Apple, We have a Problem

I love Apple’s products, I really do. And while I don’t really value the company’s secrecy, I do certainly value their innovation, and their product marketing/branding is usually top-notch.

But they aren’t above being absolutely brain-dead stupid.

So I’ve seen hints at this in my RSS reader in the last few weeks, but failed to follow up until today. Today I finally have seen the kicker with regard to QuickTime Player and Full Screen video.

Now, you theoretically have to buy QT Pro to watch movies in “full-screen” mode in QT Player. Some sites have it that you can work around this in iTunes (iTunes allows you to click the “fullscreen” option for movie trailers).

Well today — in a somewhat related hint at macosxhints.com — all you need is this AppleScript:

tell application “QuickTime Player” activate present the front movie end tell

load a movie, put that in script editor, click run, voila! full-screen!

This makes the greyed-out menu option for full-screen video even more completely ridiculous. Too bad that great software engineering by the QuickTime team is completely overshadowed by brain-dead product packaging and marketing.

(actually it could be brilliant marketing, forcing customers $30.00 because they think they must shell that out to watch full-screen video, never mind all the other features of the software are worth the licensing fee, however, that certainly doesn’t mean it’s right).