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World's Scariest QT Streams (6/5/99)
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Ah, QuickTime-- Apple's multimedia architecture which has been bringing video to the desktop for, what, seven years now? If you translate computer years into Hollywood years, QuickTime's probably long overdue for a lifetime achievement award-- but that doesn't mean the old dog isn't picking up lots of new tricks. Now QuickTime 4 is all the rage, what with its spiffy new space-age look, its MP3-compatibility, and its ability to stream live video over the Internet. In fact, we bet that most of the millions of people rocking along with QuickTime 4 have pretty much forgotten that it's not even officially "done" yet; the latest version appears to be beta 24, and while we personally haven't experienced much trouble with it, we're always a bit irrationally concerned when running software with a "b" in its version number. So we, for one, have been waiting for Apple to push the 1.0 (or is it 4.0?) version out the door.
And word around the water cooler is that we won't be waiting much longer. Various sources have come forward to say that Apple's software perfectionists are just about ready to affix their seal of approval and foist it upon a world of media-hungry netizens. Some say the software is officially at "golden master" status, some say it's not quite there but really close-- either way, we won't be surprised to see it hit the servers as early as Monday. Nor will we be surprised if the final release includes bookmarks to a spicy melange of live streaming content; for those of you who wouldn't exactly call BBC World, Bloomberg TV, and WGBH public television "spicy," okay, fair enough, but faithful viewer Damon Schreiber has us thinking that Apple may be throwing a little pizzazz into the mix...
See, Damon was an attendee at the New Media show in Toronto last week, and the keynote speaker was Frank Casanova, the head marketing guy for QuickTime. Frank hinted strongly that QuickTime 4 was well on track for a Monday release, but what Damon found even more interesting was what was in Frank's Favorites drawer-- namely, "two icons clearly labelled FOX. One was FOX sports," though the other wasn't too clear; we're hoping for FX. Frank alluded to those Favorites in a roundabout way, saying, "You can see some of the new people we're working with..." So when QuickTime 4 does ship, here's hoping that we can download a little X-Files action along with all of the financial news, world news, and the Antiques Roadshow.
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SceneLink (1581)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 6/5/99 episode: June 5, 1999: The Sears situation doesn't seem to have improved much with the official iMac rollout having been moved forward a week. Meanwhile, QuickTime 4 gets ready for its final release, with some possible Fox-flavored action thrown into the streaming mix, and AtAT fails to connect a "mystery iMac" with Apple's new Studio Displays...
Other scenes from that episode: 1580: SOS: Same Old Story (6/5/99) Sigh... We're trying hard to stay open-minded about the whole Sears iMac rollout, we really are. Overall, the Mac community seems to be walking a surreal line between picking a fight and being overly charitable... 1582: Oh. Uh, Right. Oops. (6/5/99) Okay, we're big enough to admit it: we got suckered by the CNET article referring to the "mysterious iMac" at last week's Computex convention in Taiwan. If you don't know what we're talking about, don't bother loading up the article now-- it has since been edited to remove all reference to the "mysterious iMac," which, in itself, could be viewed as mysterious...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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