Now Chrome disables Quicktime plugin by default
code.google.com
code.google.com
The Quicktime plugin on Windows is HORRID. It is a prime example of how to make a user experience complete shit. And to be honest I'd prefer the Mac version not pull it in automatically either. Weither it's the crashing, slow startup times, bazaar buffering behavior or taking over way too many MIME types I hate it.
I strongly prefer that Chrome asked my permission before executing either the Quicktime or Java plugins just like it prompts for popups. All are annoying, buggy, laggy and crashy.
Both Quicktime and Java were manually disabled globally on every browser I use and now I can feel safe leaving them on. This change makes my web browsing experience SAFER and less frustrating.
Of course my dream is never to have to touch QuickTime or that horrid Apple Update garbage on Windows ever again. I'm not buying a Mac for home because Apple can't be trusted around VisualStudio.
Flash gets the pass because Adobe lets Google worry about making sure updates are available on day 1. Odds of Google and Apple working together on Quicktime... Haha... haha... ha.
Hit the "Always run on this site" button on Apple.com and your internal sites.
It's now "ask for permission to run" instead of "always run". It's in the same boat as intranet sites needing popup permissions.
so why are you running the dev channel? :)
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/12/chrome-is-ready...
> ... bazaar buffering behavior ...
should read "... bizarre buffering behavior ...". Bazaar is a word with a Persian etymology that refers to a market.
Between this and the Honeycomb source I just checked out through git, Google has really hooked me up with the mad openness.
edit: Really, though, this is a bullshit argument that's been cooked up. These are two companies trying to preserve their ability to make money. That's it. The thing I admire about Apple, though, is that they're not making any bones about it. They go with what works better for them, and, as they see it, what works better for users. No silly holy wars or sanctimonious proclamations.
I trust the guy who is honest about his self-interest a whole lot more than phony altruists.
Or this will just quickly devolve into point scoring nit picking.
(I've only tested the Chrome extension, but it's based on the bookmarklet so that one should work to.)
This cuts both ways. Why doesn't Apple discontinue and disable the QuickTime plugin, if they really have the users' interests at heart?
Apple has tried modernizing Quicktime with something called QTKit/Quicktime X. iOS did away with this altogether and instead uses something called AVFoundation. OSX 10.7 includes an OSX version of AVFoundation.
It's not 100% clear to me what the relationship between the two on OSX will be, but I'm guessing that Apple has given up on modernizing Quicktime and is just replacing it with AVFoundation.
This can't really come quickly enough. If Windows users are tired of Quicktime, well... it behaves a lot better on OSX if you're an end-user, but programming for Quicktime is a pain. In particular, programming codec plug-ins is horrible. The basic Quicktime architecture still deals with FSSpecs, memory handles, the old Component Manager, and API artifacts relating to the old code fragment manager from the pre-OSX days. Quicktime is probably the one big chunk of code in OSX that still dates from pre-OSX days and hasn't been re-implemented in terms of something more modern like Core Foundation.
If they are disabling the Quicktime plugin on OS X, then at least just download the movie file even if the mime type is "video/quicktime".
The error screen they are showing now is scary enough that most people will abort out of it.
It was far worse earlier http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/1289538~04d191d10d05df...
Just as a thought exercise: Can't Apple be sued for monopoly abuse? They have a monopoly on portable music players, for which you need iTunes to load music on, and then they default to installing Safari trying to leverage their monopoly in music players to win over the browser market.
The free market has plenty of alternatives, though not as good if you ask me, if you do not like their solution you are free to purchase another. There's nothing monopolistic about having a hugely successful product.
(b) Apple has about 2/3 of the paid music download market and 3/4 of the MP3 player market. They block other MP3 players from talking to iTunes, and other desktop software from talking to the iPod. I think that's probably abuse: they're using iTunes's dominant market position to protect the iPod's dominant market position, and vice versa.
Like the commenter above said, there is nothing illegal with being a monopoly.
What is a monopoly then?
We'd have to wade through a lot of case-law here, but if you'll permit me the ability to speak without excessive sourcing (most of this can be found supported and sourced on Wiki)...
The courts have made a distinction between an innocent and a coercive monopoly. Where innocent monopolies, as you may argue but I disagree, are what Apple has in the music player space. These are not illegal. It would need to be shown that Apple has conspired in some way to grow and maintain their market position in a way to be detrimental to consumers and other producers.
