonts installed:
Writer - similar to Microsoft Word
Calc - similar to Excel
Impress - similar to Powerpoint
Draw - the part that's missing in Microsoft's Office
Foxit Reader - similar to Adobe Reader
Calibre - eBooks
Notepad++ - works in WINE
Firefox, Thunderbird and Filezilla all work fine. (You can copy the profile folder for Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird to Linux and it just works - fully configured. Much awesomeness!!!)
BeeBeep - Chat over LAN (configure firewall). Really useful for collaboration.
Veracrypt - encrypt your stuff
VMware Player - use VM's in Linux (Windows etc.)
Htop - shows processes (is that video editor really using all the cores for rendering?)
Catfish - file search
Bleachbit - similar to CCleaner
Lucky Backup - syncs folders
Spideroak - offline backup
Cairo Dock - epic dock similar to OS X
Applets - for your taskbar
Desklets - add clock to desktop etc.
XPad - similar to Sticky Notes
Grub customizer - just cause!
Archey - yeah I'm sad but I think it's cool
ClamTK - Anti Virus (useful for finding Windows viruses)
Avast - Anti virus
Sophos - Anti virus
If you are dual booting and your clock gets screwed up then:
sudo nemo
/etc/default
edit rcS
UTC=no
See you Tim and Satya,
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………./’/…/…./……./¨¯\
……..(‘(…´…´…. ¯~/’…’)
………\……………..’…../
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>sorry I got tired just reading that list
Maybe, just another testimony of a switcher, with some good stuff in there!
2001 switcher, here, and the list looks good, although I use different programs to some he listed ... whatever floats your boat ... He go my upvote because he took the time to list the apps he was using with windows equivalents.
Note that if you go open formats, you get none of this bullshit, this is a message to the idiots over at Adobe although they are help-AND-hope-less cretins, and to all you out there ...
If you have the source, worst case you have to hire somebody to do the patching work, more likely, somebody else will simply fork it. Here, the worst is:
"Buy more proprietary software, sucker! Oh, sir, we only have subscriptions on new releases. You must understand that we would appreciate it if you could turn around, drop your pants, and bend over for some serious customer service!"
#NordicMint4U
Adobe, the developers of the Flash plugin!
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