250 million and counting

No, not hamburgers sold at McDonald’s – QuickTime 6 downloads, according to Apple. The number includes all QT 6 releases, from 6.0 to the current 6.5, downloaded from Apple’s Web site. While the gaudy numbers are nice, what I found interesting from the conversation I had with Rhonda Stratton, director of QuickTime product marketing, earlier today was the planned support for H.264 (or AVC, as it’s called in some circles) within the MPEG-4 specification. Apple demoed this at NAB in April, showing a true High Definition video delivered at 8M bit/sec, which is what standard definition MPEG-2 currently uses. This should be pretty cool when it hits the market, though Apple is mum on when that might be. I couldn’t even get an over/under for December 31, 2004.

Another item of note from the conversation: There will be some 40 sessions at the upcoming World Wide Developers Conference dedicated with QuickTime. The conference is in San Francisco and runs June 28 through July 2.