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I don't feel like Apple adopting a new format inherently means they're moving fast and breaking things. The work on HEIF started in 2012, and Apple has used it
by gkoberger 6y ago
I don't feel like Apple adopting a new format inherently means they're moving fast and breaking things. The work on HEIF started in 2012, and Apple has used it since 2017. 8 years isn't exactly a breakneck speed.
First off, they do a good job of converting it to a JPG when necessary. They've thought about backwards compatibility.
Secondly, if we didn't move forward, we'd never see any innovation. HEIF is smaller and allows for cool features like Live Photo.
Lastly, iOS is the second most popular phone operating system on the planet, and evidently they're asking students to take a picture of their answers with their phone. Is it not reasonable to expect the College Board to test it?
- userbinator 6y agoJPEG2000 is... 20 years old and almost no one outside of specialized applications uses it either. "Innovation" is about the last thing you want in an interchange format. Old and boring works every time. (Opinion of someone who maintains legacy software and has suffered from far too many breaking changes.)
- gkoberger 6y agoSomeone needs to be the first to push it. In this case, Apple is probably the #1 or #2 generator of photographs on the planet, and it's a lot easier to make something happen quickly when the format is supported in that way.
- ben-schaaf 6y agoHEIC is heavily patented. If it was apple's intent to push a new image format for everyone, they chose just about the worst one. It's much more likely they decided to trade off interoperability for lock-in and reduced file size.
- pornel 6y agoHEIF (H.265) is heavily patented, so 8 years is way too soon. We need to wait 20 years for the format to be freely usable.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoHopefully they change to AVIF soon. Apple has always been the one to hold back free file formats in the past though.