The warning, if there had to be one, would be more along the lines of this verbose mess: “this preference pane needs to load in 32 bit mode, preference panes generally only are an interface to control some other application elsewhere on your system, we have no idea if that other application is running in 32 or 64 bits.”

This of preference panes, in this case, like an alias almost, which is a gross way to describe it, but works well enough for this.

Imagine if you had an alias to another remote server in your dock, to mount a remote volume, and it said “you are about to connect to a Mac Mini, running OS X 10.5, you are running 10.6″, that is sort of about how important this message is.

It is not a holy grail, but it was marketed as a good thing. I am not saying it is a bad thing, but I am saying there is nothing wrong with 32 bit mode, especially if it is just the time you are working in System Preferences. Apple should not have put that alert up, it confuses people, but I thin it was a push to get developers to move to 64.

64 bit gives you one main thing, above all, the ability to address more memory in your applications. The one app that it matters in, Photoshop, is 32 bit, and will be for 2 more years or so.

iTunes is 32 bit, iPhoto is 32 I believe, none of the iLife apps are yet 64 bits, mostly just the Finder was made 64, and that makes sense. I would not be surprised if we never see iTunes 64 bit, or not for a long time. I do not think it matters in the slightest.

Safari is 64 bit, Apple Mail is. Safari will benefit from it, but a lot of time was put into it to make that happen, and the web is so driven by Javascript these days, to get that runtime into 64 bot mode makes sense.

The Apps that most need 64 bit are pro apps, Photoshop, Logic, Aperture, all of Office, Entourage, etc. I bet not a single printer driver out there is 64 bits.

Back to your original issue, are the underlying libraries that F4M installs for QuickTime 64 bit? That I am not sure, but it will not hurt nor degrade them in any way to run them in 32 bit mode.

Apple may make a cut off, and say 64-bit only at some point in the future, if they do, it will be year out, 5 years out, but as to the state of current developer tools from Apple, 32 bit is still very much alive and ticking. The large majority of Apples own apps are 32 bit.

You want compatibility, so does it work, caring about the bitness of an app is not something a consumer needs to do. If you were a server admin, this matters, and havign a 64 bit webserver over a 32 bit one is great, you can use a ton more memory. But 64 bit versions of those apps have been around for ages, and running on the Mac in 64 bit mode long before Snow as well.

There is a lot of confusion on this issue, in the end, if you do not need more than 4GB or memory out of an app you are using you will not see a gain from going to 64 bit, it may even be slower at this point in time.

If you want, you can in fact keep the icon, though in most cases, just using QuickTime to play the files will be fine. I personally just toss the entire flip4mac folder in the trash.

just one qn! after downloading the flip4mac wmv player, is it ok for me to just delete the flip4mac WMV.mpkg file ? i’ve already moved the wmv player icon to my application folder.

thanks!

At any rate, installing the two above mentioned tools will not hurt anything, as is a good idea.

Thanks in advance (great tutorial by the way – exactly what I need!)

I want all comments from all people, good or bad, it is just nicer if they are constructed in a way that can inspire an elaboration as a reply to a question. This way, new data can help others. I make a strong effort to never bash on the PC, but just point out what I like or do not like.

If you listen to the radio interview, you can hear that they were rather anti-PC, and I more or less kept my mouth shut, as that is not at all where I want to go with this site.

Both Caroline and I want the site to be a safe and friendly place for all users. There is a lot of trepidation with new Mac users getting on forums and people being harsh towards them.

We want a site where users are never afraid to ask a question, and certainly never afraid to challenge things myself or another writer posts. Literally, this is priority number one for us, to make certain no one ever feels afraid to want to learn.

Knowing that, your post just struck a chord with me, as I was not at all trying to imply negatively towards Microsoft, or Windows at all, but just pointing out, that in order to play those formats, you would be helped with those two pieces of software.

I do hope to see you posting here again, and feel free to call me out of something that is wrong, but just remember, the other users here are generally very new to all this, and I never want the tone of the site to be one that intimidates.

Thanks again for reading.

Thanks for the lengthy reply. Sorry you don’t like my negative posts. If I don’t like something I am prone to complain. Don’t take it personally, these are just my feelings about Apple and Mac to date and you provide a forum. I will stop posting negative comments since you don’t like it. Good luck with the site (seriously).

“WMV Components for QuickTime will help you play some of the proprietary video formats that Microsoft has floating around out there.”

Right, like QuickTime and other Apple formats aren’t proprietary?

The point of the post was to allow users to be able to play as many video formats as possible. For many people, the web is largely a place for entertainment. There are many video formats out there, and we wanted to help people be able to see and hear all of the web. I think the tutorial accomplishes that.

So far you have made three comments that are more or less complaining. I am doing my best to find spare time to take away from work to write tutorials to help people. If I make a statement that is not correct, by all means, I would love to correct that mistake.

I do not feel my sentence you quoted above in any way was making a comparison. It is a simple factual statement, installing WMV Components for Quicktime will in fact allow you to play proprietary formats. I am not quite sure what the point would have been to state that other vendors also make proprietary formats.

That being said, lets talk about Apple’s media formats.
Starting with AAC, which they use in the iTunes store. Yes, they use FairPlay DRM, which is proprietary. This is for protected songs. This was also clearly pushed by the record industry. Apple has made it clear that they want open formats and no DRM.

AAC is a standard, was not written by Apple, and is not proprietary. From Sony, to Nintendo, to Microsoft, it is supported across the board. It is further declared an international standard by the MPEG working group. It dates back to the early 90’s as far as I remember.

A few years back, Apple made a big push to start using H.264 for video. This is also a non proprietary format. Just because quicktime plays it, does not mean it is quicktime specific, or that other players and other OS’s can not play it. H.264 is also no more than a variant of MPEG, this one being part 10.

H.264 was not written by apple, but by ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group along with the MPEG group.

I would go as far as to say, that for media formats, Apple is the least proprietary. Flash is Adobe’s baby, Microsoft makes a number of formats that only they know how to decode. Quicktime is a player, just because a media file has a quicktime icon on it, does not imply in any way it is some Apple proprietary format. It just means Quicktime may be able to play the file.

Anything based on MPEG, is about as standard and no proprietary a format you are going to get. It would not be in Apple’s interest to use proprietary formats. With a smaller market share, Apple needs to be sure video and audio created on the Mac can play on as many players as possible.

Right, like QuickTime and other Apple formats aren’t proprietary?

Quicktime 7 lists midi as a supported format:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/player/specs.html

If you can not play rmi/midi files, they may be created in a non standard way.

Where are you getting the .rmi files, there seems to be very little data on them, the only way I even know about them is as a result of an older phone using that format for ringtones.

There are a number of midi converters and players here:
http://www.macupdate.com/search.php?arch=all&keywords=midi&os=macosx

Perhaps give some of those a try. The last time I had to play with these was years ago trying to get a ringtone to work on my phone. Sorry I was not of more help.