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Real-Time, Shmeal-Time (10/6/98)
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QuickTime's all fine and dandy for distributing pre-produced video clips on the web in full-size chunks. But what about true streaming capability? If your memory's at least as good as ours (and that's not too difficult to achieve), you'll most likely recall that QuickTime's biggest limitation when compared to other video delivery services is that it can't stream live data. That makes it unusable for live webcasts, and perhaps even slightly unsuitable for delivery of pre-captured video if server loads and demand is very high. Of course, you probably also remember that Steve Jobs demonstrated a development version of QuickTime last May at WWDC which allowed the streaming of his live face into a web browser window. "Streaming QuickTime is coming" was the message, but so far we've seen no further evidence of that fact.
Nor are we likely to see more evidence for a while, yet. Robert Morgan in his RFI Report claims that Apple's pretty much dropped everything else to work on and build iMacs. Sure, other computers are being designed and built, but apparently QuickTime's been in suspended animation for a while. Mac OS Rumors has a slightly different perpective; their sources claim that QuickTime's streaming ability is coming along "slowly but surely" and may show up in a new QuickTime release to be included in the Mac OS 8.6 update expected in February. Fair enough; we'll wait until then. Whether or not the rest of the industry will is a different matter...
Remember, when streaming capability is incorporated into QuickTime itself, any application that supports QuickTime can support streaming video. At WWDC they didn't just have Steve's live face in a web browser-- they also dropped it into a Microsoft Word document, if memory serves. So prepare for all kinds of wacky uses once a streaming version of QuickTime hits the streets.
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SceneLink (1060)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 10/6/98 episode: October 6, 1998: New iMac commercials invade the airwaves, putting a face to the voice from the first batch. Meanwhile, why would "Home Improvement" cover the Apple logo on a PowerBook with a big strawberry sticker? And whatever happened to QuickTime's upcoming streaming capabilities?...
Other scenes from that episode: 1058: Selling, Selling, Selling (10/6/98) So another couple of iMac commercials have debuted, bringing the grand total up to six. The first four, which we assume you've seen by now, focused heavily on just showing the iMac's revolutionary design to the viewer, while underscoring its simplicity... 1059: Strawberry PowerBook G3 (10/6/98) It's a wonder that we saw either new iMac commercial at all, given that it debuted during ABC's Home Improvement, a show of which we've never been fond down here at AtAT headquarters. And no, it's not just because they get much higher ratings than we do...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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