As the Apple Turns: Scene 2605: 5 Alive-- Or at least 4.9 (10/11/00)

5 Alive-- Or at least 4.9 (10/11/00)

As "Steve Lite" Phil Schiller delivered the opening keynote address at this week's QuickTime Live! conference yesterday, his own little surprise may not have been as flashy as a supercomputer in an eight-inch cube, but it was welcome nonetheless. Ol' Phil hooked us up with the next iteration in Apple's venerable multimedia architecture: QuickTime 5. And while this latest version doesn't introduce a killer new technology like QuickTime 4's live streaming capabilities, according to an Apple press release, it does add a slew of new features that ought to make any media junkie quiver with delight. Thrill to the rock-steady performance of "Skip Protection"! Gasp in awe at the ability to download and install plug-ins and codecs on the fly! And, perhaps most importantly of all, cackle with glee as you notice the new QuickTime Player; gone are QuickTime 4's wheel volume control, ridiculous button layout, and cumbersome Favorites drawer. (We pinched ourselves silly to make sure we weren't dreaming.)

Now, before you trip over your virtual feet rushing to download this marvelous advance in multimedia technology, we should probably mention that QuickTime 5 isn't actually available yet. According to Apple's press release, it won't be officially released until "early 2001"-- but until then, Apple's got a "Public Preview" available. Evidently the difference between a "Public Preview" and a "Public Beta" is that Apple won't charge you $29.95 for a "Preview"-- at least, not directly. The download page implies (whether correctly or not) that only "QuickTime 3 and 4 Pro" users can install the preview, and since a QuickTime Pro key costs $29.99, you might consider that the cost of early admission.

Since we do happen to have a QuickTime Pro license, we went ahead and installed the Preview. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after we ran the installer that we noticed Apple's strangely-worded fine print warning: "QuickTime 5 Public Preview will replace older versions of QuickTime, be sure write down your current QuickTime Pro key." Sure enough, when we checked our QuickTime Settings, our Pro license key was gone. Luckily we happened to have the paper license handy, so no harm done, but we still aren't sure why QuickTime 5 couldn't preserve that setting.

Anyway, so far the only differences we notice are cosmetic. QuickTime movies viewed via the web browser plug-in have Aqua-looking buttons and sliders. The new QuickTime Player basically looks and functions identically to the one that ships with the Mac OS X public beta-- right down to the Aqua window widgets. That's right; under Mac OS 9, the new QuickTime Player features the stoplight buttons that highlight with the "X", "-", and "+" when you roll the cursor over them. But if you're expecting to see the yellow button trigger the Genie effect, prepare to be sorely disappointed-- it does nothing at all. Hey, you didn't expect Apple to get the "style over substance" monkey off its back completely, did you? It's still a huge improvement over QuickTime 4's wacky interface mish-mash.

SceneLink (2605)

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The above scene was taken from the 10/11/00 episode:

October 11, 2000: Motorola announces the 1 GHz "Apollo" G4 chip-- sort of. Meanwhile, Phil Schiller announces that Apple has released QuickTime 5-- kind of. And longtime Apple-basher John Dvorak finally sees the light-- almost...

Other scenes from that episode:

2604: The 1 GHz G4-- Someday (10/11/00) The saga continues; the seemingly neverending wait for post-500 MHz Macs finally took a quantum leap forward yesterday-- or at least a quantum baby step. For our part, we're just glad that anything happened at all...
2606: The Braying Of Dvorak (10/11/00) Okay, back when longtime Apple-basher Hiawatha Bray started to see the light and began writing positive articles about the Mac, we figured we'd seen it all. In fact, at the time we jokingly remarked that one day John "No One Will Ever Buy An iBook Because They're Too Girly" Dvorak would "say he bought himself a Tangerine iBook and our heads will explode."...

Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast...


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