In this particular case, (1) and (2) were pretty much the same, as the format that became HEIF was drafted up in 2013 and finished in 2015, by Nokia, as a contr

In this particular case, (1) and (2) were pretty much the same, as the format that became HEIF was drafted up in 2013 and finished in 2015, by Nokia, as a contribution to the proceedings of the joint MPEG/ITU-T JCT-VC working group working on the standard MPEG-H; it was accepted. Previously, with Apple 'live photos', having two separate files sitting on the disk was good enough. HEIF is very new, but it's now blessed by the premier standardization organizations in this space as a component of the next wave of media coding. Aside from the the innate value of standards in which industry players agree on common formats and semantics, Apple's move needs to be seen in context of the rival 'Alliance for Open Media' [1], which includes many big names working on future open media codecs outside of the usual MPEG / ITU-T / contributors' patent pool combo. Apple's adoption of an MPEG standard is also signalling its commitment to that particular brand of standardization. [1] http://aomedia.org/about-us/ http://aomedia.org/about-us/