Life as an Artificial Lifeform

In a move that I can only comment as "stupidity" at its best Apple tries for the billions time to force developers using quicktime "ref" movies when making movies for the iPhone. Now this is nothing new. Apple tried to persuade webdevelopers to use quicktime ref movies when it first introduced them (quicktime 3 it was when I recall correctly) and with each .5 revision it brings the issue up again. Now the latest push (a desperate one) it tries to tie the issue with the iPhone. Now there are three reason why ref movies at the current state will not be used by any devloper outside the apple campus. First there is no really easy sufficent path to create them. Yes you can use Quicktime Player to make them but I am talking about a workflow. Live Stage Pro (a 1000 USD programm) offers such a possibility (as well as make interactive quicktime and we all know how good these are doing) but its expensive, hard to learn and again offers no automatic workflow. Generally a "drag&drop" application to create a ref movie would be great - but it would need to come with Quicktime Pro - everything else will end up to be just a niche. Second ref movies require the END USER to set the connection speed inside quicktime (on Windows) or inside the Quicktime Preferences in the System Preferences. I do not know a single person in my wide circle of friends/family/bussiness partners who does even know about this setting. The iPhone might switch the setting automatically (from EDGE to wifi depending on what its on at the moment) and if you are doing a website for just the iPhone this might be a non issue - but I don´t see people doing websites for JUST the iPhone ever and because of that you do not want to be using ref movies because the default setting on MacOSX for the connection speed is "Dial Up" so all people coming to your site will see the worst possible resolution even if they have 100Mbit fibre to the home. (note to Apple: determine the connection speed when Quicktime (first?) launches with a connection speed test and this would be much less of an issue) Third we are talking about Quicktime interactive as soon as you make a Ref quicktime and Quicktime interactive is so full of flaws, speed problems and old 1995 code that you want to keep your fingers of it as much as possible. Solution. Make three videos: One for EDGE/DialUp One for 1 Mbit One for 6 Mbit and then put three links on your webpage that should do it. And maybe one day Apple is actually updating Quicktime to something modern and provide the tools to easely make what they are suggesting until then fingers off of "ref" movies. Now if you think I am bitter - I am. I tried using "refs" when they where first introduced but because of the above problems I was never able to use them and seeing Apple "pushing" them again is bringer up the bitterness. the iPhone webdeveloper info page can be found here: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/designingcontent.html the rest of the info seems quite alright.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, WebDevelopment, WebVideo, Video Encoding, Quicktime