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Comment by shoota | Hacker News Reader

A little off topic but why when I go to http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html and try to watch the video am I prompted to download Quicktime. I thought apple was all about HTML5 and killing off browser plugins?

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That video is done with an HTML5 video tag. The thing about the HTML5 spec is that it doesn't actually specify what format the video should be in, so different people use different formats and AFAIK no browser supports all the common choices out of the box. It's an unfortunate state of affairs, but it seems essentially irreconcilable — this is why WebM could have been a big deal. Apple chose to use the QuickTime file format here, presumably on the assumption that iPhone users will have iTunes installed and QuickTime with it.

Is this the first time you've seen a self-serving inconsistency? Apple as a company represents many things, and a keen PR team with excellent wording is one of their strengths. Apple isn't "all about HTML5" and "killing off browser plugins", but rather they are about their best interests. Nixing Flash kept the Apple-controlled AppStore the dominant gateway for applications on the device. Quicktime is another Apple technology, so it is pretty much expected that they will use it (if for nothing other than cross-promotion/marketshare)

M$ - Silverlight Adobe - Flash Google - WebM

Calling Apple out as if they are some how evil here is disingenuous. All the players are pushing their own formats.

Doesn't safari work without quicktime and support the <video> tag in html5?

How about calling Adobe out for "ruining the internet" with flash? I'm glad Apple kept them from ruining the iphone (like they are attempting with android).

[Edit: correct Flash to Adobe]

Nixing Flash improved our lives (especially in the long term).

When I visit, I get served H264 video in an MPEG-4 container via the <video> tag. QuickTime fallback is offered for browsers that don't support MP4 natively.

The version of Chrome I'm using must have removed H264 support. Quicktime as a fallback is rather disappointing as Flash seems like it has a much higher install base and smaller disk space footprint.

See http://labs.divx.com/html5/ to see if your browser supports H264 demo. Both Chrome and IE9 do for me and I am still asked to install QuickTime.

In fact my chrome is working with MP4 video and this appears just to be Apple pushing quicktime on to Chrome users.

It could be a broken test for support, or UA sniffing or something. I'll file a bug against the site.

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