Now on to whether it is a monopoly or not. This page can be helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Monopoly_versus_compet...
Right now another consumer electronics company could: a) produce a new unit with a high quality software, b) sell it at a competitive price point to Apple, c) create a product very similar to the iPod itself, d) there already exist many other competitors. To me these factors suggest Apple does not have a monopoly but a very successful product.
And I'd submit as noted above, even if you found Apple to have a monopoly, I do not believe it would qualify as coercive under US law.
As noted in this thread, market share is not so much the issue, as barrier to entry.
A monopoly requires that a company uses it's position of dominance to put up barriers to entry for competition.
My dictionary defines sanctimonious as "making a show of being morally superior to other people."
All I saw from Apple in that essay was boiled down as:
This shit works better than this other shit, and as a result, it is our preference. And we think it'll be better for users, too. We control all aspects of our products' user experience, so this position will be reflected there.
I'd like you to contrast that with
"If Google didn’t act, it faced a draconian future where one man, one phone, one carrier were our choice. That’s a future we don’t want. [...] If you believe in openness, if you believe in choice, if you believe in innovation from everyone, then welcome to Android. "
And if I were to quote Steve directly: "We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers. [...] We cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms [...] Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications."
It cuts both ways.
The paragraph you quoted is 100% self-interest, not morality. No loaded words making value judgments about others ("draconian").
Their concern is that they will lose control of their platform to a party that doesn't care about its future. Apple has already been down that road with Adobe on the Mac and they're making clear it sucks for their goals. Making the best apps the world has ever seen isn't idealism – it's a bunch of cash in Apple's pocket. This strikes me as pragmatic, not moralizing. They're worried for themselves, not for you or me, except inasmuch as we might be users who will cease giving them money if they ship crap.
That's just not the same as FUDding about "one man" and all this, I'm sorry.
I guess you were being sarcastic, but did you know that the Honeycomb source was released by ASUS a few days ago? See:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2042581/asus-releas...
But to be clear it's Asus fulfilling their GPL requirements for Linux, not the Google originated Android stuff.
You must love the startup scene then...
I'm really torn trying to figure out which parts of your post is sarcasm. Because if you're really claiming that Apple hasn't pursued almost every initiative with "sanctimonious proclamations", you must not be paying attention. Gruber echos the Apple talk points, and they all revolve around "just trying to do right by the customer" (instead of "just trying to ensure massive profit margins aided by complete control and industry domination).
Apple makes massive profit margins by doing right by the customer (as they see it).
Sure, and so does Microsoft. That argument works for any company.
The problem is that many of Apple's transparent positions aren't held on their merit, but instead are shrouded behind layers of sanctimonious bullshit. See the anti-Flash screeds as an example of this. That you would claim that insult about Google, in this case, is quite laughable.
Though I see that HN is once again a bastion of pro-Apple delusion as the more enlightened fled.
I wish I could agree with you. In fact, for many companies, the customer is the last consideration. Especially in the case you've brought up here. Microsoft's financial might in the 90's was all about strategic relationships, three dimensional chess and out-maneuvering their competition through ethically dubious tactics, definitely not creating value for users.
"Primarily in the 1990s, critics contend Microsoft used monopolistic business practices and anti-competitive strategies including refusal to deal and tying, put unreasonable restrictions in the use of its software, and used misrepresentative marketing tactics; both the U.S. Department of Justice and European Commission found the company in violation of antitrust laws"
In any case, these are all religious as this point, and me proving your God is wrong is something one can't easily win.
Microsoft and Apple both engage in identical behaviors. Many Microsoft boosters used the identical "for the consumer" arguments in defending Microsoft activities. Forcing IE while prohibiting competitive browser installations, for instance, simplified and created a cleaner, more user-accessible platform that would just work, blah blah blah. Same sort of nonsense you hear today.
That you would link to the anti-trust decree is bizarre. Do you think I or anyone else don't know about that? Do you think Apple's actions are so different, or is Apple simply not in control as much market as Microsoft (yet). Then again, they've already drawn anti-trust attention, so ten years from now some booster of the then-big-dog will point back at the DOJ-vs-Apple lawsuit as proof of....something.
Kinda.
