The future is mobile and it belongs to Apple, full stop.
I don't know who told you that, but he's wrong. Android is growing much faster than iOS. Not to mention that lots of people still prefer keyboards and large screens. To do work, but also to watch video. The majority of video content is watched on desktop machines, and if it's up to the cellphone networks, it will remain that way. If when you're talking desktop, you simply cannot ignore Firefox, where H.264 just isn't an option.
Apple is certainly big and powerful, but they don't get to determine the future on their own, and are perfectly capable of shooting themselves in the foot, or, who knows, even seeing reason.
Then there is the matter of hardware acceleration which frankly just can't be "dropped in" via firmware on most devices, they just don't have the chip space for that big of a change.
Mobile hardware acelleration for video is pretty new anyway. I don't see why it would be any harder with WebM than with H.264. Plenty of hardware manufacturers (and software, for that matter) are already committed to supporting WebM.
The thing you're forgetting here is that MS didn't add that functionality to Firefox. They made it available to Firefox. Just like the fact that Google made a proper rendering engine available for IE6 doesn't mean that everybody automatically uses it.
> WebM was purchased and opened up by Google. Nobody else could have proposed it before.
Somebody else could have tried to buy the technology and open it. Or develop a competing technology. No ?
Who? Not Mozilla or Opera. They don't have that kind of money. And Apple and Microsoft are generally not in the business of buying stuff just to open it up and give it away for free. Google was really the only likely candidate for this. And they're the one with the biggest interest in moving forward to a common standard that everybody agrees on.
Google may try to control the video format on the web. Like Apple, like Microsoft before.
My reading: Google is pushing for an open standard that *noone else* did before, either because of lack of interest, conflicting interests or lacking the guts to do so because of the patent minefield.
WebM was purchased and opened up by Google. Nobody else could have proposed it before. The best open alternative, Ogg Theora, is much less efficient than H.264, making it a bad choice for the companies who can afford to pay for H.264.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if Google bought WebM for the specific purpose of providing a good open compromise. They have a tendency to throw big money around just to get everybody moving in the same direction again.
That is true from the standpoint of Apple fighting for open technologies backed by large groups of companies (HTML5, h.264) where Adobe is fighting for maintaining control over the stronghold of Web Video, where they are the ones who provide players everyone needs to operate universally.
That's why Google, Apple and Microsoft were together in supporting the video tag. But then Google got greedy, and thought "Why can't I have Adobe's position"? So under the guise of being open, Google is pushing for a standard controlled by them.
It's not Google being greedy. In fact, they spent money and gave the results away for free just to get things moving again. You're completely misunderstanding the standpoints of the companies involved.
Adobe: makes tools. Tools for making graphical stuff, mostly. Video, games, other interactive graphical stuff. What they want is for people to use their tools. The only reason they care(d) about Flash is because for a long time it was the only way to distribute the resulting stuff to millions of people, increasing the demand for their development tools. If their tools can be used to develop for HTML5 or WebM, that's fine by them. It costs a bit of investment, but their position is safe.
Google: doesn't care about money, or anything short-term, really. On the short term, they are doing awesomely. They make their money from targeted advertising on the Web. For this they need two things: as many people as possible using the web for as many things as possible; and know what those people are doing on the web. They don't like Flash because it's a black box. They don't like the iPhone because it's a walled garden. They do like everything that's open, and they're willing to give enormous amounts of stuff away for free, just to break things open (see Android). What they want is for HTML5 to move forward. HTML5 was stalling because of disagreements about the video codec (Theora too slow for MS and Apple, H.264 to expensive for Opera and Mozilla), and no resolution was possible. So WebM is their proposal for a compromise: it's faster than Theora, yet open and free. A fragmented HTML5 is no use to them. They want everybody on board, and that means H.264 is not good enough, so they try to force their compromise down everybody's throat.
Apple: wants complete control over their own walled garden. They don't care what people do outside, but inside, they need to play by Apple's rules. Apple sells the Apple experience, and that does not include porn, third-party plugins, third-party dev tools, or anything that they consider too slow. There is really no good reason for them to not like WebM, other than the fact that they already invested a lot in H.264.
