Apple Says QuickTime TV is Taking Off

Computergram International, Sept 1, 1999

Apple Computer Inc added new partners to support its QuickTime TV initiative yesterday, as interim CEO Steve Jobs told the Seybold Conference that Apple "was very serious" about its QuickTime technology, particularly QuickTime TV. The new partners are Warner Bros Records Inc and Rhino Records. Jobs said that its hosting of the Star Wars Episode 1 trailer had represented "the largest download event in internet history, with some 450Tb of data downloaded from its servers. He said there had been around 13 million downloads of Quicktime 4, the recent version which added streaming for the first time.

Jobs said that competitive offerings all required payments for server-side software, whereas the QuickTime server would run on any MacOs, Linux or NT system supporting the RTP real time protocol and RTSP real time streaming protocol. Apple's collaboration with Akamai Technologies Inc was aimed at circumventing unpredictable internet latency problems by guaranteeing a certain level of performance. "They weren't doing streaming until we started working with them. Now they're putting it on all of their 900 servers," said Jobs. Apple invested $12.5m in the company as part of the deal. Jobs said there had now been 37,000 downloads of the QuickTime Streaming Server since the launch in July, and claimed that QuickTime TV was "delivering the highest quality video and audio on the internet."