> Many Microsoft boosters used the identical "for the consumer" arguments in defending Microsoft activities.
I think the big difference here is that Apple is actually right. Flash on mobile is terrible for battery life and its implementations, so far, are shoddy.
There's a big difference on imposing your will over 25% of the market of rich people with fancy phones versus 96% of the market of everyone who needed a computer to get anything useful done. Apple has nowhere near the power Microsoft did.
Silverlight on mobile though has been pretty excellent. Curious if Apple would allow Silverlight on their platform? Probably not.
What about HTML5 and Apple's promises? It's been a while since Jobs wrote that and still Apple's HTML5 implementation is not up to par. http://blog.millermedeiros.com/2011/01/ipad-is-the-new-ie6/
On top of that, Apple is in no hurry to bring the speed improvements of their Nitro JS engine to apps pinned to the homescreen. After all, they prefer devs to make native apps so that there is a lockin.
>There's a big difference on imposing your will over 25% of the market versus 96% of the market. Apple has nowhere near the power Microsoft did
What about tablets where Apple is deemed to have 94% of the market?
I think minds smarter than I have put this particular notion to bed.
> Apple can't turn on the ability to do executable, dynamically written to memory pages just for their library: they'd have to turn it on for the entire process, at which point you could also do crazy things like download native code and execute it, bypassing the entire concept of their "codesign" mechanism.
Says saurik, of Cydia fame, in that and other comments. It's a security concern for Apple, not necessarily a strategic one.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2338338
Apple controls the tablet market only because they invented it as it currently exists a year ago. That's not really a useful comparison to the 90's, as desktop computers as a category had existed for a couple of decades. Moreover, tablets aren't currently essential to doing work, so the true power Apple has over others is negligible.
You want me to believe that the engineering might of Apple haven't figured out the security for apps to make use of the new JS engine without getting full privileges? I think it's just not a priority for Apple.
There aren't many exceptions to this. It is certainly true of Apple, where you are a consumer of their platform, and a conduit of their payment system, as much as you're a consumer of a specific product.
There's a reason Apple locks down their platform, and it isn't because they're looking out for your financial or competitive choice interests.
That you bought an iPhone is simply the first step, and that consumer-capture will be exploited for years. Apple wants to be your conduit of music and movies, applications, information and subscriptions, etc. They have no interest in selling you a device just to bid you adieu.
It's good to know you can just fall back on calling people fanboys if you don't agree with their opinions.
What's right for the consumer about the compulsory 30% cut of iOS subscriptions for things like Readability, Kindle and Netflix? The uniform 43% increase for ALL customers while lining Apple's pockets for contributing basically nothing (unlike apps where they atleast provide hosting).
Edit: I am sure Android is bad for Apple's customers, no wonder they don't want it to be seen. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373502,00.asp
If you had to pick between QuickTime and Flash for playing H264 (given that Google has pulled native support for H264) I'd pick QuickTime since it doesn't allow the website designer to festoon the video with ads, links, stupid overlays, and random UI decisions, but better yet would be if Google supported H264 directly and fixed the ugly and buggy <video> tag support.
SWF and F4V container formats are indeed published freely, however the Flash runtime itself is still proprietary, and thus incompatible with an open web.
I use http://fdt.powerflasher.com/ now and before that http://flashdevelop.org/
* formerly Flex Builder, renamed to avoid confusion with the SDK
There's enough behavior that a practical Flash player needs to implement that isn't in the Open Screen spec (error handling in particular) that creating your own Flash player for general content on the web produced by Adobe Flash, and not just carefully-vetted SWF's, is hard.
But at least Adobe stopped threatening legal action against anyone who implemented their own Flash player.
Edit: Open Page? Open Screen. Oops...
To be clear, you simply have to manually enable QT for a domain you want it to run. All plugins should be set to run this way - "do you trust this domain?". It would cut down on 90% of drive by exploitations where the user never even sees the malicious iframe and has no idea that they visited the domain hosting the exploit code.
Hopefully this isn't true for the OS X version of Chrome. Otherwise, I'll be switching back to Safari...
(I first got bugged by it clicking on the Pow video link at http://pow.cx/ -- when a Mac browser won't play a straight .mov file for political reasons it could be time to change.)
That's ridiculous, especially since all versions of Chrome shipping still have h264 support. That would be a bit horse before the carriage.
