QuickTime

QuickTime is the default video player and multimedia framework included with all Macs. It can handle various formats of sound, video, picture, panoramic images, and interactivity. Under Mac OS X, it is also a framework under the Cocoa API that allows video playback in third-party applications without separate codecs. A version of QuickTime had also been available for Microsoft Windows.

Product history
QuickTime 1.0, codenamed "Warhol", was originally released for Macintosh System 6 on December 2, 1991. Adobe Premiere 1.0 had also been in simultaneous development by Randy Ubillos and was one of the first QuickTime-based video editors on the market.

Apple released QuickTime 2.0 for System 7 in June 1994, the only commercial version that was not freely released. Version 2.5 was released on July 22, 1996 with new MIDI support. In March 1998, version 3.0 introduced QuickTime Pro features, which could be unlocked with a registration code.

QuickTime 4.0 was released in June 1999 with support for playback of MP3 files. In July 2002, QuickTime 6.0 added support for playback of MPEG-4 video and AAC audio.

QuickTime MPEG Extension
On January 24, 1997, Apple released the QuickTime MPEG Extension for QuickTime 2.5 and later, which allowed playback of MPEG-1 video on Power Macintosh computers without the need for additional dedicated hardware, such as the Apple MPEG Media System card.

QuickTime Musical Instruments
Adds MIDI support to QuickTime 2.0 and later. A companion QuickTime Music control panel and Macintosh MIDI Manager had also been in development for QuickTime 2.1, but were never released.

QuickTime PowerPlug
The PowerPlug extension accelerates performance of QuickTime 2.5 and later on systems with a PowerPC processor.

QuickTime VR
QuickTime VR allowed for 360-degree navigation in multimedia titles.

The final update of QuickTime for Mac OS 8.6, 9, and the Classic environment was version 6.0.3 on April 25, 2003.

Mac OS X
Apple continued its development of QuickTime Pro features for high-end media users as a paid upgrade to the free QuickTime base installation. Codecs released exclusively for Mac OS X included Apple Intermediate and ProRes for its Final Cut Pro users. Real-time server support was provided by QuickTime Streaming Server, a service for Mac OS X Server through version 10.6.8.

Deprecation
QuickTime 7 introduced QTKit in April 2006 as a new 64-bit framework in the transition leading up to QuickTime X. Classic QuickTime (pre-X) and QTKit have since been deprecated in favor of AVFoundation and AVKit, which originated on Apple's iOS platform and have now become the default media framework for macOS.

Apple discontinued QuickTime development for Windows since version 7.7.9, leading the to recommend the removal of obsolete versions of QuickTime from Windows computers due to the lack of future security updates. Adobe discontinued support for the classic 32-bit versions of QuickTime and its legacy formats since April 2018 and ported the ProRes codecs of QuickTime X to support its Windows apps.

Articles

 * QuickTime and the Rise of Multimedia by Hansen Hsu at the Computer History Museum (2018-03-30)