P.C. Shannon

QuickTime is one of those Internet technologies that I generally refuse to use as a matter of principle. Until recently, I couldn’t say why I loathe it so, which is not the case with RealPlayer. When I was working in IT, I saw several machines rendered completely unusable by bugs and crashes in the Real software. Admittedly, this was several years ago and on computers running either Windows 95 or NT; I have downloaded and used more recent version on XP and suffered no ill effects. Still, I’m hesitant to give it a ringing endorsement.

QuickTime, by comparison, just seems superfluous. I mean, I already have software on my computer that will play movies on websites. Why should I have to install something additional? But I did just that recently, because Intuit’s support site required it, for no apparent reason.

Of course, you can’t just install QuickTime any more. No, you have to install iTunes, which includes QuickTime. Apple is leveraging one of its “free” technologies to explicitly promote a pay service.

The QuickTime installer also gave me another surprise—something called Bonjour. It never asked me if I wanted Bonjour, it just knew what was best for me. Nice. Bonjour is a network setup technology that “lets you create an instant network of computers and smart devices just by getting them connected to each other.” Wonderful. It’s an integral part of MacOS X, but how many Windows users have it? Everyone with QuickTime, apparently. How many actually use it? Zero, I’d say.

Having this software sitting on your computer, just waiting for another Bonjour-enabled device to show up, seems like a big security risk to me. Considering how widespread QuickTime is, what’s to stop an enterprising virus writer from co-opting the protocol to help his baby spread across LANs, circumventing e-mail virus protection?

Hyperbole aside, Apple is also leveraging its “free” technology to surreptitiously install its own networking technology that may or may not be very secure. (I suspect Apple doesn’t worry too much about computer security because there’s never been a virus written for Apple computers. There just aren’t enough Macs around for it to spread very far or have much of an impact (virus writers crave media coverage). Biologists call this “heard immunity.”)

Plus it broke my installation of Java, which resulted in a moment of panic when my CS assignment was due.

A simple uninstall cleared all of these problems up. Of course, it wasn’t that simple since QuickTime and iTunes are separate uninstalls in spite of being installed as a single package.

Here’s the bottom line: Apple’s leveraging of QuickTime to promote its other technologies and services is an awfully Gates-esque move for the supposed “good guys.” In the age of Google and its “Don’t be evil” mantra, Apple fails that simple test.