So, the way it's supposed to be?
works fine in chrome, won't load in firefox. as expected.
Note, the screenshot is Chrome 12 playing h264 video on Vimeo. I've done nothing to cause this to work.
Oh, yes, it's -3, please continue piling on the downvotes without bothering to verify the information you're voting based on. Pile it on, what a terrible comment for me to have made. To imply that we shouldn't errantly speculate? To suggest that it's irrational to assume they're riping it out because of h264 seeing as Chrome 12 plays it just fine for me? Good work guys.
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=78768#c1
[speculation]
Maybe it's to do with this, patched in a new OS X release only a couple of weeks ago?
"An integer overflow existed in QuickTime's handling of movie files. Viewing a maliciously crafted movie file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. "
http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10770
[/speculation]
This presumably alleviates a lot of the security concerns for that plugin, since it now has the same protection to exploitation as the rest of chrome, and security vulnerabilities might be able to be patched through chrome's auto-update(?)
However, I don't think it's the case for Windows or Linux. On those systems, it should just be another codec/browser plugin. Playing Quicktime videos should be the same as any other codec, so I don't really understand why it's not possible to sandbox it like Flash.
I think the word that java is also disabled in the nightlies in the same fashion should suggest that this isn't some partisan x264 or open web fight. It's security.
http://www.apple.com/ipad/guided-tours/
On h264/Ogg/webM capable browsers, I'm told to download and install QuickTime. If we want to talk about hypocrisy, it starts there.
How does that work? On Mac OS X to do anything with video you use QuickTime. QuickTime isn't just the front end software. It provides an API that can be used to create all kinds of software, not only that it allows other codecs to easily be installed (see Perian for Mac OS X).
In addition I have to say that I'm a MacBook Air user that means when I play flash content in the chrome browser my fan is freaking out. With QuickTime this doesnt happen and guess what I like more? Yes, playing videos without freaking out fans.
I love this damn feature and now that it's here I'm going to be impatient with any browser that doesn't. I can now feel safe leaving Java turned on.
Is there any valid technical reason for browsers to handle media files in any way other than wrapping OS provided codecs?
Security is supposedly an issue, but "clicking on a video file in your browser to play it" is no easier than clicking "open file" in a download prompt -- if there's a vulnerability in your media player, attackers don't need <video> to get to it.
Which is updated more often... Your browser or your codecs?
Browsers are taking over certain functions because the OS side (both OS X and Windows) are a mess. I imagine it makes browsers easier to test too not having even more dependencies over the quirks of whatever dot release of the OS you are running.
(Ok, I'll give you an H.264 or MPEG-2 being tied into my video hardware for great performance and low power consumption, but the rest of them…)
It's true that the bare minimum that a codec needs to do is take an input bytestream and output it to the various output(video and audio) bytestreams. So, for a hardware accelerated video, this is pretty simple-all you need to do is pipe your input stream to the hardware, and that will handle all the magic of getting it directly out to the screens and speakers. However, for non-native hardware accelerated codecs(i.e. not H.264 or MPEG-2), this process involves a lot more hardware and software to actually get something to the screen.
The non-native hardware accelerated codecs need access to(at a bare minimum) the sound and video system APIs. Unless the codec developers are certifiably insane, the codec will be using DirectX(for Windows) or OpenGL(for everything else) to handle the actual writing to the screen, especially if you want to use the video hardware for faster decoding. While it's possible for browsers to wrap those API calls, it just makes a lot more effort on all developers involved, and doesn't really get you much security at the expense of both complexity and performance. So it makes sense for any codec to have access to the lower level APIs for displaying things to the screen.
Sandboxing the process should be possible for the file inputs, but I'm not sure if it's really possible for file outputs in the cases where the codec is using a system-level API.
EDIT: After reading what I wrote, this is a good argument for the browsers themselves wrapping the codecs and placing them into a sandbox. Unfortunately, that will never happen, because of the legal minefield that almost all have right now...
But, most codecs are going to be written in C and assembly language for speed, which brings the potential for buffer overflows and other low-level exploits. Plus, that video data does eventually make it to the kernel and then the video hardware (often via a separate overlay interface like DirectShow, Xv, or VDPAU, though that is probably not the case with web browsers), so a vulnerability at any point along the chain is a serious issue.
