Correction: QuickTime 10 is likely to be released with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in the fall, and won't be updated Monday.
At WWDC Monday morning, Apple's Bertrand Serlet came out with guns blazing, not just in support of Snow Leopard, but of Safari and QuickTime, too. Announcing that Safari 4 would leave beta later Monday and that QuickTime would receive a massive overhaul, Serlet introduced new features while taking swipes at both Microsoft and Mozilla.
Safari 4 can be downloaded from CNET Download.com for Windows and Mac.
Safari 4 shipping today.
(Credit: (Credit: James Martin/CNET))The senior vice president of OS X software said that QuickTime 10 is now "super efficient" and will support HTTP streaming based on h.264 and AAC, a feature that many competing programs have long offered. The new QuickTime will automatically adjust the playback bit rate, and it will be able to stream through firewalls.
In addition to receiving a major version jump from v7 to v10, the interface has also received a complete refresh. Onscreen controls will disappear when playing back video. The QuickTime "Q" logo will also see a slight redo, changing from its familiar blue to a silver and purple.
Safari 4's Nitro will be the fastest JavaScript engine of any browser on the market, Serlet said. Without describing what kind of benchmarks he was using, he showed a chart indicating that Chrome 2 is 5.3 times faster than Internet Explorer 8, but that Safari 4 is 7.8 times faster. Safari 4 also loads JavaScript three times faster than Safari on the iPhone, Serlet said. HTML 5 audio and video tags will be support in Safari 4, too.
Microsoft was not the only target for Serlet. "The number one cause of crashes," he said, "is browser plug-ins." Mozilla Firefox is the best-known extensible browser, and one new feature in Safari 4 is designed to address the instability that some plug-ins can bring to browsers. Crashes in Safari 4 that are caused by a plug-in will cause only the plug-in to fail. Refresh the page, Serlet said, and the plug-in will reload. "All you need to do is reload that page and that's it. You haven't missed a beat."
I'll be running hands-on tests on Safari and QuickTime later today when they're made available to the public. The update to QuickTime in particular is somewhat surprising, given that Apple had been resistant for years to make any dramatic overhauls to its movie player. If the company can improve its performance, then we may be looking at a heated battle in the video playback market in addition to Web browsers.
(Credit:
CNET)
Apple Insider has unearthed proof that YouTube uploading will be built into the upcoming version of QuickTime that ships with OS X 10.6.
According to beta testers, several video-sharing options will be baked into the latest release of Apple's QuickTime media playback and editing software, including the capability to directly upload to YouTube. With the new QuickTime, you will be able to convert and upload any supported video file type to the online video service and all you will need is to be a registered YouTube user. You also will be able to seamlessly upload supported video to the MobileMe Gallery.
In addition to these new sharing options, iTunes also will offer ways to convert and export your video files to work on your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. All of these options will be available to you from the same convenient location and will automatically be imported to iTunes before being synced to your supported devices.
With this latest discovery, Apple will effectively offer built-in support for YouTube across all of its main products. Both the iPhone and Apple TV already offer YouTube support, along with some of Apple's other software including recent releases of iMovie. With the addition of direct uploads through QuickTime, Apple is providing support for desktop and laptop Macs.
Apple has issued a critical security update for QuickTime media player, aimed at resolving vulnerabilities that could potentially allow a malicious attacker to take control of a person's computer, according to an Apple advisory released this week.
People running QuickTime 7 for Windows and for Mac OS X, are affected, as well as those who are using Mac OS X 10.4 or Mac OS X 10.5, according to Apple.
Apple is advising people to update to QuickTime 7.6 for Windows, QuickTime 7.6 for Leopard, or QuickTime 7.6 for Tiger.
The update seeks to address QuickTime security flaws that could potentially allow a malicious attacker to launch a buffer overflow and execute arbitrary code on a user's system.
The attack could potentially occur via a maliciously crafted movie file, AVI movie file, QTVR movie file, or an RTSP URL, according to Apple.
Security researcher Secunia, in an advisory released Thursday, noted the vulnerabilities are considered "highly critical."
Apple rolled out a QuickTime update Tuesday night that should alleviate some of the concern over the addition of some copy-protection technology to the new MacBooks.
Apple customers who bought one of the company's new MacBooks or MacBook Pros introduced in October were annoyed to discover that the Mini DisplayPort on those systems uses a copy-protection technology called HDCP. That technology is supposed to prevent those owners from playing HD movies purchased from the iTunes store on external projectors that don't also support HDCP technology. But several owners reported that standard-definition movies were also declared off-limits by their new systems.
The QuickTime update should allow standard-definition movies obtained from Apple to play on those older projectors, but HD movies will still need an HDCP-compliant projector to be shown anywhere but the laptop screen. The update hasn't shown up on Apple's site yet, but it should be popping up in Software Update if you own one of the new systems, according to AppleInsider.
Apple has acknowledged video problems with the latest shipment of MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
Early customers of the Penryn refresh of the Apple notebooks had complained of flickering images during a QuickTime video playback on MacBooks and MacBook Pros shipping with the latest version of Mac OS X Leopard, according to our colleagues over at MacFixIt. Several discussion threads have sprung up over on Apple's user forums, and some customers report that Apple has now acknowledged the problem and is working on a fix.
MacFixIt reports that fix should come with Mac OS X 10.5.3, currently in the works. AppleInsider has reported that Apple has been a little more active than usual with the release of new builds of 10.5.3 to developers, suggesting that the next version might arrive sooner rather than later. Mac OS X 10.5.2 shipped in February.
A new version of QuickTime is available from Apple that plugs security holes in the software for both Mac and Windows users.
QuickTime 7.3.1 was published Thursday afternoon in order to plug unspecified "security issues," according to Apple's Web site. But the fixes appear to correct the Real Time Streaming Protocol issue identified in late November that could lead to unwanted visitors if you visited a Web site that contained code taking advantage of the flaw.
Four separate patches are available on Apple's site, three for the Mac OS X big cats Panther, Tiger, and Leopard, and one for Windows. You'll also likely be prompted by Apple's Software Update feature to download the fresh version.
Apple also published release notes about a new implementation of Java Friday morning for software developers running Tiger, Mac OS X 10.4, that fixes multiple vulnerabilities. The problems were corrected with Leopard, according to Apple.
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