I recently reinstalled WinXP on my box and was about to install QuickTime when I realized that I also had to install iTunes.
Well, I don’t want iTunes. I want QuickTime. After a little searching I evetually found the link. I find it strange that Apple, the company known for good usability and design makes the worlds most crappy design on their own web page for download of one of their most popular products…
Of course you could also conclude that Apple actually want to force iTunes down your throat if you want to install quicktime…? In that case they will RealPlay* themselves out quite fast.
But, for those of you that do not want iTunes, here is the solution: QuickTime Standalone installer
Update: They just moved it:
Quicktime Standalone Installer
*To RealPlay yourself out of the market = include horrible amounts of extras that the customer would never want and force it onto their computer when they install your product. Much like what Real systems did with their RealPlayer.
eirikso 
…or you could just get Quicktime Alternative 🙂
Google it, or download from: QuickTime Alternative
Would it be possible to play .mov-files directly in Windows Media Center Edition if you have QT Alternative installed?
Anyone?
Haven’t tried MOV files with QT alternative in MCE. Windows Media Player plays them fine though 🙂
QT Alternative allows the display and Playback of .MOV-Files diectly in the MCE.
Sometimes Trailers get stuck or play back with a bad performance, but in the Videos-Section of the MCE at least the icons for the movies are displayed correctly.
I would tell anybody to install QT Alternative when using the MCE – there´s no way round :-p
Installing Quicktime
I went to try to download the new Quicktime
as I am needing it for edit and recompress a video for distribution on
our web-site. I can't seem to be able to download Quicktime by itself,
I need to download it with iT…
Thank you Eirik! This was a much needed hint!
-Aleksander
Nice that this is useful. I can se from my logs that quite a bit of people come to this blog after the search “quicktime without itunes” in Google.
I am not the only one finding it stupid of Apple to bundle these two programs.
I agree. After Zonealarm went berserk every two seconds of the iTunes install (modifying registry, quickstart, system tray, autoupdate, “keylogger???” etc, I stopped the install. Can I uninstall – no. iTunes does not put an “uninstall” in the Windows uninstall list. Can I start iTunes – not if I don’t accept Apple’s multi-page license agreement. I said decline to all of their absurd music requirements, and the program won’t open.
Thanks Apple……..I take the above recommendations and do whatever it takes to rid myself of this rotten fruit, and get MS Media Player to play .mov’s. And, start sending emails to any movie trailer sites that force quicktime. I can’t be hassled anymore………………..
…and this is a pity. If Apple’s idea of how to get people switching from Windows to Apple is to make crap software for windows and force it on to peoples computers I think they’re on the wrong track…
Just accept the fricken license! Duh! And turn off ZoneAlarm during software installs. Haven’t you ever installed software before??? Quicktime is good, high quality software.
If You need realplayer I recommend the following link:
http://forms.real.com/rnforms/products/tools/red/index.html
This will enable you to download the enterprise version of realplayer WITHOUT any forms of ‘anoyities’.
Just put anything in the fields – you will be guided to the downloadpage 🙂
Kind regards
Morten
“Just accept the fricken license! Duh! And turn off ZoneAlarm during software installs. Haven’t you ever installed software before??? Quicktime is good, high quality software.”
Used to be. Used to be.
Now, QuickTime is only average quality, it’s a crappy streaming format (usually streams more choppy than WMV or Flash movies), and of course: you have to basically reconfigure your system to be All Apple, All the Time.
I’ve basically stopped using QuickTime because of this. Because it installed about 35 megs of software for a bloody 5 meg player. Because it periodically “broke” and told me that “something was missing” but it couldn’t download it (apparently QuickTime users are too stupid to be told what a Codec is, so you get cryptic, unhelpful messages that just amount to a pretty icon of a bomb). Because it installed qttask.exe even after I told it not to, which restarts itself at *EVERY FRIGGIN STARTUP*, which basically resists every attempt to extract itself like a tapeworm refusing to let go. Because every time I use an Apple product, it attempts to switch every possible player and link type to using only Apple Approved(TM) products.
I don’t know if it’s just crappy programming from Apple, or outright malice. All I can say is that since finding alternative QT codecs, I will *never, ever willingly use another Apple product*.
How’s that for user friendly?
I’m still just flabbergasted that the only pro-Apple response is “just accept the license they spoon-feed you. Just turn off your security. Just okay everything and buy all Apple. Drink the Kool-Aid.”
