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The same thing that happened to Windows Media Player, they got replaced by streaming. Anyone tech savvy enough to still use local digital media playback uses fr

The same thing that happened to Windows Media Player, they got replaced by streaming. Anyone tech savvy enough to still use local digital media playback uses freeware and open source like VLC which have a lot more compatibility. If you mean QuickTime as a framework, ffmpeg.

csydas 5y ago
I'm actually not sure this is entirely accurate; I used a Mac basically all my life (OS 7 all the way to current) and never had a Windows based machine until well into my 20's, so Quicktime and I were good friends for a long time. We also fought a lot when it came to the early days of torrenting anime and movies. I don't think Streaming and QuickTime really ever cross paths. It just didn't support as many fancy features that VLC and Media Player with the various Codec packs did, and later on players like MPV absolutely overwhelmed QuickTime in terms of playback and feature sets. I have vague memories that QuickTime used to come with the iTunes package for Windows, but I may be wrong on this so don't quote me on it. I do distinctly remember a period of time when many people who had Windows would ask how QuickTime got on their system. From the Mac side of things, QuickTime always felt like it didn't know what it should be. It was aways a sort-of media player without all the library features and playback features the other players had, along with a very basic media editor, media converter/exporter, and a few other bells and whistles that were neat but no one used and very few people wanted to pay for. Eventually I think Apple just realized there was no sense in maintaining it as a priority. As I wrote this post, I realized that on Big Sur, the dictionary no longer corrects QuickTime like it corrects iTunes or iMac or many other Apple products. (amusingly, apple seems to have had the self restraint not to assume you mean the company and not the fruit when writing apple, just a neat little fact ;)) Ultimately though, I don't think streaming and QuickTime really were enemies at all. I don't think streaming was even really a thing by the time QuickTime was really relegated to "that app you accidentally open movies in sometimes." Now it just is a media player that sticks around because you have to have a media player with your OS or the other OSes will make fun of you.
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  > I have vague memories that QuickTime used to come with the iTunes package for Windows, but I may be wrong on this so don't quote me on it. It did, because QuickTime is/was a media handling framework. The article isn't talking about the QuickTime Player application except incidentally. When you were using the Mac on OS 7 up until about 2011 (with the introduction of AVFoundation), just about everything that was playing media using Carbon or Cocoa API calls was using QuickTime under the hood. When Apple ported QuickTime Player to Windows, they ported the QuickTime framework, too -- and iTunes for Windows was built to use that. So QTP basically came along for the ride whether you wanted it to or not. I don't know if this is still the case, though.
  - tveyben 5y ago
    I was initially confused OS 7 was for me ‘System 7.x’ (partially also triggered by the ‘used all my life’) - then year 2011 was mentioned and I understood that it was only a partial version number that was noted and the reference was actually for ‘Mac OS X 10.7.x’
    - realityking 5y ago
      Grandparent is indeed talking about System 7. it was the first version of Mac OS that shipped with QuickTime.
    - boondaburrah 5y ago
      You might've called "OS 7" growing up if your first Macintosh ran "Mac OS" 7.6 or later.
- kalleboo 5y ago
  > As I wrote this post, I realized that on Big Sur, the dictionary no longer corrects QuickTime like it corrects iTunes or iMac or many other Apple products This would be odd since the video player in the very latest macOS is still called "QuickTime Player" even though QuickTime is no longer involved. Indeed on Monterey it's autocorrecting completely for me
chipotle_coyote 5y ago
The article is clearly talking about QuickTime as a framework, and while it touches on its widespread use on Windows, it's primarily talking about QuickTime on the Mac, which was replaced by AVFoundation. (Also, the current version of the QuickTime Player -- and, of course, AVFoundation -- handles streaming perfectly well, although I doubt many people use QTP for that.)
nyanpasu64 5y ago
I no longer recommend VLC for music playback. They resample audio (change its playback rate and pitch away from nominal hardware rate / audio file rate) for some reason, and this algorithm breaks down especially when you seek, causing files to randomly be pitched up and down by nearly a semitone at worst. The bug has been reported for many years now, I recently found the exact circumstances, reproduction instructions, and a workaround (disable audio resampling), but not a fix: https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/14287 https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/14287. Note that disabling audio resampling may impair AV sync.
- pipeline_peak 5y ago
  What about Foobar2000 and Deadbeef
  - aspenmayer 5y ago
    Foobar2000 isn’t open source, so that probably disqualifies it for many VLC users. It also has UI weirdness like VLC, but differently weird. I guess that’s less of an issue than it could be, but the Android version of foobar2000 doesn’t have an obvious Play All/Shuffle All button when in shuffle mode, among other quirky situations that other players handle better. Haven’t tried DeaDBeeF to my knowledge, but it seems vaguely familiar, so maybe I did way back in the day. I haven’t really used local music much since I started streaming music. I never would have guessed that shift would occur. I’m finding the value in local media lately, though. I know that remote streaming assets can disappear anytime, and now plan for that eventuality. Building a local media library feels sustainable and fun again, and discovery has a companion goal of collecting.
  - nyanpasu64 5y ago
    foobar2000 works on Windows and runs fairly well on Wine, and has a lot of game music emulation plugins (which I use heavily unlike most people). Audacious runs on Linux, and has some game music emulation plugins (not as rich and configurable as foobar2000 though). I haven't noticed audible pitch shifts yet, but don't know for sure whether they ever resample, drift, or drift audibly. Another option is mpv and the various UIs, which support video as well as audio.
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csydas 5y ago

