Apple QuickTime DRM Disables Video Editing Apps 448
An anonymous reader writes "According to numerous posts on Apple's discussion forums (several threads of which have been deleted by Apple), as well as a number of popular video editing blogs, Apple's recent QT 7.4 update does more than just enable iTunes video rentals — it also disables Adobe's professional After Effects video editing software. Attempting to render video files after the update results in a DRM permissions error. Unfortunately, it is not possible to roll back to a previous version of QT without doing a full OSX reinstall. Previous QT updates have also been known to have severe issues with pro video editing apps."
Re:The answer is quite simple actually: (Score:2, Insightful)
Just as bad as microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As always (Score:5, Insightful)
Yay Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple make shiny things for fashion victims. Apple make good UIs. Apple seem to have a better security model than MS.
But it's time to admit that Apple are just as much coprporate MP/RI-AA whores as MS.
That's why we don't use Quicktime... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mac - best damn video editing platform in the world.
Seriously - Apple in my experience pulls posts when their veracity can't be verified. Lord knows they keep plenty of very negative postings on their forums when the bug or whatever issue it is, is a known issue.
I'd stay tuned on this one - Apple has no reason to screw up 3rd party video editors and I certainly wouldn't build a conspiracy theory that its to boost their Video Rentals.
I bet this one is fixed pretty soon. I'll ante $0.25 on the bet.
Re:As always (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't Leopard have Automatic Updating turned on [apple.com]?
Re:Just as bad as microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just as bad as microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just as bad as microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
If you paid attention to any discussion about Leopard over the last few months, you'd see that there are a lot of Apple users (fans, even) that are unhappy with their Leopard experience. Well, so far anyways.
I don't think anyone who likes Apple would fight you on the argument that DRM is bad. Furthermore, that DRM is the cause of breaking legitimate programs is a pretty serious problem that only the most ignorant of Apple fanboys can dismiss.
And I don't think you'd argue me on the point that both sides of the table have ignorant schmucks on it.
What has this got to do with DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a lot of people very quick to jump on the bandwagon, saying "DRM this" and "Defective By Design that" but I see nothing to suggest this has anything to do with DRM. Even less to suggest this was a deliberate move by Apple. (And even then, the headline "Disables Video Editing Apps" is sensationalist - only one application seems to be affected).
So what remains as fact: Apple have a introduced a bug in an update to a shared library - so what? It's hardly the first time this has happened, on any OS. And maybe not even that - perhaps it's even possible that QuickTime is correct, and the change has just exposed a latent bug in AfterEffects? We just don't have the data to make a judgment, so perhaps everyone could calm down and stop acting like Apple is chained to Hollywood and making the sky fall in.
Then Tell Apple to break it out.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor design if you ask me and thats a hell of a lot more vendor lockin than what MS does.
I'm not defending MS either, just trying to understand wtf is going on. I was about to give OSX the light of day but it doesn't seem to be any more practical than upgrading to Vista.
Apple's finally done it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they need to get back to "thinking different".
Re:Yay Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple is a bad company all round, their hardware always has defaults from fire hazard magsafe adapters through to discolouring notebooks to easily scratched iPod screens to Safari on Windows being the buggiest piece of software released in the entire history of computing.
Their kit is appallingly expensive and feature lacking, and we keep being told it's the godlike interface that makes it so amazing, yet the iPhone is probably the most unusable phone in the in history of the universe for anyone wanting to send text messages (i.e. 99% of the population of Europe and Asia). MacOS is easy for things you're allowed to do but my god, just hope you don't need to do something like persistent static routes which is a mere one line command in Linux and Windows but has you hacking away at various startup scripts to do properly in MacOS. God at least most expensive manufacturers of items nowadays ensure their products are ethically produced to try and make you feel good about the purchase for some reason or another but it's not like you even get that with Apple's horrible non-green sweat shop produced crap.