And people say Microsoft is bad! At least you can usually opt-out from THEIR crappy software…
You know, Microsoft got sued for forcing people to take Internet Explorer along with Windows….this is not as bad, but just as annoying, Apple sues everybody, maybe they need a dose of their own medicine?
hey is there a hack to trick your player into acting like Quicktime, like the RealPlayer spoof does?
The best alternative to Quicktime is simply: “Quicktime Alternative“
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
I HATE quicktime because of thier real player qualities. I don’t even like WMP, but at least most people don’t FORCE you to go get quicktime. I didn’t beleive it existed anymore before today. I am innstalling it only because Quicktime alternative is a hassle and doesn’t work correctly for me sometimes. If they only had an auto updater…
…and I still can’t believe why Apple do their best to annoy people…?
Thanks a ton, Erik. This finally puts an end to annoying iTunes.
Keep it up!
Have you guys actually tried to Google “quicktime without itunes”. First in the list, Apple’s own site pops up 🙂 Wouldn’t you think, Google would find and index a page on Apple’s site if it wanted to? Well, it did. But thanks to the author for reposting the link anyway 😉
All commercial software sucks. Because “our company has to survive” is a higher priority than “give customer a tool to use”.
Actually, when I posted this article Google did not show the standalone download page from Apple. It only found the original QuickTime download page where the standalone link was well hidden…
Dang, too late. Installed the package with itunes, but it’s still possible to just uninstall itunes separately. Of course, that doesn’t help with all the system settings that were change in the process of installation. Whis I knew about the standalone version just a few minutes earlier…
I’ve got to say that it used to piss me off that it iTunes installed itself, then hogged the memory with it’s iPod checker.
Luckly for me I goggle the phrase and found the standalone, however pleased to see that people also agreed with me that we don’t need both.
really, quick time is gonna die soon! i needed a simple small plugin for mozilla firefox (or internet explorer) just like the ‘adobe flash player’ to play online quick time content. but i was forced to download such a big installation file and all other unnecessary softwares which kept hogging my system resources. they changed my preferences and all music files started playing in itunes which is really really a horrible program. i uninstalled both it & quicktime. now i use k-lite codec pack which has alternatives for quick time, realplayer and much more. the only problem is, this alternatives are unable to play web contents in quicktime format. and what a badluck! allmost all major hollywood companies use quicktime format for their movie trailors!! s***! everyone should ban this bad program. it’s as annoying as spywares!
Just surfing and found this old post of mine, and the reply by the apple nut who said “just accept the license” and shut off my security.
He can’t be serious.
Anyway, I never could get quicktime to work properly (without all the memory hogging tray items and itunes etc.).
I removed it from all of our computers, and have not installed on our new computers (and told the kids not to “accept the license and turn off security”. Anytime they have because they wanted to see a movie trailer, they learned their lesson when suddenly they couldn’t get their mp3 players and playlists to work anymore. Not everyone want’s an ipod or let apple run their musical lives – look what it did to the Beetles 🙂
I don’t know if the above information is out of date or what, but I just deleted iTunes without a hitch from the control panel add/remove programs dialog… and quicktime appears to still be installed.
Running msconfig from the start menu also lets you turn off the iTunes “helper” from startup, which incidentally is something I did a few days ago so maybe that has something to do with my smooth uninstall…
I NEED Quicktime. It actually is not JUST a player. Many of the Quicktime libraries are used by various CAD applications for drawing geometry eg TouchCAD and SailCut.
So full marks to Apple for publishing the api for programmers to use.
And Negative 1000 marks to Apple for making us clag up our work systems with a whopping great music player (that saves files in a format that can only be played on an iPod grrrrrrr!)
I’ve now got iTunes off my system hooray and I play my portable music on a nice MP3 player called an iRiver. Goodbye to MP4s forever 🙂
Yes. QuickTime is a very nice media player. And on a Mac iTunes is a very nice music library. But forcing everyone to install both when they only need QT is a bad idea.
http://www.brothersoft.com/quicktime-download-43141.html
They changed it so that even the standalone page grabs itunes. stupid apple. this link ^^ works for JUST quicktime!
thanks dude, that helps alot.
FYI, Googling “quicktime no itunes” does indeed bring up a link to Apple’s site… but the only DL available as of 3/11/09 is WITH Itunes…
Going with the QT alternative, don’t have time to fight w/ proprietary software…