Microsoft: Honestly, I have no idea what drives them at the moment. I'm not sure they know either. They've always been about domination. Not of their little corner, like Apple, but of everything. They've lost that domination now, and seem to want to rebuild some credibility (with IE9 finally being standards-abiding and everything). I don't see why WebM wouldn't fit into that, but then again, they no doubt have lots of other plans, contacts and contracts playing a role in the background. And those would be slowed down if they suddenly need to tell all their contacts to use WebM instead of H.264.
Mozilla: They're just not going to pay for H.264, and even if it was free, they wouldn't be willing to invest in it without some solid reassurances that it will remain free forever.
Opera: Similar to Mozilla, though probably slightly less so.
Uhhhh..maybe you didn't get the memo but H.264 works in Firefox now thanks to MSFT. And while this plugin calls the native Windows 7 codec I'm sure it won't take long before a hacked one that just calls VLC or KLite DShow filters will be released which will take care of XP and Vista.
That just means that H.264 in Firefox is almost as well supported as WebM in IE. Almost, because it only works on Windows 7.
Sure, anyone can make plugins or extensions with whatever features they like for Firefox or other browsers, but that relies on people installing plugins (just like Flash does, incidentally). It doesn't support it out of the box.
I seriously doubt you'll see teh titties in WebM anytime soon....or well ever actually.
Why wouldn't they (or anyone else, for that matter) support WebM, if that's what they need to reach their viewers?
Ah yes, the famous open, patented, royalty-encumbered standard. Except for the open part
It is open.
In what way exactly is it open? The specs may be freely available, but if I want to actually use it, I need special permission. And that permission is not automatic; it may cost money. I already have permission to use WebM however I like.
I think you underestimate the size of YouTube. It's way bigger than all other video hosts put together. If a WebM browser gives you the best YouTube experience, that's what people will want. And with Firefox's sizable market share on the desktop, and Chrome's market share on smartphones, I'd say WebM cannot be ignored.
And if YouTube offers video in either HTML5+WebM or Flash+H264, iDevice users definitely have a problem.
The video tag had a solid reason behind it, you didn't have to expend efforts working with annoying Flash video wrappers. But Google has gone and tossed that down the drain in favor of forcing a standard on the world at a time they lack the power to do so - and in the process KILLED open video on the web by bringing us all back to the dark ages of Flash video players everywhere.
How did Google kill open video? It's possible that WebM won't matter and therefore Google's action won't help to open video, but it won't kill it, because we never had any alternative for open video anyway.
Or did you see Ogg Theora as a serious contender? As part of the HTML 5 standard, is was dead already. It's h264 or WebM, and Google supporting an open format can only help open video.
I certainly appreciate Google's solidarity with the less wealthy players on the browser market.
The problem with this is that a more thorough vetting of patent applications will drive up the cost of getting patents. So only the already wealthy and powerful could afford to get patents.
This is already the case. Vetting patents through lawsuits isn't exactly cheap either. Probably more expensive than having the USPTO do it. Therefore only the rich and powerful can afford to defend and attack patents. For the little guy, patents are useless.
The solution is abolishing patents.
A far better idea. At the moment, patents only stifle innovation.
I don't like patents in general, and part of me is definitely happy that an innovative company like Google ignores this stupid patent arm's race. But with the way the US legal system often works, I'm still worried. It often looks like quantity (money, patents or lawyers) is a lot more important than quality (are the patents any good, are the lawyers right, are you actually legally in the right?).
Yet the Droid (Verizon's version of the Milestone) does not have the encrypted bootloader that the Milestone has. And despite the encrypted bootloader, the Milestone can still be rooted. You tether with it, install kernel modules, even. You just can't update to Android 2.2.
No, that's really just the cult worrying about the health of its leader. Jobs did more than just the iPhone. Apple shares have been going up continuously since his return. It's not about Cook handling Android, it's about whether Cook is as awesome as Jobs. And that's rather unlikely.
