Apple gripe...

[DGhost]

Ok... So as much as I may personally bitch about Apple products, I generally don't have anything against them and will often try them to see how good they are. I own an iPod (somewhere around here - I use a Zune instead now though) and have, in the past, used iTunes for quite a while. Soo... I installed Safari a few weeks ago to see how good it was and if it was worth recommending to others. I have not had QuickTime or iTunes installed on this computer, however, as I have had no reason for them.

That being said, the Apple Software Update popped up earlier to nicely notify me that Safari had a new update available. In the process though, it somehow deemed that my computer needed to update both QuickTime and iTunes...

This kinda annoys me. It's one thing to offer updates for installed programs, but it's another thing entirely to pass off installing new software on your computer as an update. Especially under the guise of a security update.

gripe gripe gripe gripe

[schmosef]

You're not a QT 7 user so the update is not recommended for you.

Seriously, this issue has been bugging me for a while.

I have QT installed on one of my PCs and practically every time I log into it I get a pop-up telling me I should install iTunes.

[az]

Yeah, Apple's apps on Windows are really, really bad. On the mac, iTunes and QuickTime are installed anyway, so this kind of stuff can't happen. And from what I hear, Safari for Windows isn't very good as well. iTunes on Windows has been a resource hog in the past, and Quicktime... let's just not talk about it. The Quicktime player interface on OSX is equally bad, BTW. And it can't do fullscreen, either.

[DGhost]

And it can't do fullscreen, either.

Or save the file you are viewing, unless you buy the $30 Quicktime Pro liscence.

i always marveled at the ability for users to justify that. Of course, the fact that most Apple software does not phone home helps out. Lets you just reuse the same liscence on multiple computers.

[Gurm]

I consider Quicktime and iTunes to be viruses/malware. I uninstall them as a matter of course from customer machines. Something goes wrong? They're the first things to go. Those, anything from Real, and a few others.

[Helevitia]

What is it about quicktime that bothers you? It seems very un-intrusive to me. Real on the other hand is insanely intrusive.

[schmosef]

Over the weekend, on my work PC at home, the Real "Message Center" would pop-up after reboot to warn me that "My Credit Card was expiring..."

WTF?!!!

I uninstalled it.

[DGhost]

Real is bad. Quicktime isn't too bad, but it's mostly the fact that they are moving to integrate it with iTunes on Windows. And then there are the annoyances - you can't fullscreen a video, you can't save a video, it defaults to having an icon in the system tray that is entirely unnessecary, it takes over file associations for all kinds of files by default, performance is horrid for HD quality videos, the fact that they have had security holes that even their "security updates" didn't fix, the fact that it bugs you to buy the non-crippled version just so you can save files and full screen videos, etc etc.

it's just an annoying piece of software to have on the computer. i used to keep it installed to be able to watch quicktime videos, but really it's not even worth that anymore. Most things come in WMV as well and it's generally a bit friendlier (or more integrated, either way) to deal with.

[schmosef]

Hey, so that reminds me of another QT problem. It's constantly crashing IE.

I would say that 30% of the time I try to watch a movie trailer or other QT content posted on a website the QT plug-in crashes.

And about 50% of the time that I close IE after I've viewed some QT content, I get a warning that IE crashed on close.

It's stuff like that that I find infuriating. Apple has to know about these problems. I wonder if they care. Maybe they hope that users will blame the issues on their PC/Windows install and not assume it is because of poor coding on Apple's part.

[az]

I don't know why Apple makes such poor software for Windows. This has always put me off trying a real Mac. Quicktime on the mac can't do fullscreen or save, but it's fast, doesn't nag, doesn't crash, etc. Likewise with iTunes, which was constantly hogging my CPU on windows, but is unnoticeable on my mac. I really think they do have contempt for Windows PCs and think their apps can behave the way they do on Windows because they believe all other apps to do the same.

Of course, Quicktime on the Mac can play almost no format by default, so you have to get Perian for that, which is basically ffdshow for the Mac. But that problem is not exclusive to the Mac, of course. WMP isn't too versatile without downloaded codecs either.

[Jessterw]

*Shudder* iTunes and Safari (even if it is "beta") under Windows just irk me. Stability is a major issue and the fact that Apple insists using the Aqua UI is just silly. We won't mention QT, which I've always detested (even under OS X at times).

Not sure if it's worth mentioning, but Safari is actually coded with a different framework (for Windows) than iTunes or QuickTime were (not sure if those two use the same as each other). That new framework appears to be part of the reason for a lot of the issues people are having with Safari. Hopefully Apple works out the kinks there and it ends up increasing the stability of all their apps under Windows.

As far as the update software goes, that's definitely a tad annoying, but I guess it's a plus that none of it is forced (i.e. you can deselect the items you don't want). I do have a feeling that part of the reason for QT and iTunes appearing has to do with Safari being the intended development platform for iPhone 'apps' and iTunes being the software used to sync with the phone and QT being required by iTunes. Either that or the update software isn't as 'smart' as it should be.

It's all sort of sad considering IE5.5 was once the best browser under OS X and Office:mac (2004) was even better than its Windows counterpart at one point.


@Gurm: Wow, really showing your contempt and, dare I say, ignorance there. Sure they suck as Windows apps, but to call them virus/malware? That's just silly.

