Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Ruining a Good Thing

So, the news of the day turned out to be Google yanking the H.264 codec out of Chrome. (Also, somebody released a phone on Verizon or something.) Of course, I’d like to put in my two cents.

  1. It’s kinda sad how this is playing out. Apple is pushing a codec it has a lot of ties to, H.264, so it isn’t at the mercy of Adobe Flash for its video needs. Google, in turn, turns around and pushes WebM so it’s not at the mercy of Apple’s partner’s codec for its own video needs. Adobe, on the other hand, is sitting with a box of popcorn watching these two wage an incessant format war so that when the dust settles, HTML5 video is a failed specification and the world is once again at the mercy of Adobe Flash for its video needs. Thanks, you stubborn bastards.

  2. With Google out of the picture, Windows users - still making up 9 out of every 10 PC users (sadly, even including me) - will have to resort to Internet Explorer to see H.264-only HTML5 content.1 I find this interesting.

  1. Yes, you can run Safari on Windows, but whoever designed that UI left her glasses at home because it looks like every edge was hit with the blur tool and margins are inconsistent. I tried using it today to spite Google but left after 15 minutes. Say what you will about Chrome, their UI is good. Also, I need a 1Password extension before I’ll commit to any browser. Since I figure I’m the only Windows user left who actually remembers that Apple made a Windows version of Safari, they can be counted out. ↩