Apple’s QuickTime technology used to be one of the main ways to watch videos across web browsers, Macs, and Windows PCs. Those days are over, but QuickTime Player is still a core application on Mac computers.
The Origins of QuickTime
QuickTime might be most recognizable as a media player, but it was originally an all-encompassing framework for digital media. There was a QuickTime Player application for Mac and Windows, a QuickTime plug-in for web browsers, a PictureViewer tool for viewing photos, and other components.
The iTunes music player was also closely integrated with QuickTime, which is why QuickTime Player was required when installing iTunes on a Windows PC.
QuickTime Player and QuickTime web plug-ins could view many different video and audio formats—some of which Apple helped create, and some of which were third-party technologies. Apple Video was the earliest format built for QuickTime Player, but as video compression improved over time, QuickTime added support for more video and audio codecs. There was even a QuickTime VR file format for viewing panoramic images.