Editing QuickTime (section)

=== QuickTime 4.x ===
Apple released QuickTime 4.0 on June 8, 1999<ref name="Timeline of QuickTime Updates">{{cite web | title=Timeline of QuickTime Updates at the Apple Museum | url=http://www.theapplemuseum.com/index.php?id=41 | access-date=January 8, 2007}}</ref> for Mac OS 7.5.5 through 8.6 (later [[Mac OS 9]]) and [[Windows 95]], [[Windows 98]], and [[Windows NT]].  Three minor updates (versions 4.0.1, 4.0.2, and 4.0.3) followed.<ref>{{cite web | title=Apple&nbsp;– Developer&nbsp;– QuickTime&nbsp;– Technical Note TN1183 | url=https://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1183.html | access-date=January 8, 2007}}</ref>
It introduced features that most users now consider basic:<ref>{{cite web | title=Apple&nbsp;– Developer&nbsp;– QuickTime&nbsp;– What's New in QuickTime | url=https://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/whatsnew.htm | access-date=January 8, 2007}}</ref>

* Graphics exporter components, which could write some of the same formats that the previously introduced importers could read. (GIF support was omitted, possibly because of the [[Lempel–Ziv–Welch#Patents|LZW patent]].)
* Support for the QDesign Music 2 and MPEG-1 Layer 3 audio (MP3). 
* QuickTime 4 was the first version to support [[Streaming media|streaming]].  It was accompanied by the release of the free [[QuickTime Streaming Server]] version 1.0.
* QuickTime 4 Player introduced [[brushed metal (interface)|brushed metal]] to the Macintosh user interface.

On December 17, 1999, Apple provided QuickTime 4.1, this version's first major update.<ref name="Timeline of QuickTime Updates" />  Two minor versions (4.1.1 and 4.1.2) followed.<ref>{{cite web | title=Apple&nbsp;– Developer&nbsp;– QuickTime&nbsp;– Technical Note TN1197 | url=https://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1197.html | access-date=January 8, 2007}}</ref> The most notable improvements in the 4.1.x family were:<ref>{{cite web | title=Apple&nbsp;– Developer&nbsp;– QuickTime&nbsp;– Summary of Changes and Enhancements for QuickTime 4.1 | url=https://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/REF/QT41_HTML/QT41WhatsNew-2.html
 | access-date=January 8, 2007}}</ref>

* Support for files larger than 2.0 [[gigabytes|GB]] in Mac OS 9. (This is a consequence of Mac OS 9 requiring the [[HFS Plus]] filesystem.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Mac OS 8, 9: Mac OS Extended Format - Volume and File Limits|url=https://support.apple.com/kb/TA21924?locale=en_US|access-date=2020-06-09|website=support.apple.com}}</ref>)
* [[Variable bit rate]] (VBR) support for MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3) audio.
* Support for [[Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language]] (SMIL).
* Introduction of AppleScript support in Mac OS.
* The requirement of a PowerPC processor for Mac OS systems. QuickTime 4.1 dropped support for Motorola [[68k]] Macintosh systems.