Wow. There is a ton of multimedia software from freeware up to commercial $$$ software that won't start or break without QuickTime or am I missing something?

This certainly looks like a major issue for media production. I know I have a ton of clients who are only set up to take .mov/H.264 files, and I have no idea how this will affect them yet.

Doesn't iTunes for Windows depend on QuickTime? Does this mean that iTunes for Windows is also deprecated?

Apparently, iTunes no longer depends on QuickTime.

I didn't want to install QuickTime in the first place, but shitty iTunes required it.

Now I have a completely separate old laptop that I only use for bloated malware like iTunes, TurboTax, Adobe Flash, and the Java browser plug-in.

That keeps my everyday machines free of this junk.