I came across an interesting article on ZDNet in which the author writes how Apple QuickTime does not play 1080p H.264 QuickTime movies properly even on a high end Windows Vista based PC whereas Mac Mini plays it perfectly.

The same thing happened to me a couple of days ago when I tried to play a 1080p H.264 clip in QuickTime on my system running Windows Vista. You might be thinking what else one can expect from the so called ’slow’ Windows Vista. Well if that’s what you are thinking then let me burst your bubble- you are absolutely wrong! The same clip played perfectly in VLC Player on the same computer!

Here are some snippets from the original article from ZDNet: (view original article)

I downloaded some test clips and tried playing them with Apple QuickTime on my 3.0GHz quad-core QX9650 Vista 64-bit system - This rig is kitted out with Velociraptor drives, 8GB of fast RAM and a Crossfire quad-GPU setup. The results - Awful. The clip was jerky and jittery.

My system is capable of flawless Blu-ray H.264 1080p video playback and so the system is operating normally. 1080p H.264 QuickTime movies play fine on the Mac Mini through QuickTime, and they play fine on Windows when using third party media players. So the issue is here isn’t which OS is best, or which platform is best, it’s all down to Apple’s QuickTime player for Windows not being up to the job.

I’m going to ignore the fact that QuickTime virtually offers door into people’s PCs for any hackers willing to use it.

It seems that Apple just can’t write decent code for the Windows platform. That may be because Apple doesn’t have the in-house skill to develop good software, or it may be down to some decision to make Mac OS seem better than the Windows platform.

Your thoughts please, readers?