6 ms·

We are seeing a deeper and deeper split between Google (webm/VP9, webp, AV1, strongly pushing their formats) and Apple (HEVC, HEIC, Atmos, completely boycotting

We are seeing a deeper and deeper split between Google (webm/VP9, webp, AV1, strongly pushing their formats) and Apple (HEVC, HEIC, Atmos, completely boycotting Google's formats), with Microsoft caught in the middle, supporting neither that well. Apple's stance is especially interesting because it's unclear to me what they gain by pushing license fee encumbered formats.

theandrewbailey 4y ago
I figured that it was because Apple is more heavily involved with Hollywood than Google is, from production to distribution, and Apple would rather side with standards formulated by trusted experts, professionals, and academics with long track records like MPEG than ones that seemingly came from nowhere.
- ajross 4y ago
  > standards formulated by trusted experts, professionals, and academics with long track records like MPEG I genuinely can't tell if this is humor or not. If it is, bravo.
  - tpush 4y ago
    Perhaps formulate a point instead of pretending to be incredulous.
    - AvesMerit 4y ago
      You missed the pun
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Fortunately, MPEG got lobotomized by ISO a few years back[0]. So there's room for a new standards org (e.g. AOM) to overtake them. In fact, Apple joined AOM recently, so presumably they will be providing their own expertise to that organization too. [0] Specifically, Leonardo Chiariglione got fired and the MPEG working group cut up into a bunch of pieces.
kyriakos 4y ago
Apple prefers to pay dolby than help Google in any way it seems.
- thornjm 4y ago
  The article said Dolby prefers to charge on the playback side. Does anyone know if Apple pays Dolby anything? iPhones produce a lot of content so it makes sense for Dolby to provide Apple with free licensing if it popularises the formats.
CharlesW 4y ago
By supporting de jure standards (vs. Google projects which hope to become de facto standards), Apple gets a 3rd-party ecosystem for use cases where it wants one. Examples include USB, Wi-Fi, MPEG-4, Thunderbolt/USB4, web standards, etc. In many cases, Apple is an active participant in the standards process of de jure standards which are important to their business objectives. When de facto standards develop enough momentum to have customer value on their own or as part of other de jure standards, Apple will support them at the OS or app level. Examples include MP3, VP9, Opus, VST3, etc.
- account42 4y ago
  How are MPEG-LA/Dolby/etc's standards more "de jure" than Google's? Both are standards only in the sense that a number of corporations agree on them. Neither have any kind of legal basis for being the standard.
  - midislack 4y ago
    MPEG's an industry group, Google's not. Pretty easy to understand.
shp0ngle 4y ago
Apple is a governing member of Alliance for Open Media that develops AV1 standards. They joined quite late but are there.
- account42 4y ago
  Apple is also a member of Khronos - the highest level of membership in fact. Doesn't mean that they are at all interested in furthering and promoting the standards Khronos oversees. Microsoft is also a member of Khronos btw and they have been actively hostile towards open graphics standards for much longer. It simply makes sense for corporations to get access to relevant standards bodies in their fields, whether they are interested in adopting those standards or interested in competing with them.
asciimov 4y ago
Apple is just supporting the technology people likely already have in their homes.
- mminer237 4y ago
  I think it's actually the opposite. Historically, nothing but Apple devices have been able to easily view HEIC images. I think half the reason Apple does it is to make life as hard as possible for people not using Apple devices, so they will give up and switch.
  - account42 4y ago
    You can see this strategy also in their refusal to provide first-class chat interopability.
sparrc 4y ago
> Apple...completely boycotting Google's formats This is not exactly true, they are a "founding member" of AOM: https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ > Apple's stance is especially interesting because it's unclear to me what they gain by pushing license fee encumbered formats. My guess is cheaper hardware. AV1 is simply behind HEVC in terms of hardware (ie, ASIC encoder/decoders) support.
- lelandfe 4y ago
  They also recently added WebP/M support to macOS, iOS, and Safari: https://caniuse.com/webp https://caniuse.com/webp
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- account42 4y ago
  > This is not exactly true, they are a "founding member" of AOM: https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ Doesn't mean that hey are there to adopt those standards rather than to be informed on how to best compete with them. > My guess is cheaper hardware. AV1 is simply behind HEVC in terms of hardware (ie, ASIC encoder/decoders) support. This might be a reason for anyone else but Apple makes their own hardware.
jacooper 4y ago
It was the main reason dealing with Safari was a PITA, luckily they supported WebP recently.
- account42 4y ago
  Hopefully they won't take this long for jxl.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    Looks like they are supporting AVIF. Its in IOS 16 and in beta Ventura. And almost no body supports JpegXL, is it much better than AVIF? https://medium.com/codex/webp-avif-and-jpeg-xl-better-image-formats-for-websites-31df8e48c507 https://medium.com/codex/webp-avif-and-jpeg-xl-better-image-...
    - account42 4y ago
      Comparing lossless compression formats is tricky, but it is at least competitive with AVIF. The big advantage of JXL is that it can provide additional compression for JPEG files without any (further) quality loss. Both Chrome and Firefox have implemented JXL support (to some extend, FF's implementation did not work for me when I tried it) but it is still hidden behind flags for now.
jiggawatts 4y ago
> unclear to me what they gain It's clear to me! I have an iPhone Pro 13, and I tell you: the Dolby and HEIC formats are a key reason I use the Apple ecosystem instead of Android. The pictures and video I take have a huge dynamic range, accurate true-to-life colour, and have a surprisingly small encoded size. The 4K Dolby Vision HDR video the iPhone takes looks like it has been professionally graded and rarely needs any further touching up. To reproduce it with any other device would require a significant setup of something like DaVinci Resolve and a RAW video workflow. I don't know if everyone but me is colorblind or what, but it's night & day to me. The Apple + Dolby Vision videos are mindblowingly good, whereas everything I've seen taken by or displayed on an Android device is always incorrect in some way. Blown highlights, oversaturated, or whatever. Google has little clue about colour, HDR, standards, quality, or anything at all along those lines that photographers or videographers care about. They're still releasing SDKs and entire operating systems with the baked-in assumption that images are always 8-bit sRGB SDR. Then they don't bother color-managing that at all, leading to the inevitable end result of either desaturated or garish color depending on the display panel used. PS: Microsoft used to be the best of the bunch back in the Vista days, and is now regressing to be the worst of the bunch. In part, this is driven by the need to be "cross platform" and compatible with Google's Android. Only Windows and Mac uses 16-bit linear light blending for the desktop window manager, whereas Android uses 8-bit unmanaged God-only-knows-what-color-space.
- solardev 4y ago
  Does this really work..? I just switched to an iPhone 14 from a Pixel 5 and the pictures are so much worse. Maybe if I bothered with a raw workflow, but in automatic mode, the pixel photos are way better...
  - expensive_news 4y ago
    Not that I’ve had either phone but I would say you’re likely in the minority. I have the iPhone 12 and have always been happy with the iPhone cameras. It’s not like it even comes close to my DSLR but they’re decent for phones. I haven’t had a lot of Androids either but all of the ones I owned had terrible cameras. You don’t need to shoot in RAW to get good results. I’m curious what your complaints are?
ksec 4y ago
Apple typically pick the better standard, being widely used in the industry and licensing cost isn't ( as much ) an issue. At least in Steve Jobs's era, he do appreciate people doing innovative work and are paid for it. And cost wasn't as ridiculously expensive as they are today. And when it was, Steve would demand they show why they are worth that much. Now I think that is mostly gone in Apple.

