Yesterday I ran across Russell's blog post saying that Steve Jobs' latest keynote was available online. I figured I'd watch it. I tried and discovered that I need to upgrade Quicktime, which led to Apple pissing me off for trying to shove iTunes down my throat along with Quicktime.
Screw that. I download iTunes if and when I want to download iTunes.
Before I could write about it, though, I found that JR had been through exactlty the same experience. So go read his rant and just pretend that I bitched about it too.
Posted by jzawodn at October 17, 2005 10:41 AM
Two easy options here Jeremy:
1. Write your own multimedia system and use that instead of getting one for free from Apple.
2. Quit your bitching.
I use Quicktime Alternative and Real Alternative on my windows boxen. No more systray crap, no more "tell me later" bullshit. And Media Player Classic to boot, which looks like a computer program with a decipherable UI rather than a fucking spaceship console.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm
Or you can google "quicktime without itunes" and click the first link you find:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone.html
Meant to mention to you, Jeremy, over the weekend I got email from a guy whose dad said he was having trouble with "Yahoo Reader". I was like, huh? Then after he asked again, he figured it out -- his dad had Adobe Acrobat but it has the Yahoo Search toolbar (and logo) in it, so he thought it was a Yahoo product. Oops...
Craig, there's a third option: Ignore apple videos. :-)
Aren't they just giving Windows users what they expect to get? ;-)
Even more annoying is pages that "bundle" Flash in them (like Yahoo does all over its pages), then Flash bothers viewers to upgrade. Pot, kettle, black.
I know you've already commented on stuff like this, but I was plenty irked yesterday when I had to allow the Adobe Acrobat installer to install Yahoo Toolbar in order to get the latest version of Acrobat on my PC.
Yeah, but I assumed you wanted to see Jobs badly enough to not ignore the video though Jeremy :)
Yahoo! Tool Bar is an optional download with the Adobe Reader.
I had the Acrobat/Yahoo toolbar experience yesterday. Yes it is optional, but the wrong way. In the middle of the last of a series of pages are two ready-checked boxes that will cause downloads of Yahoo toolbar and Photoshop Album starter kit - unless you are concentrating on the screen and unclick them before hitting "Download".
IMHO this is simply bad and underhanded. I do *not* want to have to concentrate to weed out unrelated products that are trying to get to my laptop under the radar.
I also had the QT/iTunes experience last week, and then later realised that iTunes is a MUCH better app than RealPlayer, so deleted that instead. Go figure.
I don't mind iTunes and Quicktime being bundled together just so long as they're available separately too. I use both, so if they've both been updated it's easier to download them both at the same time; however, in the past, when iTunes has been updated and QuickTime hasn't, it's a bit annoying to have to download a huge package with QuickTime and Rendez-Vous included when you already have the latest version.
When I updated from iTunes 5.0.1 to 6 on my Mac, I downloaded a 13MB update, yet it only had to updated 700KB of files.
Completely agree Jeremy, Quicktime does, and always has bugged me. But if I need it, why can't I just download it easily, a simple link saying "download Quicktime", why do I have to start choosing if I want iTunes with it or not? I dislike iTunes almost as much, and there I have more choice, I really don't want it on my machine.
Might be nice of Apple to offer these things for free, but I'd rather have some choice and be able to pick a program that I like using and doesn't screw things up.
RealPlayer is just as bad, that thing bugs me as well.
I like to play video files in Windows Media Player, or the software I got with my DVD drive, and play music in Winamp, things that start forcing me to use other software to do those things irritate me and have to do more to make me watch/listen to them.
Craig said:
"Write your own multimedia system and use that instead of getting one for free from Apple."
That is beyond a moronic statement.
Don't like your car? Build one.
Don't like your wife? Kill her and genetically engineer a new one.
Don't like your house? Take the next year or two off work and build one yourself.
We get products for them to deliver on our expectations. Wether or not we pay money for them, the makers of those products are responsible for their limitations and failings. Maybe Apple has the right to release bloatware, but we have the right to complain about it.
Let me ask you this: When Microsoft bundles, do you defend them? I doubt it.
Even worse, when you upgrade iTunes, it forces you to upgrade Quicktime and if you have a Quicktime Pro license on an older version, you lose that. Not a nice way to treat paying customers.
Grrr! I just ran into the same problem and was *really* unhappy about it. I remembered that you'd recently talked about this, and I want to thank Nathaniel for the advice (in the comments above) to look for the standalone download.
I still think the practice sucks!