This sounds great. For a while now I've been fantasizing about what I'd do if I had any way to get into the smartphone hardware business, and I was planning on the name: Ultimate Geek Phone. Apart from being completely open, big capacitive touch screen, etc, it'd be a bit heavier than other smartphones because of the much bigger battery, and have a sturdy steel casing (one of the things that I really like about my Milestone).
This one has the openness right. Now if only they made it from metal instead of plastic, and put a bigger battery and more powerful chips in it, I'd gladly pay EUR 600 for it. (Just not now, because I'm really broke at the moment.)
Even so, it's bizarre for Motorola to invest so much energy in alienating customers. How does it actually help them to restrict their customers so much? If it was at least a sane business decision, I wouldn't complain.
Then again, the main reason I'm complaining is that they weren't so open and honest about this when I bought my Milestone. I'm glad they're honest about it now, because I will avoid their products like the plague from now on.
Yes, but experience in area Y != experience in area X. No one, no matter how good, is going to master a programming language in a week or even a month.
That depends a lot on the language and what you consider mastery. A good programmer can learn the basics of any language with a familiar paradigm in a week, two at the most. If you know C++, the basics of Java or C# are easy. If you know Java, you can be productive in Groovy within a week. Or Ruby, or Python, for that matter. But going from OO/imperative languages with maybe a hint of functional programming to something like Lisp or Haskell, yes that might be a bit harder.
What usually takes the most time, is learning new frameworks, existing projects, and the real guts of the language. But then, university graduates rarely master those either.
It's been on public display for weeks in a dark cellar of their branch office in Alpha Centauri. If he can't be bothered to keep up with local events, he only has himself to blame.
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The future is mobile and it belongs to Apple, full stop.
I don't know who told you that, but he's wrong. Android is growing much faster than iOS. Not to mention that lots of people still prefer keyboards and large screens. To do work, but also to watch video. The majority of video content is watched on desktop machines, and if it's up to the cellphone networks, it will remain that way. If when you're talking desktop, you simply cannot ignore Firefox, where H.264 just isn't an option.
Apple is certainly big and powerful, but they don't get to determine the future on their own, and are perfectly capable of shooting themselves in the foot, or, who knows, even seeing reason.
Then there is the matter of hardware acceleration which frankly just can't be "dropped in" via firmware on most devices, they just don't have the chip space for that big of a change.
Mobile hardware acelleration for video is pretty new anyway. I don't see why it would be any harder with WebM than with H.264. Plenty of hardware manufacturers (and software, for that matter) are already committed to supporting WebM.
The thing you're forgetting here is that MS didn't add that functionality to Firefox. They made it available to Firefox. Just like the fact that Google made a proper rendering engine available for IE6 doesn't mean that everybody automatically uses it.
> WebM was purchased and opened up by Google. Nobody else could have proposed it before.
Somebody else could have tried to buy the technology and open it. Or develop a competing technology. No ?
Who? Not Mozilla or Opera. They don't have that kind of money. And Apple and Microsoft are generally not in the business of buying stuff just to open it up and give it away for free. Google was really the only likely candidate for this. And they're the one with the biggest interest in moving forward to a common standard that everybody agrees on.
A rather awesome idea, in fact.
Google may try to control the video format on the web. Like Apple, like Microsoft before.
My reading: Google is pushing for an open standard that *noone else* did before, either because of lack of interest, conflicting interests or lacking the guts to do so because of the patent minefield.
WebM was purchased and opened up by Google. Nobody else could have proposed it before. The best open alternative, Ogg Theora, is much less efficient than H.264, making it a bad choice for the companies who can afford to pay for H.264.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if Google bought WebM for the specific purpose of providing a good open compromise. They have a tendency to throw big money around just to get everybody moving in the same direction again.
That is true from the standpoint of Apple fighting for open technologies backed by large groups of companies (HTML5, h.264) where Adobe is fighting for maintaining control over the stronghold of Web Video, where they are the ones who provide players everyone needs to operate universally.
