Microsoft has some good news for movie fans. If you want to watch .mov files in Windows 7 (read our full Windows 7 review), you don't need to install Apple's QuickTime. Bye, bye annoying system tray icon! Adios, Apple update!
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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