Apple screws us once again QT7 is not better than QT6._Pro

[Mitchji]

Hi,

https://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars/16#qt7

Excerpts:
QuickTime 7 summary
Despite the ongoing annoyance of the “QuickTime Pro tax,” QuickTime 7 is the most important upgrade to QuickTime in the Mac OS X era. It solves long-standing architectural problems, leverages several of Tiger’s other new technologies to do things only dreamt of by QuickTime 6 and earlier, includes its own best-of-breed video codec, and is finally embraced by Cocoa. The new QuickTime Player is good enough to be in danger of reinforcing the (largely uninformed) folk wisdom in the Mac community that rewriting an application in Cocoa automatically makes it better. QuickTime 7 has been a long time in coming, but it has turned out to be well worth the wait.

There’s one final unpleasantry to deal with: QuickTime Pro. Like its predecessors, the Tiger QuickTime Player is crippleware. Many of the most useful features are disabled, and can only be enabled by paying Apple $30 for a QuickTime Pro license. The menu items for these “pro-only” features are grayed out and have obnoxious little “PRO” badges next to them.

Don’t misunderstand, none of the disabled features in the QuickTime Player are actually disabled in QuickTime 7 itself. They’re simply disabled in the player application. Anyone can create a QuickTime player application that goes right ahead and calls the APIs that the QuickTime Player in “non-pro” mode refuses to call. Oh and by the way, the QuickTime browser plugin-suffers from the same intentional feature debilitation.

This has been the case for years with QuickTime, so why get all riled up about it now? Here’s why. Mac OS X ships with a complete integrated development environment that supports C, C++, Objective-C, Java, and all of the APIs in Mac OS X (not to mention distributed compiling, a GUI design and layout tool, and a suite of performance monitoring applications). Tiger includes a free web browser, e-mail client, address book, dictionary, thesaurus, font manager, and AIM/Jabber instant message client. When you buy an iMac you get all of the above plus iLife: iPhoto, iMovie, Garage Band, and iDVD.

The total development cost of this software bundle is absolutely huge. The total retail cost of iLife alone is $80. And yet after spending $1,500 or more on a new Mac with this great software bundle, what’s waiting for you when you fire it up for the first time and try to watch a QuickTime movie trailer in full-screen mode? Why, it’s a nag screen asking you to pay $30 more for the “privilege” of calling the QuickTime APIs that are sitting right there in the library code on your disk.

This is just criminally stupid. It mars the otherwise exemplary out-of-box experience for buyers of consumer Macs especially. Having spent well over $4,000 on my current crop of Mac hardware (plus $80 for iLife ’05 plus who knows how much for the Mac OS X Public Beta through Tiger), I find it personally insulting that I’m still not entitled to the “wonders” of QuickTime Pro.

Yeah, sure, I can download a third-party movie player application and find a third-party QuickTime browser plug-in. I can watch movie trailers in iTunes, which will go full-screen even without the magic “pro” key. Or I can google for an illegitimate QuickTime Pro key code. I can even shell out the $30. But it’s not the money that bothers me, it’s the principle. I’d be happy if Apple simply raised the price of its hardware by $30. On a $4,000+ bill, it’s practically a rounding error.

But please, Apple, give up on the QuickTime Pro thing. It’s always been annoying, but when viewed alongside today’s suite of bundled Apple software, it’s downright ridiculous. Worse, it makes the Mac platform look bad when the bundled QuickTime Player application can’t do all of the things that make QuickTime so cool: cut, copy, and paste together different kinds of media into a single file, extract and recombine tracks, import and export a huge number of formats, and yes, view video in full-screen mode.

Yeesh. Rant over.

Best Wishes,

Mitch

[Zman]

I am not arguing with you about that, but the FCP tech guys at apple said QT7 is not better that QT6.5 pro, they said in QT7 you dont have any pro features unless you buy the pro update or wait for FCP5. I said does QT7 at least look better the QT6.5 pro they said NO, because your not getting the new codec unless you buy the QT7pro.

[Zman]

I am not arguing with you about that, but the FCP tech guys at apple said QT7 is not better that QT6.5 pro, they said in QT7 you dont have any pro features unless you buy the pro update or wait for FCP5. I said does QT7 at least look better the QT6.5 pro they said NO, because your not getting the new codec unless you buy the QT7pro. with the H.264 QT7PRO update all is awesome but with QT7 regular it’s ok.

[Hmurchison]

What’s the problem?

[Uwe Klimmeck]

Digitizing up to 24 channels of audio in 24 bit plus H.264……
I think its great for 30 bucks.

Greetings
Uwe

[Zman]

ok, here it is again, In tiger you only get QT7, no pro features just normal QT features, so i called mac we have FCP support 24/7/365 and i said hey i have tiger here but it only has QT7, not the pro version and FCP likes the pro version. they said yes this is true, if you want QT7pro buy it for 29.99 or wait for FCP5. now the apple tech guy said if you use any pro features in your work such as looping or creating audio channels different from A1/A2 or any other pro fearture from QT6.5 you need to have QT7pro. QT7 is not a pro version. Here’s what he sent me:

Astounding New Codec
And as a powerful application ideal for creating high-quality audio and video content, “QuickTime 7 Pro” lets you create H.264 video, capture audio and video, create multi-channel audio and export multiple files as you continue to playback or edit video. Powerful and easy to use, it

[Zman]

true you are correct, but a lot of people thought that if you were using FCP HD, your QT pro # would work for the QT7pro version at least in FCP HD.

[Steve Connor]

I want it all, and I want it FREE! – good grief it’s only $30 every year or two

Steve Connor
Cardinal HD

[Uwe Klimmeck]

AVID will charge you a Digi I/O box for thousands of dollars to digitize 8 channel audio.
I’m fine with 30 bucks.

Have a nice weekend.

Greetings
Uwe

[Vincent Rice]

Yeah, we all know this. So what? If you were paying any sort of attention you would know this is always the deal. Wait for FCP 5 and stop yer whining.