Let's look at the basic facts: Apple is a governing member of AOM (Alliance for Open Media). A patent-free implementation of a hardware AV1 decoder is availab

Let's look at the basic facts: Apple is a governing member of AOM (Alliance for Open Media). A patent-free implementation of a hardware AV1 decoder is available right now. Apple makes its own chips with significant revisions every year. Apple seems to like being on the forefront of mobile silicon and already stuffs its chips full of things orders of magnitude more elaborate than this. Apple now runs their own streaming network and being able to offer AV1 encodes stretches their bandwidth further. Consider also that iPhone chips of today inevitably become the Apple TV chips of tomorrow. But most importantly of all, there's no commercial or competitive incentive for Apple not to do it. All of its serious competitors license the patent encumbered codecs and would need to continue doing so indefinitely just like Apple.