I admit I am an Apple zealot. What is even worse is that I don’t own anything from Apple, unless you count iTunes and Quicktime software. I love following their new gear, so when I saw that Steve Jobs’ intro of the new iPod nano and the Motorola ROKR phone was available for viewing online, I rushed over there to check it out. That’s when things went wonky.
The sound and video was so choppy that it was impossible to watch. I figured the servers must be overloaded with people watching, but that seemed a bit amateurish for Apple. After some investigating, I saw that the web site had auto-detected that I was using Quicktime 7, so it sent me the H.263 version of the video. H.263 is a highly compressed standard that downloads quickly, but relies on the processing power of your computer to show the video correctly. Sounds great, except that my computer isn’t fast enough to display it. And there was no way for me to select the non-H.263 version of the video! So I had to actually uninstall iTunes, track down Quicktime 6 on the Internet, install that older version, and then bingo, I was able to view the video perfectly.
The worst part is that there is no way to install iTunes without Quicktime 7, to my knowledge. Boooo Apple! Boo!
Oh well, I guess I have to upgrade my computer to… hey, how about a Powerbook?
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