Time to ditch QuickTime for Windows

Here’s a fun one:

The Department of Homeland Security (??) announced that QuickTime for Windows has 2 nasty security flaws.

They also say that Apple is no longer providing updates for QuickTime for Windows, so they are recommending that QuickTime be uninstalled from Windows machines.

So… DHS? What?!

Okay, you can read the DHS announcement here.

It refers to the two vulnerabilities, here and here.

A few choice excerpts from both of the 2 security vulnerability reports:

This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable installations of Apple QuickTime.

An attacker could leverage this to execute arbitrary code under the context of the QuickTime player.

Okay then…

Well, I was unable to find anything from Apple itself that would indicate that QuickTime for Windows is deprecated. In fact, you can still download it from Apple’s site.

However, a quick check shows that the latest version of QuickTime for Max is QuickTime X, whereas QuickTime on Windows is still stuck at version 7. It appears it’s still available, but will no longer be patched or updated in any way.

Note that if you installed iTunes, you may have gotten QuickTime, as well.

So, it’s probably a good idea to go to:

Control Panel
Uninstall a program
Click QuickTime
Click Uninstall

For those of you with Windows 10, the old Control Panel can be found by:

Right-click Start button
Click Control Panel

If you don’t have iTunes, you can also uninstall any other Apple programs, such as the Apple updater service. If nothing else Appley shows up in your list of installed programs, rock and roll! You’re done.

Now that you no longer have QuickTime, you may want to try out the free VLC Media Player for some of your QuickTime-y video playing needs.

VLC won’t play all QT videos perfectly, but it’s better than nothing.

Frankly, I’m a bit surprised at this development. QuickTime will rapidly go the way of the dodo if Windows support is dead! At the moment for example, I cannot watch anything on trailers.apple.com because I don’t have a Mac.

Now that’s a brilliant move on Apple’s part, eh? 🙄 Oh well, there are always trailers elsewhere, like on YouTube…