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by galad87 1558 days ago
Apple is a "Founding Member" of Alliance for Open Media (which doesn't really mean they are actually a founding member). I think Apple main issues with VP9 was that it was a Google codec by all means. Apple already supports FLAC and Opus in macOS and iOS, and VP9 in Safari.

It could be that they are waiting to see if AV1 will actually get a marketshare outside Youtube or not.

2 comments

> Apple already supports [..] Opus

...to bad that they (in the usual Apple fashion) don't support it in a standard container which everyone else supports and require you to package it in their special snowflake .caf container, so even though in theory everyone supports Opus you still need to use MP3 if you don't want to deal with having to support multiple formats/codecs at the same time.

I thought it supported .opus too, I guess I was too optimistic.
VP9 is an open format but can still be encumbered by patents. $20 says Google gave Apple an indemnity agreement for VP9 support for YouTube only which is why VP9 is locked down so hard in iOS. So if Apple enables VP9 and gets sued for patent infringement for their VP9 implementation Google will have to pay for some or all of the legal costs and/or judgements resulting from them.