WHY APPLE HATES FLASH

Most importantly Apple doesn’t want “a third party layer of software [to] come between the platform and the developer.” Finally, Jobs concludes, Flash is a relic. “Flash was created during the PC era –- for PCs and mice,” he says, “but the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards –- all areas where Flash falls short.”

From http://mashable.com/2010/04/29/steve-jobs-flash-is-no-longer-necessary/ which includes the whole letter from Steve Jobs.

One thing it seems we need to understand (among others) is H.264, the role of flash video, clist to the metal and overheads.

Tx

At its highest level, HTML5 sounds great. Simpler is always better, and if you don’t need a plug-in to play a video file, that’s one less item for potential viewers to download. The problem is that—at least today—only around 50 percent of available browsers support HTML5, and more importantly, the W3C hasn’t specified one codec that must play in all browsers.

For example, suppose you bought Apple’s argument that HTML5 was better, dropped your current plug-in-based technology, and produced your website in an HTML5-compatible format that played on the iPad. To accomplish this, you’d have to encode your video in H.264 format, which is the only format that plays on the iPad.

Sounds good, until you realize that less than ten percent of those browsing to your website from their computers can play the file, since only Apple Safari and Google Chrome – both around 5 percent market penetration – can play HTML5 video in H.264 format. Those visiting your site via Mozilla Firefox could not play the video, since Firefox can’t play H.264-encoded video. This is particularly significant since Firefox – at 23 percent market share – is by far the most popular HTML5-compatible browser.

To play in Firefox, and the Opera browser, you’d have to encode your video into the Ogg Theora format, which is much lower quality than H.264 and isn’t supported in any of the more popular encoding programs like Adobe Media Encoder, Apple Compressor, Sorenson Squeeze, or Telestream Episode. This means that you’ll likely have to use a command line encoding tool to achieve the best results.

Once you produce in H.264 and Ogg format, you still only have—at most—40 percent or so of potential viewers that can play your files. To satisfy the rest, you still have to make your video available using your plug-in based technology, which is typically Flash using the VP6 codec. Operationally, code on your web page would query the browser as to its capabilities—if it was HTML5 compatible, it would send the video encoded in the proper format, if not, it would revert to the plug-in.

Google’s WebM technology, which is currently supported in Opera and will be supported in upcoming versions of the Firefox and Chrome browsers, does little to break the logjam, since Apple won’t support it, and Internet Explorer 9 will only support it if already installed on the system. Of course, until WebM support becomes pervasive, you’ll still have to encode in H.264 for Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer 9; Ogg for older versions of Firefox and Opera; WebM for newer versions of Firefox, Opera and Chrome; and potentially VP6 for Flash (or Windows Media for Silverlight).

By this point, you have to be asking yourself if the extra work is really worth it. This turns out to be a very good question."

This is a bit beyond me at the moment.

Why doesn't Firefox play H.264? Are people at these web video standard deciding conferences stupid?