I'm actually not sure this is entirely accurate; I used a Mac basically all my life (OS 7 all the way to current) and never had a Windows based machine until well into my 20's, so Quicktime and I were good friends for a long time. We also fought a lot when it came to the early days of torrenting anime and movies. I don't think Streaming and QuickTime really ever cross paths. It just didn't support as many fancy features that VLC and Media Player with the various Codec packs did, and later on players like MPV absolutely overwhelmed QuickTime in terms of playback and feature sets. I have vague memories that QuickTime used to come with the iTunes package for Windows, but I may be wrong on this so don't quote me on it. I do distinctly remember a period of time when many people who had Windows would ask how QuickTime got on their system. From the Mac side of things, QuickTime always felt like it didn't know what it should be. It was aways a sort-of media player without all the library features and playback features the other players had, along with a very basic media editor, media converter/exporter, and a few other bells and whistles that were neat but no one used and very few people wanted to pay for. Eventually I think Apple just realized there was no sense in maintaining it as a priority. As I wrote this post, I realized that on Big Sur, the dictionary no longer corrects QuickTime like it corrects iTunes or iMac or many other Apple products. (amusingly, apple seems to have had the self restraint not to assume you mean the company and not the fruit when writing apple, just a neat little fact ;)) Ultimately though, I don't think streaming and QuickTime really were enemies at all. I don't think streaming was even really a thing by the time QuickTime was really relegated to "that app you accidentally open movies in sometimes." Now it just is a media player that sticks around because you have to have a media player with your OS or the other OSes will make fun of you.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago
> I have vague memories that QuickTime used to come with the iTunes package for Windows, but I may be wrong on this so don't quote me on it. It did, because QuickTime is/was a media handling framework. The article isn't talking about the QuickTime Player application except incidentally. When you were using the Mac on OS 7 up until about 2011 (with the introduction of AVFoundation), just about everything that was playing media using Carbon or Cocoa API calls was using QuickTime under the hood. When Apple ported QuickTime Player to Windows, they ported the QuickTime framework, too -- and iTunes for Windows was built to use that. So QTP basically came along for the ride whether you wanted it to or not. I don't know if this is still the case, though.
- tveyben 5y ago
  I was initially confused OS 7 was for me ‘System 7.x’ (partially also triggered by the ‘used all my life’) - then year 2011 was mentioned and I understood that it was only a partial version number that was noted and the reference was actually for ‘Mac OS X 10.7.x’
  - realityking 5y ago
    Grandparent is indeed talking about System 7. it was the first version of Mac OS that shipped with QuickTime.
  - boondaburrah 5y ago
    You might've called "OS 7" growing up if your first Macintosh ran "Mac OS" 7.6 or later.
kalleboo 5y ago
> As I wrote this post, I realized that on Big Sur, the dictionary no longer corrects QuickTime like it corrects iTunes or iMac or many other Apple products This would be odd since the video player in the very latest macOS is still called "QuickTime Player" even though QuickTime is no longer involved. Indeed on Monterey it's autocorrecting completely for me

chipotle_coyote 5y ago

The article is clearly talking about QuickTime as a framework, and while it touches on its widespread use on Windows, it's primarily talking about QuickTime on the Mac, which was replaced by AVFoundation. (Also, the current version of the QuickTime Player -- and, of course, AVFoundation -- handles streaming perfectly well, although I doubt many people use QTP for that.)

nyanpasu64 5y ago

I no longer recommend VLC for music playback. They resample audio (change its playback rate and pitch away from nominal hardware rate / audio file rate) for some reason, and this algorithm breaks down especially when you seek, causing files to randomly be pitched up and down by nearly a semitone at worst. The bug has been reported for many years now, I recently found the exact circumstances, reproduction instructions, and a workaround (disable audio resampling), but not a fix: https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/14287 https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/14287. Note that disabling audio resampling may impair AV sync.

pipeline_peak 5y ago
What about Foobar2000 and Deadbeef
- aspenmayer 5y ago
  Foobar2000 isn’t open source, so that probably disqualifies it for many VLC users. It also has UI weirdness like VLC, but differently weird. I guess that’s less of an issue than it could be, but the Android version of foobar2000 doesn’t have an obvious Play All/Shuffle All button when in shuffle mode, among other quirky situations that other players handle better. Haven’t tried DeaDBeeF to my knowledge, but it seems vaguely familiar, so maybe I did way back in the day. I haven’t really used local music much since I started streaming music. I never would have guessed that shift would occur. I’m finding the value in local media lately, though. I know that remote streaming assets can disappear anytime, and now plan for that eventuality. Building a local media library feels sustainable and fun again, and discovery has a companion goal of collecting.
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  foobar2000 works on Windows and runs fairly well on Wine, and has a lot of game music emulation plugins (which I use heavily unlike most people). Audacious runs on Linux, and has some game music emulation plugins (not as rich and configurable as foobar2000 though). I haven't noticed audible pitch shifts yet, but don't know for sure whether they ever resample, drift, or drift audibly. Another option is mpv and the various UIs, which support video as well as audio.

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