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Ponying Up For Quicktime (4/1/98)
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Okay, yes, it's true-- Apple's finally started charging certain licensing fees for Quicktime, its cross-platform digital video architecture. This move has proved, shall we say, "unpopular" with folks who are used to getting previous incarnations of Quicktime for free. But the license fees aren't as bad as many people are making them out to be. MacCentral's got Don Crabb's unique perspective on the whole shebang, done up in his own inimitable fashion.
First of all, there's the license-to-use. Your basic, run-of-the-mill Quicktime 3.0 is free to use-- you can download it and install it and play Quicktime movies as you always have, and you won't have to pay a dime. However, certain features, particularly authoring features, only exist in Quicktime 3.0 Pro, an "unlocked" version that allows features like full-screen, full-motion capture and goodies like that. That version will run you $29.95. And truth be told, we at AtAT are a little bummed about that ourselves, but not overly so-- especially given how much time and money Apple has obviously invested in the development of this software.
But what we really don't get is all the people complaining about the royalty fees for Quicktime distribution: $1 per shipped copy of Quicktime 3.0, $2 for each shipped copy of Pro. First of all, since Quicktime is free to download and will continue to be included with Apple system software, you don't have to include Quicktime on your shipping multimedia product-- tell people to get it themselves if they don't have it already. And secondly, if you do want to include the code on the disc for your customers, you can avoid paying the royalty fee entirely by including a little commercial in the installer hawking the $29.95 upgrade to Pro. Frankly, we just don't see the big deal here. Apple's done a great job with Quicktime 3.0, effectively finally shipping a video architecture that accomplishes what the original version of Quicktime could only hope to attain one day. And now that it's finally done, it's not unreasonable to want to get paid for it. (shrug)
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 4/1/98 episode: April 1, 1998: Predictably, the airwaves were awash with a bevy of April Fool jokes today, revealing that a sense of humor is alive and well and running throughout the entire Mac community (luckily for us). Meanwhile, consternation and uproar ensue over Quicktime 3.0's licensing fees, and Super Steve spends a public day in his guise as mild-mannered computer animation mogul...
Other scenes from that episode: 587: Poisson D'Avril (4/1/98) Well, as usual, April 1st brought a slew of fake stories and announcements meant to bring a smile to our faces. The first one we noticed was the press release over at MacCentral, which announced Bare Bones Software's first hardware product-- a PCI card "text accelerator."... 589: Mild-Mannered Animator (4/1/98) Look, up in the sky-- is it a bird? A plane? Nope, it's Super Steve, the interim Apple CEO who works miracles of media manipulation by focusing his Reality Distortion Field on his unsuspecting foes...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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