What Is Apple Doing With QuickTime?
As expected, AV Foundation from iOS 4 will be added to Lion. My take is that signals the end of QuickTime as we’ve known it. But it’s not only that there’s a new Framework for for working with time-based audiovisual media – there’s a lot more to QuickTime than that, and it’s all the interactive and additional technologies in QuickTime that don’t appear to have a future. Features that were important when QuickTime MOVs were the preferred (at Apple) distribution format.
One of these days I should learn how to use Quartz Composer.
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"One of these days I should learn how to use Quartz Composer."
Check out Zugakousaku's site, if you haven't already, to see some of the cool things that can be done.
But more importantly:
"As expected, AV Foundation from iOS 4 will be added to Lion. My take is that signals the end of QuickTime as we’ve known it."
What about QT Player 7 and the legacy frameworks?
As a user, I need those to remain intact in Lion in order to be able to migrate. And frankly, I'd appreciate maintenance of those frameworks in the OS X release after Lion as well, assuming that Lion isn't the EOL for OS X.
I understand why Apple is moving to a cocoa rewrite of QT. The motivation is quite sensible. But QT predates even OS X, and there is a lot of legacy things that Apple can't simply axe without an extended period of maintenance.
I further understand that Apple is not Microsoft, and that legacy is never much of a priority. But there are certain cases where legacy support is crucial, even in CupertinoWorld. Running Classic apps continued to be supported for 5 years after OS X started getting pre-installed on new Macs. Similarly, support for QT "classic" should be maintained for 5 years after the release of Snow Leopard put the writing on the wall.
(And if anybody has played around with the Lion betas and isn't bound by NDA, I'd love to know if they have any clues as to the support or lack of support for QT Player 7 on Lion...)
