[whynotminot]

I think it makes sense for companies to start with decode though. That hits pretty much 100% of users--everyone watches video.

But only a small fraction of users actually create content and need accelerated encode. And Apple especially I think is unlikely to use AV1 for their video recording, given their investment in other formats for that use-case.

[repelsteeltje]

> And Apple especially I think is unlikely to use AV1 for their video recording, given their investment in other formats for that use-case.

I concur. The raison d'être for AV1 is (lack of) patent license royalties. These apply to user devices as well as services. Think Google: Android as well as YouTube cost fortunes in AVC/HEVC licenses, so here AV1 makes sense.

On the other hand, Apple sells expensive hardware and has no problem ponying those licenses. Soon after adopting HEVC they doubled down with Dolby Vision which technically adds very little on top of standard HDR features already available in HEVC and AVC but present serious interop problems for device come with shiny Dolby stickers.

[kevincox]

Plus unless you are streaming or producing a ton of video most users can afford to wait a bit for software encoding (which is often better quality as well). So encoding is far less important than decoding.