Let's separate the issues into two groups: Quicktime issues, and Quicktime Player issues.

Quicktime - is the library of code used by many apps to encode, decode, and otherwise work with time-based, static, and interactive media.

If you have Quicktime 6 you should be able to view virtually any content created under Quicktime 7, with the exception of H.264 encoded video, and perhaps a few other small items. The vast majority of things should work fine - interactivity is the same, image support is the same, etc. Therefore, front a content playback perspective, upgrading shouldn't be necessary except for support for newer codecs.

• Quicktime Player - one particular app that is provided with Quicktime; for much basic functionality it's simply using core Quicktime routines. More advanced functionality, such as the editing UI, fullscreen display, etc, are all features of the application - and whether they are available to the user depends on whether they have paid the Pro registration. Note that not paying for QT Pro will *not* inhibit other apps from implementing similar features - if someone wanted to write a full-featured Quicktime Player knockoff that has all the "pro" features of Quicktime Player Pro, and they want to give it away there's nothing preventing them. Just like Premiere, or LiveStage, or any other "pro" app that uses adv. Qucktime features does *not* require their users to have Quicktime Pro licenses. It's for these reasons I've said for a long time that I think Quicktime Pro should really be called Quicktime Player Pro, as all you're getting from the license are unlocked features in that app - it doesn't affect Quicktime itself in any meaningful way and so is a misleading bundling of the two separate products.

When you upgrade to Quicktime 7, you need to purchase a new key for Quicktime Player 7 to activate it's "pro" features. The older Quicktime Player 6 still runs just fine under Quicktime 7, and its old key still works, so that's one way to avoid paying again - just backup the old Player app and key and use it as you always have. Note, you'll even gain a few new features added by Quicktime 7 itself, like H.264 encoding.

• The main reason to save the old Quicktime Player 6 is not to save money - are we really that cheap? - it's because a number of features of the *app* are broken or otherwise dysfunctional in Quicktime Player 7. AppleScript support has changed again, and not all for the better - for instance, I filed a bug about naming/annotating tracks via AppleScript. There are other reported issues affecting text tracks, sprites, and VR, and I'm sure others. Note that many/most of these problems are not Quicktime problems, they are Quicktime Player problems, so you can confidently upgrade to QT7 as long as you keep an older copy of the Player around just in case.

My advice for content creators: backup the QT6 Player and key; upgrade to Quicktime 7, pay for the new Pro license, and then keep the old Player app around for when you need it - I still script against it, for instance, rather than scripting with the new QT Player 7.