[Gurm]

@Gurm: Wow, really showing your contempt and, dare I say, ignorance there. Sure they suck as Windows apps, but to call them virus/malware? That's just silly.

Well, I view any Windows app that:

- without permission or provocation takes over far too many filetypes,
- registers itself as a BHO, a DPF, and in some cases a service...
- installs multiple (buggy, crash prone) "run at boot" instances...
- crashes IE more often (which, since IE crashes ITSELF plenty, is really an inexcusable "insult to injury"!)...
- and which doesn't even PLAY ITS OWN FILES PROPERLY...

as at the very least crapware and intrusionware. Is it "malware"? Only if you let it send in statistics or put in your name to get the endless string of e-mails about other stuff you don't want. I have yet to get USEFUL e-mail from Apple. I would imagine that I might get notified about good stuff if I registered MacOS, but the only thing Apple has ever sent me is "hey, buy Quicktime Pro!" or "hey we're having a super special promotion on Fiona Apple at the iTunes store!"

It's not as bad as Realplayer... it doesn't crash your WHOLE SYSTEM... uh... anymore. It used to.

Oh, and it doesn't live with itself. There is no mechanism for Quicktime to locate other Quicktime, leading to Quicktime apps running QT5 that uninstall QT6 & 7.

And don't get me started on how bad iTunes for Windows is, I mean it ought to just WORK. It's not a tough app! Catalog songs, load them onto iPod. How hard is that? XPod does it in a tenth of the size without the intrusive services and constant crashing. Christ, even CREATIVE makes a halfway decent media manager (Julie uses MediaSource extensively for her Zen).

I've seen these things run fairly well under OSX. I can only assume that Apple's programmers have contempt for Windows systems such that they are only willing, for the sake of sales, to release the bare minimum software that "sometimes works" in order to sell more iPods to the mindless sheep that want to pay triple for an MP3 player.

And I'm really not against Apple here! I know it sounds like it, but I'm not. Macs are cute. And pretty. And have swell UI's. iPods and iPhones are well designed and have spiffy user interfaces. Graphic designers need Macs to get their work done, because the people they send graphics to refuse to accept PC file formats... fair enough.

But let's call a spade a spade. Quicktime has been a scourge on Windows for 15+ years now. l remember swearing at it and endlessly installing/uninstalling/downloading patches for it... in 1992! Then when they went 32-bit it got worse for a long time before it got better.

Ok, rant mode off.

When presented with Quicktime and/or Real, I uninstall them and install QT Alternative or Real Alternative.

[Jessterw]

Fair enough. Funny that I've not had have those problems with iTunes under Windows... *shrug*

As far as your little snip about graphics designers - in case you didn't notice, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, and QuarkXPress all run under OS X and Windows. Many printers accept Publisher files as well. Then there's FrameMaker, which isn't even available for Mac OS anymore, but is for Windows and Linux.

Many graphics designers stopped using Macs years ago, so while they're still a sizable portion of the Mac demographic, they've long been superseded by developers and casual users. But now I'm venturing way off topic.

[Gurm]

Fair enough. Funny that I've not had have those problems with iTunes under Windows... *shrug*

Yeah, I know. There are a lot of Mac users who claim to have never seen the mysterious "Error 4" with the options to "restart, retry, or quit" (which all do the same thing - nothing at all), too.

BUT, there are also PC users who insist that BSOD's are a thing of the past as well. I still see my fair share of them, although arguably hardware or drivers are to blame nowadays, but they still happen when PC's are poorly configured.

As far as your little snip about graphics designers - in case you didn't notice, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, and QuarkXPress all run under OS X and Windows. Many printers accept Publisher files as well. Then there's FrameMaker, which isn't even available for Mac OS anymore, but is for Windows and Linux.

Last time I had to ship to a design house (when my parents put out their last album) I still had to convert everything to MAC Quark. I don't even remember the specifics of why they couldn't take PC Quark, which is what I was using (and Quark for the PC is... ridiculously poorly written, let me tell you).

But we have a customer who has an art department that is 100% Mac-based, even when using the Mac is clearly NOT a good choice. In some cases it certainly is, but in many cases it's just ridiculous - I watched a designer with a G5 tower and several gigs of RAM open an Illustrator file, and admittedly it was a 100MB file but it took LITERALLY 2 minutes to open and another 2 to close. Ouch!

Now I'm off topic too. *sigh*

[Jessterw]

I've never seen "Error 4," but I've seen plenty of other Mac errors. By the way, I was using iTunes for Windows before I ever started using a Mac.

I'm not sure how using a Mac can ever not be a "good choice," unless the software available for the task at hand is non-existent or extremely, poorly written. But that's true for PCs as well. There's nothing I could do on a PC that I can't do on a Mac, and what I do runs the gamut of design and development. Of course, the reverse is mostly true as well, it just takes more steps in some cases.

Opening an Illustrator file of that size would take forever on an equivalent PC too (you've used that anecdote several times before, by the way). Then again, Adobe was producing piss-poor versions of Illustrator for Macs for some time (some would say they still are).

As far as that design house who refused Quark files from the PC version - that's just asinine. Quark isn't all that well written for the Mac either according to those I know who use it.