There's really no reason to buy Apple kit, it's all round worse than standard PC kit bar one thing, it looks nice when it hasn't discoloured, scratched or died a cosmetic death to fingerprints on it's touch screen. That hardly seems a reasonable factor for purchasing something though unless you're a mindless fashion sheep.
Re:As always (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just as bad as microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
I swear, the Pope must *wish* he was Steve Jobs.
Re:As always (Score:5, Insightful)
I am an environmental modeling software engineer with more than 20 years experience. Let me tell you: You damned well should engineer clean interfaces that can be properly tested. If Apple had done so, this kind of problem would not have occurred. What we are seeing with Apple here (and with DRM in general) is hacking, not engineering.
fwiw.
Re:As always (Score:5, Insightful)
The other part of your comment makes sense, but is simply an unrealistic expectation for 95% of end-users. Yes there are people who would know how to use a VM to test new software before upgrading, but the simple fact is, they shouldn't have to. Apple fucked up. Now they should own up to it and simply fix the problem.
Re:Yay Apple (Score:3, Insightful)
I use Macs because they work more consistently and more cleanly, for me in general than a windows counterpart and i was just tired of using linux and getting almost what I wanted out of it.
For the most part Macs do "just work" and work well for most of the target market. What we all have to realize though is that Apple has a target market, and despite what they say it isn't the "power user", it's the teenage kids and the hipsters or the video/music editing market. With any company that has a target market like that, they're going to make decisions that aren't best for everyone, and generally are only best for the bottom line. They are no better and no worse than any other corporation, MS included. In the end, it's all about money for them. And honestly, it should be.
Could they still retain some good and try to buck the system, sure. In their own way, I'm sure they feel like they are, but all you have to do is look at google and see that after a certain point, it doesn't matter what your original intentions were, it's impossible to "do no evil" in all aspects of business. So Apple, like all other companies, make sacrifices. Usually those sacrifices come at our (the consumers) expense.
Re:As always (Score:3, Insightful)
b) In what universe would Apple refuse to fix the problem?
c) In what court do you think Adobe have any right to sue Apple for making changes to it's own product?
Like the other poster said: sue first, ask questions later.
Re:As always (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The answer is quite simple actually: (Score:3, Insightful)
Thought not. Shame, though.
Re:As always (Score:5, Insightful)
Just look at the penalty you pay for on Vista to get all of the DRM. It's insane.
Re:As always (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As always (Score:4, Insightful)
your assuming Adobe was using the interfaces properly in the first place. Its quite possible to get away with using APIs incorrectly in one version of software and have it break in the next version.
Re:The answer is quite simple actually: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yay Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
It works.
Face the facts, Apple buyers have the highest post-purchase and on-going satisfaction rates in the industry. For their hardware and their software. If it was how you said it was, they wouldn't, full stop. Of course they have their issues, and Apple do make some poor decisions sometimes (plastic in the MacBooks covering the vents). Expensive? Depends on your point of comparison.
A few discoloured iBooks, a couple of scratched iPod nano screens because of careless owners (ooh, sharp metal things can scratch?!), and you label their entire product line as if it all had that. My 1G nano was perfectly readable over 2 years after getting it, and it never had a protective case or that much care lavished on it.
A lot of people value appearance. A home computer shouldn't sully the room it is in, but if you live in a pizza box strewn basement I guess that wouldn't occur to you.
Re:As always (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As always (Score:3, Insightful)
I love how everyone is quick to smack Apple upside the chops on this - how do we know it wasn't Adobe that screwed up here by using the API incorrectly, and now they're getting bit on the ass?
Does this occur in other (non-Apple) apps that compress to QuickTime?
Please, before accusing others of fanboi-ism, be objective yourself. If Apple b0rked this, then they deserve the hit on the chin they're getting. If Adobe fucked up, then you're no better than the fanbois.
Re:It never ceases to amaze me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As always (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with your "should not," but 15 years of pulling hair over Quicktime says reality wins. If you rely on QT to make money, e.g. video editing, your production machine is tied very closely to the version of the software you are running, and nearly every version of every app on your machine is determined by that, plus the main editing apps you rely on. It may mean that you are running a much older OS version than you want, or even older hardware. Anyone who relies on Digidesign to butter their bread knows exactly what I mean.
