Hard on the heels of the discovery of what Apple has done to iMovie comes another interesting example of a company losing touch with its most devoted customers. While installing software updates on one of our machines, I found that Apple wanted to install a new version of QuickTime. And then I noticed this:

Important Notice to QuickTime Pro Users

QuickTime 7 will disable the QuickTime Pro functionality in prior versions of QuickTime, such as QuickTime 5 or QuickTime 6. If you proceed with this installation, you must purchase a new QuickTime 7 Pro key to regain QuickTime Pro functionality. After installation, visit www.apple.com/quicktime to purchase a QuickTime 7 Pro key.

This is the kind of thing one used to expect from Microsoft.

Later: Quentin emailed in more reasoned tones.

When you upgrade to iLife ’08 or iWork ’08, it doesn’t overwrite the old versions. So you can still happily use a previous version of iMovie if wanted.

On the QuickTime front, installation WILL overwrite previous codecs etc. I think it’s still the case, however, that if you rename the player before installing, that old player will retain Quicktime Pro functionality though the new one doesn’t.