That's why Google, Apple and Microsoft were together in supporting the video tag. But then Google got greedy, and thought "Why can't I have Adobe's position"? So under the guise of being open, Google is pushing for a standard controlled by them.
It's not Google being greedy. In fact, they spent money and gave the results away for free just to get things moving again. You're completely misunderstanding the standpoints of the companies involved.
Adobe: makes tools. Tools for making graphical stuff, mostly. Video, games, other interactive graphical stuff. What they want is for people to use their tools. The only reason they care(d) about Flash is because for a long time it was the only way to distribute the resulting stuff to millions of people, increasing the demand for their development tools. If their tools can be used to develop for HTML5 or WebM, that's fine by them. It costs a bit of investment, but their position is safe.
Google: doesn't care about money, or anything short-term, really. On the short term, they are doing awesomely. They make their money from targeted advertising on the Web. For this they need two things: as many people as possible using the web for as many things as possible; and know what those people are doing on the web. They don't like Flash because it's a black box. They don't like the iPhone because it's a walled garden. They do like everything that's open, and they're willing to give enormous amounts of stuff away for free, just to break things open (see Android). What they want is for HTML5 to move forward. HTML5 was stalling because of disagreements about the video codec (Theora too slow for MS and Apple, H.264 to expensive for Opera and Mozilla), and no resolution was possible. So WebM is their proposal for a compromise: it's faster than Theora, yet open and free. A fragmented HTML5 is no use to them. They want everybody on board, and that means H.264 is not good enough, so they try to force their compromise down everybody's throat.
Apple: wants complete control over their own walled garden. They don't care what people do outside, but inside, they need to play by Apple's rules. Apple sells the Apple experience, and that does not include porn, third-party plugins, third-party dev tools, or anything that they consider too slow. There is really no good reason for them to not like WebM, other than the fact that they already invested a lot in H.264.
Microsoft: Honestly, I have no idea what drives them at the moment. I'm not sure they know either. They've always been about domination. Not of their little corner, like Apple, but of everything. They've lost that domination now, and seem to want to rebuild some credibility (with IE9 finally being standards-abiding and everything). I don't see why WebM wouldn't fit into that, but then again, they no doubt have lots of other plans, contacts and contracts playing a role in the background. And those would be slowed down if they suddenly need to tell all their contacts to use WebM instead of H.264.
Mozilla: They're just not going to pay for H.264, and even if it was free, they wouldn't be willing to invest in it without some solid reassurances that it will remain free forever.
Opera: Similar to Mozilla, though probably slightly less so.
Uhhhh..maybe you didn't get the memo but H.264 works in Firefox now thanks to MSFT. And while this plugin calls the native Windows 7 codec I'm sure it won't take long before a hacked one that just calls VLC or KLite DShow filters will be released which will take care of XP and Vista.
That just means that H.264 in Firefox is almost as well supported as WebM in IE. Almost, because it only works on Windows 7.
Sure, anyone can make plugins or extensions with whatever features they like for Firefox or other browsers, but that relies on people installing plugins (just like Flash does, incidentally). It doesn't support it out of the box.
I seriously doubt you'll see teh titties in WebM anytime soon....or well ever actually.
Why wouldn't they (or anyone else, for that matter) support WebM, if that's what they need to reach their viewers?
Ah yes, the famous open, patented, royalty-encumbered standard. Except for the open part
It is open.
In what way exactly is it open? The specs may be freely available, but if I want to actually use it, I need special permission. And that permission is not automatic; it may cost money. I already have permission to use WebM however I like.
I think you underestimate the size of YouTube. It's way bigger than all other video hosts put together. If a WebM browser gives you the best YouTube experience, that's what people will want. And with Firefox's sizable market share on the desktop, and Chrome's market share on smartphones, I'd say WebM cannot be ignored.
And if YouTube offers video in either HTML5+WebM or Flash+H264, iDevice users definitely have a problem.
H264 is an open standard and if you pay your money you won't be sued by the patent pool.
If you need permission to use it, is it really open? I think that's the main point people seem to disagree on here.
