On QuickTime....

I've just mentioned a post by Robert Scoble, and I mentioned Photosynth a couple of weeks ago. Before I went to Barcelona, I downloaded  Scoble's video showing Photosynth - it was in QuickTime .MOV format and I hadn't put QuickTime onto the build of Vista I was running.

I've been raving about Sony's Bravia advert which is available as a QuickTime download, and since my children like some of the other bit of QuickTime I have this weekend the I reached the point where QuickTime had to go on my system.

Apple's download page had a link to give feed back for QuickTime on Vista; and I had to tell them what a pain of an application it is. It doesn't let the Windows mange its Window: it implements its own title bar, and Minimize/Maximize/Restore icons rather than using the standard Vista ones. There's no system Icon in the top left corner, the Window doesn't support glass or follow the system colours and font selection. I plugged my Samsung TV in as a secondary monitor and found that if you maximize the QuickTime Window it comes back to the primary screen (a consequence of not letting the OS manage the Window and implementing your own lash-up).

Then there are the "poor citizen under Vista" issues.  The "Rolodex-style" Windows Switcher will show the progress bar moving in QuickTime, but the Video freezes. Quicktime files don't have preview "Live-icons" and can't be played in Vista's preview pane (something which annoys me with Adobe PDF as well). Explorer can't show or set properties on QuickTime files - like a title, tag or author, but since Apple don't provide a filter for Vista's search engine setting meta data wouldn't give you much benefit.

If I want to play multiple WMV files I can make a play list in Windows Media player. To do this with QuickTime Apple want me to buy the pro version of the software.  If you open multiple Quicktime files they show in separate windows (WMP assumes you want to stop the one you were playing and open the new one in its window), the QuickTime way might be better - except that the instances communicate so that only the foreground plays sound - even though Vista will allow multiple applications to make sounds at the same time.

Why do I need a QuickTime application at all ? Since QuickTime comes with an ActiveX control that can be embedded in a web page it can't be that difficult (surely) for the Windows

Technorati tags: Apple, QuickTime, Microsoft, Vista

Media team to embed the control in WMP...