Yes, I've
bitched about this before, but it's still happening and it's still
stupidly annoying.
WTF?!
Apple, are you listening?
Nope. Didn't think so.
My "Software Update" just suggested I install QuickTime 6.2 because "This update is recommended for users of iTunes 4." Huh? QuickTime (video software) used with iTunes. That's not terribly intuitive. But if they want to bundle AAC audio support with QuickTime rather than iTunes, so be it. But don't tell me I must reboot in the process. That's just plain stupid. This is Unix under the hood, right? Is this an AAC kernel module, or what?
Now I understand why people have a love/hate relationships with their Macs. Apple drives them nuts often enough to make it happen.
I love iTunes and the new Apple Music store. Yes, I complained about it but I've actually used it a bit more and am very fond about it. I plan to do a small write-up on it soon. But right now I'm pissed at Apple. Last night I was in love with Apple and how fucking brilliant the music store is.
One more note, Apple. Please make URLs that are easy to guess. I first tried music.apple.com only to find that I didn't exist. I had to use www.apple.com/music instead. It's not hard to make both work. Really. Having things work on the first guess is part of what makes Apple stuff cool. Please extend that to your web site.
I know you can do it. How? Try quicktime.apple.com and notice that it takes you to www.apple.com/quicktime/. No fuss. It just works.
Posted by jzawodn at May 04, 2003 10:07 PM
i understand your frustration, but...
quicktime isn't just video. it's video and audio codecs. the recommended update is to add the AAC codec to quicktime which itunes uses. synergy and all that.
about the reboot part. yeah, it's annoying. i imagine that it doesn't really need a reboot, but just needs the user to log out and back in (to restart aqua).
these things will get better as time goes on. apple has had a good track record of doing the "right" thing lately.
There's a lot of stuff that uses Quicktime. For example, if you're looking at trailers in Watson or Sherlock, it might get confused if Quicktime changed underneath it. Undoubtedly there's other places where its used (paths, perhaps?).
I also assume they just decided, it "just works better that way". Fewer incidents, few strange things.
The apple sound libraries (which play system sounds, etc.) are also all quicktime based. For a while there was a bug in quicktime which would cause system sounds to cease.
So in that context, it isn't necessarily as "obviously broken" to require a reboot. :-/
Do you find applemusic.com hard to guess :).
Also, not sure if its related, but iTunes 4 can display video clips. I'd love to see a way in iTunes 4 to search for only for video clips.
Cheers
-Emmanuel
The host redirect is just a legacy thing; not to make it easier for you to find the current page.
Years ago Apple used hostnames (http://cyberdog.apple.com/ ) instead of directories (/powerbook/ off www.apple.com). When they moved it they added the obvious redirects.
- ask
... and on reboots. As others have pointed out then QuickTime is a fairly fundamental part of the OS. They could make a "this update requires you to logout and login again" instead of a full reboot; but unless you run daemon processes on your box then logging out is just as bad as a full reboot.
I'm pretty sure that the reason iTunes 4 requires QuickTime 6.2 is because AAC is an audio codec licensed from Dolby. Since QuickTime already had the codec in order to play DVD-Audio, it made sense to not have to re-license it for another application. It's an expensive license (just like mp3 was/is).
The QT update was probably just to make it more accessible to iTunes 4.
I vaguely recall reading an Apple tech note, it said that recent OS versions like 10.2.5 don't need to reboot after an install in many cases where it previously would have been required, but the note was lacking in specifics. IIRC older iTunes updates required a reboot but this one didn't. The situation is improving.
There have always been allegations that there are sooper sekrit kernel mods in QT updates, to optimize performance and allow QT to hog the CPU. But I've never seen any proof that this is true.
Whether it's audio, video, or both, there's still no reason for a reboot. Just telling the user they have to log out and log back in should be fine, and is this not done with other updates, just a note saying "you must log out and log in for this to apply"? Either way I agree with Jeremey, it's silly, and apple should know better.
I assumed there was a kernel mod for DRM authorization/deauthorization involved
