iTunes 10.5- no quicktime?

The new update to iTunes (10.5) says the following: Note: iTunes 10.5 no longer requires or includes QuickTime.

What am I missing here? I thought the Quicktime player (behind the scenes) was what itunes used to play the music? If no Quicktime now...what is being used?

 

I'd like to know the same thing.

 

I thought QuickTime was a video player, not an audio player. Anyway, if they are able to now distribute the two applications completely independently of each other, and one doesn't require the other, then either iTunes never really needed QuickTime, or they incorporated the essential code from QuickTime into iTunes, so they can now go on divergent development paths.

Craig.

 

Quciktime was always the engine 'hiding' within itunes to play the music. If I had to guess I'd think your second option is correct....but would like to know for sure. Surprised at only 2 responses...maybe people didn't realize Quicktime was doing the heavy lifting in itunes??

 

Do you have links to any articles describing how QuickTime was doing the "heavy lifting" in iTunes?

I'd always thought it was primarily about bundling the two so they piggypack on each other and penetrate the marketplace more thoroughly. Not saying there wasn't some integration between iTunes and QuickTime, just that it wouldn't surprise me if it was more superficial. However, what you describe sounds like iTunes and QuickTime were deeply integrated, so I'd love to read some articles online that talk about it.

Craig.

 

Ah, this Yahoo answer suggests that my suspicion might be right:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080808190748AAs6sEC

Apparently iTunes needed (needs) QuickTime codecs, which can be distributed and installed independently of the QuickTime application itself.

That's part of the advantage of codecs, right? You don't need to install the source application; you can build a completely different application that uses the relatively lightweight codecs.

Anyway, if that Yahoo answer is correct (and if the steps suggested in the answer can successfully be followed, it must be true), it suggests that Apple simply started bundling the QuickTime codecs (only) with iTunes, rather than the entire QuickTime application.

Craig.

 

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Features)

iTunes is an application that allows the user to purchase and manage audio and video on a personal computer, acting as a front end for Apple's QuickTime media player.

 

I think what happens now is, when you install the new iTunes, the installer goes out and checks to see if the user already has QuickTime installed, and if so, it doesn't try to install it again. If QuickTime is not there, it grabs the basic codecs off the disk and installs those as part of the system files.

I'm positive that iTunes itself is just a database and file-handling application and does not actually play audio, video, or still photos. All of that is done outside the program. On the Mac, it's simpler because QuickTime is part of the operating system (just as Windows Media Player is part of Windows). Apple chose to ignore Windows Media and use its own engine, just to simply creating one application for two operating systems (Mac OSX and Windows).

 

On the right hand side of the screen on the iTunes info page it still reads that QuickTime is required.

 

Strange since they claim it's no longer needed in the release notes.

 

What I do know about iTunes 10.5 is that I had it and tried my copy of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits (it is a Made In the USA 1980s CD issue) and 10.5 played the CD very scratchy while all of the other media programs played it fine. I downgraded to 10.4 and the same CD played just fine. If you have to downgrade iTunes, uninstall iTunes and Bonjour, install it and then remove all of the library files and start over. Do not uninstall QuickTime though.

 

I just updated iTunes to 10.5 and it re-installed Quicktime.

 

In other words, QuickTime is STILL necessary.

 

Just curious...Do you have a PC or a Mac?

 

Windows

 

Interesting. Me too. CD's play fine, but I am having troubles with Sound Check...it seems to work sometimes and other times I have to go back and re-check. Also, adding artwork is kind of strange to how it used to be.

 

You may have to downgrade. iTunes for Windows is buggy indeed.

 

I know...but everything seems fine for the most part with the exception of what I mentioned.

I saw this on youtube...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYbHhZu34ks

Was your computer sounding similar to this?

 

Quicktime is no longer necessary for iTunes 10.5 for Windows.

 

Thats what they say in the latest itunes release notes...but it sounds like it still is required..

 

I understand why you are a little confused. You have part of the story right, but not all of it.

"Quicktime Player" is a media player application that supports playback of audio and video, animation, 3D rendering, and other types of media (MIDI, etc.).

On the other hand, "Quicktime" is the middleware engine behind Quicktime Player, the Quicktime internet plugins and ActiveX controls, and formerly iTunes. "Quicktime" is an API and a series of plugins (including codecs and other dynamically linked libraries), a hardware abstraction layer (so it can communicate with the drivers already installed on the system), as well as a container format (which is the same thing as the MPEG-4 container format). In certain ways, it is similar to DirectX (a Microsoft middleware product that also includes a HAL, drivers, plugins, etc.).

When you install "Quicktime," you are installing not only "Quicktime Player," but also the underlying architecture--the libraries that contain the API, various plugins, codecs, and other DLL's. Quicktime acts as a system-wide service that many applications--not just iTunes and Quicktime Player--can and do utilize.

In any event, iTunes for Windows no longer requires Quicktime to be separately installed. What that means is that whatever codecs iTunes needs for operation are now directly bundled into the application. There is no need for a system-wide API for iTunes to work as the playback engine is now directly built in to iTunes.

 

It isn't required, period. I just installed iTunes ONLY on my Windows 7 machine and it works perfectly. I did not install Quicktime.

 

Nope. It just sounded scratchy.

 

Thanks for clarifying this, Billy. I did a Google search for half an hour, and nobody had this information on iTunes 10.5! I'm curious as to whether Apple did this on the Mac version as well, or if it only affected the Windows version.

 

As far as I know, the Mac version uses the Quicktime libraries, which is not big deal as Quicktime is built into Mac OS X.