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Codecs and formats that Apple tries to ban, touch events API that Apple tries to ban, support for DASH that Apple tries to ban. And so on. Basically anything t

by shmerl 4y ago

Codecs and formats that Apple tries to ban, touch events API that Apple tries to ban, support for DASH that Apple tries to ban. And so on. Basically anything that Apple tries to ban for anti-competitive reasons. Once this blocker is removed, no one will care about Apple bans anymore.

kouteiheika 4y ago
> Codecs and formats that Apple tries to ban [..] Basically anything that Apple tries to ban for anti-competitive reasons. Opus support: Firefox: 2012 Chrome: 2014 Safari: Unsupported AVIF support: Firefox: Oct 2021 Chrome: Aug 2022 Safari: Oct 2022 (but incomplete and buggy) AV1 support: Firefox: 2019 Chrome: 2018 Safari: Unsupported WebP support: Firefox: 2019 Chrome: 2014 Safari: 2022 WebM support: Firefox: 2014 Chrome: 2013 Safari: 2022 Ogg Vorbis support: Firefox: 2009 Chrome: 2010 Safari: Unsupported FLAC support: Firefox: 2017 Chrome: 2017 Safari: 2019 Basically any codec/container that's open and/or royalty-free Apple isn't very keen to support, and if they do they always drag their feet.
- thiht 4y ago
  Why do they drag their feet so much regarding open codecs? It seems like they just need to take an existing dependency and integrate it in their browser, that doesn't seem like a lot of work. Maybe I'm completely wrong about that? Are there hidden complexities? Maybe they want to implement the codecs in-house? Royalty/licensing issues?
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    They want to only offer good options, to guarantee a certain UX. All of the codecs they do support have hardware acceleration and tend to be among the best in their class. Why would they duplicate functionality they already have? I agree it's annoying on occasion.
    - kouteiheika 4y ago
      > They want to only offer good options, to guarantee a certain UX. All of the codecs they do support have hardware acceleration and tend to be among the best in their class. Why would they duplicate functionality they already have? This is provably false though. For example, they support Opus bitstreams either through WebRTC (because it's required) or inside their own buggy special-snowflake .caf container (so they do support the more "expensive" encoding/decoding part of Opus that could benefit from hardware acceleration), but they don't support Opus audio files (that is, the '.opus' Vorbis container which everyone uses to hold Opus audio, which is the "easy" part of supporting Opus and doesn't benefit from having hardware acceleration because there's nothing to accelerate there). And they control their own hardware for how many years now? Their A4 silicon first appeared in 2010; they could have easily added whatever hardware acceleration they want to, but they chose not to. Frankly I'm not sure what their motivations are. I guess they just don't care?
      - dontlaugh 4y ago
        I’m trying to say they don’t care about anything other than the “blessed” path. Anything else is by accident. They couldn’t see a point to opus files, so they didn’t bother.
        shmerl 4y ago
        They are more malicious being part of MPEG-LA themselves (later they decided to join AOM though). So their attitude to codecs is not accidental.

by shmerl 4y ago

kouteiheika 4y ago

> Codecs and formats that Apple tries to ban [..] Basically anything that Apple tries to ban for anti-competitive reasons. Opus support: Firefox: 2012 Chrome: 2014 Safari: Unsupported AVIF support: Firefox: Oct 2021 Chrome: Aug 2022 Safari: Oct 2022 (but incomplete and buggy) AV1 support: Firefox: 2019 Chrome: 2018 Safari: Unsupported WebP support: Firefox: 2019 Chrome: 2014 Safari: 2022 WebM support: Firefox: 2014 Chrome: 2013 Safari: 2022 Ogg Vorbis support: Firefox: 2009 Chrome: 2010 Safari: Unsupported FLAC support: Firefox: 2017 Chrome: 2017 Safari: 2019 Basically any codec/container that's open and/or royalty-free Apple isn't very keen to support, and if they do they always drag their feet.

thiht 4y ago
Why do they drag their feet so much regarding open codecs? It seems like they just need to take an existing dependency and integrate it in their browser, that doesn't seem like a lot of work. Maybe I'm completely wrong about that? Are there hidden complexities? Maybe they want to implement the codecs in-house? Royalty/licensing issues?
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  They want to only offer good options, to guarantee a certain UX. All of the codecs they do support have hardware acceleration and tend to be among the best in their class. Why would they duplicate functionality they already have? I agree it's annoying on occasion.
  - kouteiheika 4y ago
    > They want to only offer good options, to guarantee a certain UX. All of the codecs they do support have hardware acceleration and tend to be among the best in their class. Why would they duplicate functionality they already have? This is provably false though. For example, they support Opus bitstreams either through WebRTC (because it's required) or inside their own buggy special-snowflake .caf container (so they do support the more "expensive" encoding/decoding part of Opus that could benefit from hardware acceleration), but they don't support Opus audio files (that is, the '.opus' Vorbis container which everyone uses to hold Opus audio, which is the "easy" part of supporting Opus and doesn't benefit from having hardware acceleration because there's nothing to accelerate there). And they control their own hardware for how many years now? Their A4 silicon first appeared in 2010; they could have easily added whatever hardware acceleration they want to, but they chose not to. Frankly I'm not sure what their motivations are. I guess they just don't care?
    - dontlaugh 4y ago
      I’m trying to say they don’t care about anything other than the “blessed” path. Anything else is by accident. They couldn’t see a point to opus files, so they didn’t bother.
      - shmerl 4y ago
        They are more malicious being part of MPEG-LA themselves (later they decided to join AOM though). So their attitude to codecs is not accidental.