QuickTime & iTunes, Bundled Together 17 years, 10 months ago by Martey Dodoo

I found out last night that the movies from my digital camera do not work in VLC, which means that I had to install QuickTime to view them.

I was dismayed to see that downloading QuickTime was going to give me iTunes as well. I can understand why someone downloading iTunes would want the most recent version of QuickTime (since the components of the latter program control audio/video playback in the former), but since QuickTime is almost certainly more popular than iTunes, it is obvious that someone at Apple hoped to increase iTunes' marketshare by including it when people download QuickTime.

I felt even worse after I installed both iTunes and QuickTime and manually uninstalled iTunes by shutting down its helper programs and deleting its directories. Glancing over the QuickTime web page, I saw a link for the "QuickTime Standalone Installer." In my defense, the link is not easy to find on the page. As the screenshot shows, the link is so small that it is virtually impossible to notice. Even though I was looking to download QuickTime (and only QuickTime!), I did not see it the first time I was at the page. That page sort of reminds me of RealNetworks' old website, whose sole purpose was to make it impossible for you to find the free version of RealPlayer.

After uninstalling QuickTime+iTunes (to ensure that no trace of iTunes was left on my computer), I installed QuickTime, only to receive a final affront. All of my QuickTime preferences (which I had immediately changed ) were remembered, except that the application put itself back in the system tray.