The video tag had a solid reason behind it, you didn't have to expend efforts working with annoying Flash video wrappers. But Google has gone and tossed that down the drain in favor of forcing a standard on the world at a time they lack the power to do so - and in the process KILLED open video on the web by bringing us all back to the dark ages of Flash video players everywhere.
How did Google kill open video? It's possible that WebM won't matter and therefore Google's action won't help to open video, but it won't kill it, because we never had any alternative for open video anyway.
Or did you see Ogg Theora as a serious contender? As part of the HTML 5 standard, is was dead already. It's h264 or WebM, and Google supporting an open format can only help open video.
I certainly appreciate Google's solidarity with the less wealthy players on the browser market.
The problem with this is that a more thorough vetting of patent applications will drive up the cost of getting patents. So only the already wealthy and powerful could afford to get patents.
This is already the case. Vetting patents through lawsuits isn't exactly cheap either. Probably more expensive than having the USPTO do it. Therefore only the rich and powerful can afford to defend and attack patents. For the little guy, patents are useless.
The solution is abolishing patents.
A far better idea. At the moment, patents only stifle innovation.
It's not so much about how much money they have, but what they do with it. Google does much nicer things with their money than Oracle.
Kinect didn't come from Microsoft research.
I don't like patents in general, and part of me is definitely happy that an innovative company like Google ignores this stupid patent arm's race. But with the way the US legal system often works, I'm still worried. It often looks like quantity (money, patents or lawyers) is a lot more important than quality (are the patents any good, are the lawyers right, are you actually legally in the right?).
Yet the Droid (Verizon's version of the Milestone) does not have the encrypted bootloader that the Milestone has. And despite the encrypted bootloader, the Milestone can still be rooted. You tether with it, install kernel modules, even. You just can't update to Android 2.2.
No, that's really just the cult worrying about the health of its leader. Jobs did more than just the iPhone. Apple shares have been going up continuously since his return. It's not about Cook handling Android, it's about whether Cook is as awesome as Jobs. And that's rather unlikely.
This sounds great. For a while now I've been fantasizing about what I'd do if I had any way to get into the smartphone hardware business, and I was planning on the name: Ultimate Geek Phone. Apart from being completely open, big capacitive touch screen, etc, it'd be a bit heavier than other smartphones because of the much bigger battery, and have a sturdy steel casing (one of the things that I really like about my Milestone).
This one has the openness right. Now if only they made it from metal instead of plastic, and put a bigger battery and more powerful chips in it, I'd gladly pay EUR 600 for it. (Just not now, because I'm really broke at the moment.)
In any case, I hope they get really big.
For the vast majority of their customers, Motorola *is* doing the right thing.
Motorola is investing time and money in features that can only harm their customers. In what world can that possibly be "the right thing"?
Even so, it's bizarre for Motorola to invest so much energy in alienating customers. How does it actually help them to restrict their customers so much? If it was at least a sane business decision, I wouldn't complain.
Then again, the main reason I'm complaining is that they weren't so open and honest about this when I bought my Milestone. I'm glad they're honest about it now, because I will avoid their products like the plague from now on.
You could just secure everything, and hope you didn't miss anything important. It's better than securing nothing.
That doesn't make it any less of an issue.
Yes, but experience in area Y != experience in area X. No one, no matter how good, is going to master a programming language in a week or even a month.
That depends a lot on the language and what you consider mastery. A good programmer can learn the basics of any language with a familiar paradigm in a week, two at the most. If you know C++, the basics of Java or C# are easy. If you know Java, you can be productive in Groovy within a week. Or Ruby, or Python, for that matter. But going from OO/imperative languages with maybe a hint of functional programming to something like Lisp or Haskell, yes that might be a bit harder.
What usually takes the most time, is learning new frameworks, existing projects, and the real guts of the language. But then, university graduates rarely master those either.
It's been on public display for weeks in a dark cellar of their branch office in Alpha Centauri. If he can't be bothered to keep up with local events, he only has himself to blame.
It's true. And in my personal experience, its a lot easier to increase your salary by switching to a new job than by staying in the old one.