Apple isn’t causing a problem in the manner you’re implying - they’ve been using those codecs for years at this point.
All that’s happening here is chrome is adding support for an existing standardized format that is used by the general public in presumably sufficient amounts to warrant the complexity.
If Apple can stop using it to not proliferate it switching to AV1 by default and aren't doing it, then you can say they are part of the problem due to their size.
I.e. if you meant that Google went out of the way to enable it in Chrome because Apple users produce so much content with it (because of Apple), then Apple are causing a problem.
Compare it to someone who makes products that dump toxic waste in the environment when they are being used but due to their size others have to start dealing with it to interoperate instead of avoiding that. You can't say they aren't causing a problem.
When it comes to media codecs Apple were always very problematic, but I thought after them joining AOM something could improve.
Presumably heif and/or hevc had an advantage when Apple adopted them as the default formats. Given they’re primarily on mobile devices it’s reasonable to assume there is hardware support. So switching to something else means battery life impact on everything else.
What you are saying, is that because Google didn’t support a standard format that has been around, and in wide spread use, for years Apple should make all of its devices worse.
Today AV1 can be supported in hardware and is supported in all recent or upcoming SOCs and GPUs. So Apple have no excuse not to do it when they are even pouring tons of money into making and refreshing their own chips.
Can you explain how a new or soon to be released device having hardware support for something adds hardware support to the last 9 years of devices apple has sold that still work with iMessage and Apple's Photos app? Or should Apple just break those because you have a personal bias against a standardized file format?
I guess Google and Android have demonstrated that supporting hardware after you've sold it isn't something that people actually care about so maybe you're right and apple should take the same approach - after all I'm sure breaking older hardware will result in sales, which is good for business.
Above was never about older devices. They can use H.264 and VP9 which have hardware support for years already. It was about newer ones. There isn't a need to ever use the toxic H.265.
All Apple devices communicate with each other via heic, etc. older devices may not be able to encode the video version, but they can all decode it.
You are saying that Apple should revert all of their image and video encoding to h264 because you’ve decided av1, etc is better, and that justifies regressing 100s of millions if not billions of devices.
I do not understand why you find this concept so hard to grasp - millions or billions of devices exist, are in use, and produce and display heic and heif data. Those devices will continue to do so, because new hardware that supports new codecs can’t be magically installed in those devices. So if nothing else, devices that produce the standardized format you despise will continue to produce that format, hence it makes sense for chrome to support that format.
new devices can encode in av1 and similar, but only if you think it’s reasonable for Apple to effectively break older devices for no real reason. Given people already accuse Apple of designed obsolescence, despite providing greater long term support for all its devices than any other company, I can’t imagine “Apple breaks sending images to old ‘supported’ devices” going over well.
Again, this is a super basic and obvious concept that should not be remotely challenging to understand.
I get that you hate heif and hevc, and I get that new hardware supports codecs that might be better, but that is not remotely relevant because there are vast numbers of devices out there that don’t support your favorite codec of the day.
Apple are at fault for deliberately proliferating the damaging codec. Trying to whitewash it with arguments like "they can't do otherwise" won't going to fly. They aren't some poor vendor with no choice. What they are causing is reducing choice for everyone else due to their own size, which was exactly the point.