I'd rather see applications just feed the bytestream to the OS to decode using the best means available, even if it means support for new codecs is a bit slow. (Although an OS-level codec plugin architecture like QuickTime Components can get you software decoding for new or obscure codecs.)
If my GPU has a high-quality, high-speed H.264 decoder, I shouldn't have to worry about which browsers will use it. They should all default to the OS-provided decoding and playback methods unless there are sound technical reasons not to. If I want to use a new codec that's not supported by the fixed-function decoder, I shouldn't have to worry about which web browsers have bothered to include the necessary OpenCL code to decode on my GPU. I should just be able to install one codec that hooks in to the OS's media framework, and all browsers should use that first.
Yes, and Firefox already has platform-specific Direct3D and OpenGL backends. Remember that a browser today needs to be able to accelerate not just video but all content and compositing, so they already have to put in that investment. The investment in video is just an additional delta.
I'd rather see applications just feed the bytestream to the OS to decode using the best means available, even if it means support for new codecs is a bit slow. (Although an OS-level codec plugin architecture like QuickTime Components can get you software decoding for new or obscure codecs.)
Hm. "I'd rather see applications just feed the HTML to the OS to render using the best means available, even if it means support for new HTML features is a bit slow. (Although a engine-level plugin architecture like ActiveX or NPAPI can get you some sort of rendering for new or obscure features.)" How is your assertion materially different?
If my GPU has a high-quality, high-speed H.264 decoder, I shouldn't have to worry about which browsers will use it. They should all default to the OS-provided decoding and playback methods unless there are sound technical reasons not to. If I want to use a new codec that's not supported by the fixed-function decoder, I shouldn't have to worry about which web browsers have bothered to include the necessary OpenCL code to decode on my GPU. I should just be able to install one codec that hooks in to the OS's media framework, and all browsers should use that first.
- See http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2009/06/directsh... for some problems with using OS codecs, some of which apply to Quicktime too.
- You're ignoring the fact that browser makers may think supporting H.264 is against the principles of the web and will damage it.
The non-political arguments the mozillazine article makes against using the OS's media frameworks can be solved by using ffmpeg/etc. as fallbacks, except for the one about having to support multiple rendering paths (and even that could be solved by just packaging ffmpeg in the OS-supported codec format).
If a web browser maker wants to make it hard to use H.264 even when the user already has a fully-licensed decoder as part of their operating system, then they are putting their political goals above the users' needs.
If I want my browser to supplant my operating system, I'll use ChromeOS. Otherwise, I want my browser to play nice and not bring along political baggage.
I don't want my browser to include it's own unoptimized codecs, it's own half-assed OpenGL implementation, it's own font rendering code, it's own widget library, it's own PDF viewer, and it's own device drivers. I want my browser to include a kick-ass [X]HTML+CSS+JS engine, and delegate the rest to the operating system like any sane application.
"You need to install plugin X to view this video."
"You need to install QuickTime Component X to view this video."
"You need to install third-party Firefox codec X to view this video."
Except that the third piece of software likely won't exist, and Mozilla might not even let it exist.
If browser vendors make it hard to install and use a codec for patent-encumbered formats like H.264, that will only prolong the use of even worse plugins like Flash for the purpose of playing H.264 videos.
But inside the browser it's a web technology. That's the whole point of the video tag.
When a browser's raison d'être is "political" as you put it, then of course any such decision is going to have a moral component. It isn't just about short-term support -- it's about a long-term vision for what the web should be like, and more importantly shouldn't be like. H.264 isn't compatible with that vision.
they are putting their political goals above the users' needs.
But those goals are the users' long-term needs. The minor loss if people can't play H.264 video right now is offset by the much greater victory if the web stays free and open.
I don't want my browser to include it's own unoptimized codecs, it's own half-assed OpenGL implementation, it's own font rendering code, it's own widget library, it's own PDF viewer, and it's own device drivers.
Stop making ridiculous blanket statements. This is much more nuanced than that, and involves balancing the costs of including custom code with its benefits.
See http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2009/06/directsh.... The philosophical reasons are even more important though.
Facebook's was to ban(ish) QuickTime.
QuickTime feels like something that should have gone the way of the dodos, back when RealPlayer disappeared into obscurity.
After RealPlayer, QuickTime became the worst software experience on Windows. (iTunes comes in right after.)