Apple has announced that they will no longer be supporting Quicktime 7 on computers running any version of the Windows operating system and will not be fixing any known vulnerabilities that could put devices at risk.
This may initially shock many casual computer users who remember using Quicktime all the time in the 90s and early 2000s, but the majority of programs on Windows today can play media files by themselves and most major websites have switched over to Flash and HTML5 for video playback. No one really embeds Quicktime videos anymore.
Apple has issued a statement which encourages all Windows users to uninstall the program and associated plug-ins from their computers and Trend Micro’s, Christopher Budd, has revealed that there are already two rather large vulnerabilities in existence that put computers at risk.
Budd describes these security risks as, “heap corruption remote code execution vulnerabilities” that allow “an attacker can write data outside of an allocated heap buffer”.
To uninstall Quicktime 7 on Windows 10, users can find the process by performing a Windows Search for, “Uninstall QuickTime” or by opening “Control Panel” (this also works in pre-Windows 10 PCs), clicking on “Programs”, then “Programs and Features”, then choosing Quicktime manually to uninstall it. Those with other versions of Quicktime are naturally encouraged to uninstall those as well.
The age of Quicktime on PC appears to be over however, Apple will still be updating and supporting the program on Macs. With the entire population of PC users being instructed to remove Quicktime from their devices, it does feel like it’s only a matter of time before Apple discontinues support for it on Macs as well, though.
What do you think? Do you think this is a significant development or was this bound to happen eventually anyway? Do you still use Quicktime? Let us know in the comments below.