Upgrading Quicktime/OS/major apps often means upgrading other software, and in the ecology of file compatibilities, that means churn and sometimes disaster. Don't upgrade mid-project, we've learned the hard/expensive way. It's faster to avoid upgrade kerfuffle than to have a speedy machine that's broken.
It's especially hard if you're an independent media freelancer without multiple production machines. I work off of one main machine, and with many overlapping projects, some things can get pretty out of date. One of the less obvious blessings of running a Mac is that I can delay security updates etc. without too much stress.
Re:The answer is quite simple actually: (Score:5, Insightful)
because they are screwing sony's customers...
Which is not a good reason to like a company. One company who habitually screws over another company which you don't like; ok, you can like them. I may not like Sony and if I do buy a Sony product it's because I've done my research and it is the product which best suits me, but they're not the one being screwed here.
When a company screws the customer, even if the customer is not their customer, it is a reason to begin to dislike them, as well. Especially if you're a stockholder. When a company spends time figuring out how to screw over not their competition, but their competition's customers, they're not too far off from figuring out how to screw their own customers. Let's face it, that's what this is about.
Which is why I will never own an Apple product.
Unless I see some changes.
People, wake up. This is the same game the US Government plays; but I won't go too far off-topic and get into that in this thread. Maybe tomorrow.
Re:The answer is quite simple actually: (Score:2, Insightful)
You won't buy an Apple product and yet you're willing to buy from Sony?
Re:The answer is quite simple actually: (Score:4, Insightful)
Notice the types of products I'm talking about, here.
Wait a minute. Am I actually defending myself against a troll?
*repeats to himself* They're not real. They can't hurt you. You don't have to fight back. They're not real. They can't hurt you. You don't have to fight back. They're not real. They can't hurt you. You don't have to fight back.
Re:Informative? NOT (Score:5, Insightful)
You may have a point but, the WMP updates have never borked your Windows system to the point where you need to re-install the OS to get functionality that it broke working again. Funnily enough, "it just works".
Can you see the new Mac/PC commercial?
PC:"Hi. I'm a PC."
MAC:"Hi I'm a Mac I'm a Mac I'm a Mac I'm a Mac"
PC:"Gee Mac, looks like your video is stuck in a loop"
MAC:"I know. I installed an update to Quicktime and now I can't edit videos anymore!"
Re:Informative? NOT (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I have never had any IE update remove basic functionality from the OS that the only remedy was re-installing the OS. IE can be rolled back to previous versions simply by uninstalling the updates. I have had updates from MS that have broken things before, sure - but never to the point where and entire re-installation of Windows was necessary, and that was my point.
Re:The answer is quite simple actually: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As always (Score:3, Insightful)
b) In what universe would Apple refuse to fix the problem?
c) In what court do you think Adobe have any right to sue Apple for making changes to it's own product?
Like the other poster said: sue first, ask questions later.
We hate lawyers unless we want to sue a company we hate. We don't need any cause beyond hating the company.
In our universe, Apple intentionally sabotages it's own OS components. It's a business strategy called 'Cutting off your head, arms, and legs to spite your face.'
In our universe, the 5 people that wanted Ogg Vorbis support in iPods are the equivalent to both Adobe and the entire film and video industry.
Re:Informative? NOT (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is evil. News at 11. (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course you can build your own computer, but you still support a good bunch of evil companies because someone needs to manufacture the parts you're building with. If you don't want to support evil corporations you need to abandon pretty much everything our society is about.
Yeah, our society is somewhat broken.
Re:Does this suprise anyone? (Score:1, Insightful)
So, uh, could you please point me to the part of that document that you think refers to fixing DRM permissions errors in QuickTime 7.4? Because I've scoured through it at least three times in two different languages and I still can't find it.