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Why wouldn't Apple adopt Webm?

• othermaciej 15y ago
  Perhaps this very Microsoft blog post gives some insight into why an organization might hesitate to use a technology covered by Google-owned patents. (Google has promised to continue Motorola's policies on standards-essential patents, i.e., they will use them as a weapon.)
• mikeryan 15y ago
  First its an inferior codec (particularly when compared to h.264 main or high profile) Second its unclear if WebM is patent encumbered or not. AFAIK its not yet been tested but if this current battle heats up its likely to come under fire fast. Third you now have literally millions of mobile devices and other CE devices with built in H.264 hardware video decoders very few with built in WebM. A lot of folks haven't cared that H.264 is patent encumbered, they pay the licensing fees and go on their way with a very tried and true codec. Until now...
  • fpgeek 15y ago
    I suspect (but can't prove) that WebM is more battle-tested than you think. It has been shipping in Android phones since Gingerbread and it also ships in Chrome (which comes directly from Google). Those are big, fat juicy targets for anyone who thinks they have a patent that can take WebM down. No one has even tried. I wonder why? I suppose they might be laying low to get more WebM adoption and more potential damages, but how many millions of infringing instances can you want?
• dubya 15y ago
  They could, for future products, but I suspect that all current iDevices have hardware H264 decoding support, and no WebM decoding support. Meaning battery life or performance would suffer on the web, though it would still be fine for things obtained from itunes.