theandrewbailey 4y ago

I figured that it was because Apple is more heavily involved with Hollywood than Google is, from production to distribution, and Apple would rather side with standards formulated by trusted experts, professionals, and academics with long track records like MPEG than ones that seemingly came from nowhere.

ajross 4y ago
> standards formulated by trusted experts, professionals, and academics with long track records like MPEG I genuinely can't tell if this is humor or not. If it is, bravo.
- tpush 4y ago
  Perhaps formulate a point instead of pretending to be incredulous.
  - AvesMerit 4y ago
    You missed the pun
kmeisthax 4y ago
Fortunately, MPEG got lobotomized by ISO a few years back[0]. So there's room for a new standards org (e.g. AOM) to overtake them. In fact, Apple joined AOM recently, so presumably they will be providing their own expertise to that organization too. [0] Specifically, Leonardo Chiariglione got fired and the MPEG working group cut up into a bunch of pieces.

kyriakos 4y ago

Apple prefers to pay dolby than help Google in any way it seems.

thornjm 4y ago
The article said Dolby prefers to charge on the playback side. Does anyone know if Apple pays Dolby anything? iPhones produce a lot of content so it makes sense for Dolby to provide Apple with free licensing if it popularises the formats.

CharlesW 4y ago

By supporting de jure standards (vs. Google projects which hope to become de facto standards), Apple gets a 3rd-party ecosystem for use cases where it wants one. Examples include USB, Wi-Fi, MPEG-4, Thunderbolt/USB4, web standards, etc. In many cases, Apple is an active participant in the standards process of de jure standards which are important to their business objectives. When de facto standards develop enough momentum to have customer value on their own or as part of other de jure standards, Apple will support them at the OS or app level. Examples include MP3, VP9, Opus, VST3, etc.

account42 4y ago
How are MPEG-LA/Dolby/etc's standards more "de jure" than Google's? Both are standards only in the sense that a number of corporations agree on them. Neither have any kind of legal basis for being the standard.
- midislack 4y ago
  MPEG's an industry group, Google's not. Pretty easy to understand.

shp0ngle 4y ago

Apple is a governing member of Alliance for Open Media that develops AV1 standards. They joined quite late but are there.

