STATIC DISCLAIMER: All the stuff in here is purely my opinions, and they tend to change depending on what mood I'm in. If you're going to get bitter if I say something about you that you don't like, then maybe don't read. I avoid using names as much as possible, and would request that people who know me do the same in their comments. Basically, I often vent my frustrations on here, so if you happen to be someone who frustrates me, expect to read a description of someone very much like you in here!

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Quicktime is lame

This post was originally constructed in August this year, and was saved as draft. I've added the last paragraph and published. Trying to get rid of some half-written drafts I have. Expect some more soon-ish.

Just a short (edit: not short) Mac bash this morning:
So I turn on my PowerBook this morning, and Apple Software Update comes up with some updates for iTunes and Quicktime and stuff. So I take a look at the update for Quicktime and observe the following:

QuickTime 7.2 addresses critical security issues and delivers:
- Support for full screen viewing in QuickTime Player

Now, this is a feature that has been in, oh I don't know, EVERY other media player since forever. Apple has witheld it up until now, because they want you to pay for Quicktime Pro which DID have this feature. So, to sum up - a feature that has been in every other media player forever is finally introduced into Quicktime today (well, within the last week), negating the need for you to pay Apple extra for it. If you had bought Windows 95 in 1996, you would have got this feature for free, and it's been a staple in Media Player, and every other media player for Windows or Linux (or 3rd party for OSX for that matter) since forever. WHY this wasn't included in Quicktime boils down to greed on the part of Apple.

But hey - this is what I've come to expect from Apple. Upgrades to their IM client are advertised as features of their paid OS upgrade. As opposed to, you know, almost every other IM client which gives you feature updates FOR FREE and for the most part already have MORE FEATURES then iChat. But still, Apple users will use iChat. And this is where I get confused - WHY!?!? And this is not specific to iChat - an advertised improvement in Leopard is having stationary in Apple Mail. Again, there are free mail clients available that do this, and everything else Apple Mail does already - and they're FREE. And sometimes, they WORK BETTER. Just try doing a simple out-of-office notification in Mail. My boss does when he's out of town - I have to check it every day to ensure it hasn't gotten confused and started sending emails to itself.

The list goes on - and features advertised as revolutionary (*cough* Time Machine *cough*) are just the equivilent of pre-existing features in Windows/Linux with a pretty UI. Previous Versions, anyone? In Vista, they've even made it exceedingly simple. Right-click on any file, and:



You can do this on a folder, and actually open and work with previous contents of that older. And if you use Windows Backup, it will record the fact that there are previous versions on specific backups and display them in the list. Revolutionary! Next year's OS, today!


Anyway - this pargraph I'm now typing months after I originally created this post, and as it turns out the great Leopard is held by the Mac zealots in my office as being buggy and unreliable, and as such, no one has upgraded their work machines to it due to software incompatiabilities with Filemaker, which I believe have just recently been resolved with a second patch (that is, they patched it once to get it just to run, and now they've patched it again to get it to work properly). Good times.

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