Comment by WilliamLP | Hacker News Reader

Comment by WilliamLP | Hacker News Reader

> Google, Mozilla, and Opera have all committed to support WebM, and we have already started making YouTube videos available in the WebM format. Adobe has also committed to support VP8, the video codec for WebM, in an upcoming Flash Player release.

If Apple isn't going to support it for iPhone and iPad, and you seek a common video encoding, you might as well say straight out that it isn't viable.

The cover-all solution for video is exactly what YouTube uses right now - Flash and H.264. There is absolutely no chance in the foreseeable future of eliminating the H.264 piece, because of Apple. There is some chance of eliminating the Flash piece, depending on IE9 becoming widespread and Firefox either relaxing their stance on H.264 or becoming irrelevant some day.

These facts make people upset, but they are facts.

Broadcom, which has some of its chips in iPhones already, supports WebM: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/broadcom-accelerates...

Qualcomm, AMD, TI and NVidia are also on list of supporters: http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/

Apple may be able to get hardware decoder for WebM bundled in the same package as H.264 codec.

It's likely that WebM will be widely supported and technically good enough for Apple, so Apple would have to have a good reason to "veto" it.

You are overestimating the power of Apple.

If Youtube uses native webm, with flash fallback for browsers that do not support webm and native application with low-resolution for iPhone (i.e. status quo on iOS), where do you see the problem?

Apple will have to provide a very good reason why they are sole platform vendor refusing to support webm in any way.

> where do you see the problem?

1. iOS isn't just iPhone, but includes one of the fastest selling devices in tech history.

2. low-res for the iPhone isn't going to cut it either anymore.

3. Apple's customers are precisely the people who are most willing to pay for products. Treating them as second class web citizens is the worst business decision possible.

Apple's has a minority share of the mobile device market. You are drastically overestimating the importance of a vocal minority. iOS already doesn't support Flash; won't support Flash; can't support Flash because that would threaten the closed App Store. And the rest of the world has gotten along just fine. Indeed, the only people Apple's refusal to support Flash hurts, are Apple users.

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