Dear Apple

[hirez]

Fuck you.

No, really. While I rather care for the idea of your BSD-based (Well, Mach kernel, BSD userland, NeXTish UI) OS and shiny machines that are more than a little reminiscent of a Sharp cassette deck I bought in 1984 when silver meant Future, I'm somewhat less impressed with the utter balls-up the latest Quicktime install has made of my Winders box. If I want your woolly-jumpered nanny-knows-best environment, I'll go use it native. It's not going to fly on a machine that's slowly becoming KDEish (only with all the useful corners filed off so I don't hurt myself. And only one screen. Where are the virtual desktops, eh?) as Cygwin takes over.

Arse!

(There's probably a sensible answer to prising Qt's fingers off the capability to play MP3s from Firefox, but I'm not seeing it just now. Normal service is for the weak.)

Comments

[hazeii.livejournal.com]

Uh, hello? If you don't expect the occasional download to fuck your box, don't use 'Winders'.

[steer.livejournal.com]

OK, basically windows is still wedded to the idea that files should rightly be named 8.3 characters with the 3 telling you what application should run the thingy. (Now of course it is 8 or more by 3 but never mind that). Anyway, the windows machine has some internal list of which apps deal with which extension (you probably know this already).

Windows audio apps usually squabble in an ill mannered way over which of them gets to play which extension. Start up the thing which you actually WANT to play the mp3 in question from the start menu. Usually in an option menu there will be an option called something like "file associations". Go to this and check "mp3".

Note that lots of them have "check this at start up" options meaning that the greedy little fuckers pretend they are the best meejah player ever and try to nab back all the file associations.

Apologies if this is patronising and you know it already and the malaise with your machine is something deeper.

Quicktime does really really really suck utterly.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Hm. I could see that if it were an Explorer problem, but the file-associations were MP3->Winamp. In fact, anything that wasn't either QT .mov or 3gpp -> Existing applications, in both Winamp and QT's config dialogs.

This would appear to have been mimetype malarkey (yes, I'd changed that in QT, too), but while the mimetype associations were tweakable in older browsers, it seems not so in Firefox. In fact, there used to be a 'bolt all the missing configuration bits back in' extension.

[Shrug]

Whatever, the toys are back in the pram and this Belgian beer (Tripel Karmeliet) is rather fine. I feel the need to return to that splendid country when the weather is somewhat more clement and investigate some hostelries.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear it's all fixed up (and Tripel Karmeliet is rather good but you regret the fourth of fifth -- well, I do). Also sometimes worth peeking at Firefox Optoins->Downloads->plugins where fscked things can hide and cause this kind of issue.

[spride.livejournal.com]

so, what happened, exactly?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Low blood-sugar.

The longer answer seems to be that the security-patched QT (Qt, by comparison, is reasonably well-behaved) took control of in-browser MP3 playing. Which would have been fair enough if the thing had actually managed to play all of the MP3, rather than just the first half-second while whizzing the slider all the way to the right in a self-righteous manner.

Deinstalling QT has made things work the way I want, so that's jolly good.

[spride.livejournal.com]

Unless you're an insulin-dependent diabetic who's taken too much insulin and too little carbohydrate, there's no such thing as low blood sugar.

FWIW I've found QT to be a model of stability when I used Winders for AV, but I never saw it steal things I didn't want it to. Caveat: that was ages ago.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Ok, lack-of-food based stupidity and short temper, then.

Indeed. Previous versions behaved themselves. It's very odd.

[lastaii.livejournal.com]

There's probably a sensible answer to prising Qt's fingers off the capability to play MP3s from Firefox

Double click on My Documents > Tools > Folder Options > File Types

Scroll down to MP3 and change it from Quicktime to FireFox.

Of course, QT may well have seriously frigged with the registery, in which case it's probably quicker to re-install winders ;)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

See above...

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

Yup.

In Firefox, go to Tools>Options>Downloads>View and edit actions

Should sort you.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

You'd think, were indeed there an option to do that sort of thing. One can change or remove an existing 'action' (mp3 not in that list) or, on a further menu, disable the filetype of a plugin. Mp3 not in that list either.

Very odd.

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

MP3 is definately in my list and I have Quicktime installed. Very odd indeed.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I was a release or two off $latest Firefox. The dialogs are now as you describe.

[meltie.livejournal.com]

When i've finished destroying it you can have my hackenbook ;)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

If I thought you were serious...

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it did that to me a couple of years ago and I've not touched it since. If I need QT I use QuicktimeAlternative (and also RealAlternative). A lot of folks will be quick to blame Windoze, whereas I say that Apple has to take most of the responsibility, especially as it's bad design rather than just shit coding.

[dr-atheist.livejournal.com]

Considering they bundle it with iTunes and the iPod/iTunes is their baby as far as grabbing windows users away to OD X is concerned you'd think they'd pay more attention to it.
That said the redmond boys aren't much better at coding for OS X.
In windows I do whatever I can to kill quicktime, on my mac, it works perfectly.*

*once you have downloaded apple's "presetation script" and yoinked the nasty bit of code out tat stops full screen playback...
-- CHECK FOR QUICKTIME PRO
if QuickTime Pro installed is false then
set the target_URL to "http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/"
display dialog "This script requires QuickTime Pro." & return & return & ¬
"If this computer is currently connected to the Internet, " & ¬
"click the “Upgrade” button to visit the QuickTime Website at:" & ¬
return & return & target_URL buttons {"Upgrade", "Cancel"} default button 2
ignoring application responses
tell application "Finder"
open location target_URL
end tell
end ignoring
error number -128
end if

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

Nod. I have been working both on Mac and PC recently, mostly with video animations and for ease of use we used QT as a common format.

Works like a dream on the Mac, utter dog on the PC.