account42 4y ago
Apple is also a member of Khronos - the highest level of membership in fact. Doesn't mean that they are at all interested in furthering and promoting the standards Khronos oversees. Microsoft is also a member of Khronos btw and they have been actively hostile towards open graphics standards for much longer. It simply makes sense for corporations to get access to relevant standards bodies in their fields, whether they are interested in adopting those standards or interested in competing with them.

asciimov 4y ago

Apple is just supporting the technology people likely already have in their homes.

mminer237 4y ago
I think it's actually the opposite. Historically, nothing but Apple devices have been able to easily view HEIC images. I think half the reason Apple does it is to make life as hard as possible for people not using Apple devices, so they will give up and switch.
- account42 4y ago
  You can see this strategy also in their refusal to provide first-class chat interopability.

sparrc 4y ago

> Apple...completely boycotting Google's formats This is not exactly true, they are a "founding member" of AOM: https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ > Apple's stance is especially interesting because it's unclear to me what they gain by pushing license fee encumbered formats. My guess is cheaper hardware. AV1 is simply behind HEVC in terms of hardware (ie, ASIC encoder/decoders) support.

lelandfe 4y ago
They also recently added WebP/M support to macOS, iOS, and Safari: https://caniuse.com/webp https://caniuse.com/webp
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
account42 4y ago
> This is not exactly true, they are a "founding member" of AOM: https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ https://aomedia.org/membership/members/ Doesn't mean that hey are there to adopt those standards rather than to be informed on how to best compete with them. > My guess is cheaper hardware. AV1 is simply behind HEVC in terms of hardware (ie, ASIC encoder/decoders) support. This might be a reason for anyone else but Apple makes their own hardware.

jacooper 4y ago

It was the main reason dealing with Safari was a PITA, luckily they supported WebP recently.

account42 4y ago
Hopefully they won't take this long for jxl.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Looks like they are supporting AVIF. Its in IOS 16 and in beta Ventura. And almost no body supports JpegXL, is it much better than AVIF? https://medium.com/codex/webp-avif-and-jpeg-xl-better-image-formats-for-websites-31df8e48c507 https://medium.com/codex/webp-avif-and-jpeg-xl-better-image-...
  - account42 4y ago
    Comparing lossless compression formats is tricky, but it is at least competitive with AVIF. The big advantage of JXL is that it can provide additional compression for JPEG files without any (further) quality loss. Both Chrome and Firefox have implemented JXL support (to some extend, FF's implementation did not work for me when I tried it) but it is still hidden behind flags for now.

jiggawatts 4y ago

> unclear to me what they gain It's clear to me! I have an iPhone Pro 13, and I tell you: the Dolby and HEIC formats are a key reason I use the Apple ecosystem instead of Android. The pictures and video I take have a huge dynamic range, accurate true-to-life colour, and have a surprisingly small encoded size. The 4K Dolby Vision HDR video the iPhone takes looks like it has been professionally graded and rarely needs any further touching up. To reproduce it with any other device would require a significant setup of something like DaVinci Resolve and a RAW video workflow. I don't know if everyone but me is colorblind or what, but it's night & day to me. The Apple + Dolby Vision videos are mindblowingly good, whereas everything I've seen taken by or displayed on an Android device is always incorrect in some way. Blown highlights, oversaturated, or whatever. Google has little clue about colour, HDR, standards, quality, or anything at all along those lines that photographers or videographers care about. They're still releasing SDKs and entire operating systems with the baked-in assumption that images are always 8-bit sRGB SDR. Then they don't bother color-managing that at all, leading to the inevitable end result of either desaturated or garish color depending on the display panel used. PS: Microsoft used to be the best of the bunch back in the Vista days, and is now regressing to be the worst of the bunch. In part, this is driven by the need to be "cross platform" and compatible with Google's Android. Only Windows and Mac uses 16-bit linear light blending for the desktop window manager, whereas Android uses 8-bit unmanaged God-only-knows-what-color-space.

solardev 4y ago
Does this really work..? I just switched to an iPhone 14 from a Pixel 5 and the pictures are so much worse. Maybe if I bothered with a raw workflow, but in automatic mode, the pixel photos are way better...
- expensive_news 4y ago
  Not that I’ve had either phone but I would say you’re likely in the minority. I have the iPhone 12 and have always been happy with the iPhone cameras. It’s not like it even comes close to my DSLR but they’re decent for phones. I haven’t had a lot of Androids either but all of the ones I owned had terrible cameras. You don’t need to shoot in RAW to get good results. I’m curious what your complaints are?

ksec 4y ago

Apple typically pick the better standard, being widely used in the industry and licensing cost isn't ( as much ) an issue. At least in Steve Jobs's era, he do appreciate people doing innovative work and are paid for it. And cost wasn't as ridiculously expensive as they are today. And when it was, Steve would demand they show why they are worth that much. Now I think that is mostly gone in Apple.