Brain Handles

So, there's this little quirk in Quicktime that's been bugging me and I finally decided to Google for a solution, only to find out there isn't one and people have been complaining about it for years without Apple doing a damn thing.

Now this isn't one of those "why can't Mac be more like Windows" complaints. This is legitimate as it gets.

The quirk in Quicktime is that if you're playing a video from disk in Quicktime or a web video where the web designer hasn't specified a volume, Quicktime will start playing the video AT TOP DAMN VOLUME! Yes, that was in all caps, known to us old hands on the web as "screaming". Now it's not just Windows Media Player that remembers the last used sound level, it's just about every video player and MP3 player that are available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Even iTunes remembers the last volume setting.

You won't find a lot of discussions on it, but if you search for "quicktime volume" or "quicktime default volume" on Google, you'll find discussions dating back almost 6 years asking how to keep Quicktime from starting up AT TOP DAMN VOLUME, and in every single one, there's either no answer, or people suggesting using your system volume to control it.

People love to crow about how Apple pays so much attention to making things "just work", but this simple thing, just being able to keep Quicktime from defaulting to its HIGHEST VOLUME SETTING, is something every other application does, even other applications by Apple, but they've left it out of Quicktime.

Apple gets a lot of things right. But this one is a no-brainer. Let's bring Quicktime up to par with other media player apps and fix the volume control issues. How about it, Apple? People have only been asking for this tiny, simple thing for like 6 years. Isn't it about time you got around to it?