Windows 7 to replace Quicktime

Microsoft has some good news for movie fans. If you want to watch .mov
files in Windows 7, you don't need to install Apple's QuickTime.

The support for .mov files was mentioned deep in a long list of
changes that are coming to the Windows 7 Release Candidate.

On the Engineering Windows 7 blog, in a post entitled 'Some changes
since beta for the RC', Chaitanya Sareena, Senior Program Manager on
the Core User Experience team, talks up improved playback support for
video content from digital camcorders and cameras:

"We've since added support for Windows Media Player to natively
support the .mov files used to capture video for many common digital
cameras," writes Sareena.

While this may delight owners of cameras which output in the .mov
format, it's also good news for anyone who enjoys watching movies on
their PC, as movie trailers, particularly those on Apple Movie
Trailers, come in .mov format, and so require QuickTime (or a freeware
player such as VLC) to view.

Windows users who install QuickTime are then nagged with pop-ups from
the Apple update software prompting them to install other Apple
software such as iTunes and Safari.

And while this move brings wider camera support, and rids Windows
users of those annoying nag screens, it also has the added benefit for
Microsoft of making one Apple application less necessary to download.

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