Web Dev Chronicles

Want a really good reason why no one should be jumping on the HTML5 video bandwagon? Go read this CNET story about MPEG LA's move to extend the free web usage of the H.264 until 2015.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000040-264.html

This is all playing out exactly as many online commentators, including myself, have predicted, except now the timing is official and about exactly right to screw over as many people as possible. The general expectation is that the world will be ready to fully consume HTML5 content in 4-5 years, right when MPEG LA will be in a position to change their minds about their "generosity" and start imposing license fees to use H.264 on the web.

As the CNET story mentions, Mozilla is already in a position where they'd have to pay $5million to add H.264 to Firefox and presumably Adobe paid up already in order to allow Flash Player to playback H.264 content (incidentally, this is one of the reason's Flash Player can't be entirely open sourced, it contains licensed codecs which Adobe has paid for and can't give away).

Unfortunately Ogg Theora still isn't up to the task of delivering top quality HD video so it's out. This leaves our only real hopes on what I first said when Google announced they intended to acquire ON2. I maintain that Google will put out whatever ON2's latest greatest codec is with a perpetually free to use license, build it into Chrome's video tag support and then encourage everyone else to do the same.

The video tag in HTML5 is useless unless every browser supports the same video codec. This is why Flash works right now. We can all publish FLV videos and know that every single Flash Player out there can playback that video to user's without any problems. 

Oh and one more thing I just thought of…maybe for some organizations video codec uniformity isn't a concern. If you upload videos to a hosting service like Youtube, then you can count on that service rendering all the different variations of your video and even determining how to deliver the right one to the user's browser. The real problem is for people hosting their own video or trying to build rich web experiences that incorporate video. Having to render and host multiple source video files and then browser detect to deliver the right one, the complexity of production is growing massively for web developers and content creators.

This is all a step backwards. In the last few years for the most part we've enjoyed fairly smooth cross-browser development (which the exception of IE6's continued but fading existence). We are now on the cusp of going back to the early days when browser makers felt it was cool to introduce their own tags as they pleased.

Posted by Rick Mason at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week's NOW has a story about the iPad that is both misleading and glosses over the dozens of issues that the iPad announcement has stirred up. I've already addressed most of these issues on this blog and over at fitc.ca so I'm going to focus mostly on the idea that the iPad could be a replacement for laptops or desktops.

The problem with seeing the iPad as a laptop, desktop or even netbook replacement is that it isn't and Apple has no intention of it being that. Even in the top models there is very little storage in today's terms. One of these would barely hold the music I bought last year let alone my entire collection. And what about movies or the dozens of apps you need to make this thing useful since the lack of Flash is forcing many rich internet application developers to rebuild their web apps as native apps.

The reality is, the iPad is almost useless without a full blown laptop or desktop computer to sync it to so you can use iTunes to move your media back and forth between the iPad and main computer. Not to mention that's the only way to back it up which is an incredibly important thing to do (these things do die, my iPhone 3GS just had it's camera bite the dust this week).

I'd also say it's hard to call the iPad a replacement for any computer given how incredibly closed it is. You can't do whatever you want with it. You can only do what Apple allows.

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2010-01/ipad%E2%80%99s-closed-system-sometimes-i-hate-being-right

A good example being the Apple mandated removal of USB file transfer from Stanza. As Apple decides to move into a market, in this case e-books, they have it within their power to cripple anyone that might interfere.

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/02/02/apple-forces-stanza-to-nix-usb-book-sharing/

It's also a bit soon still to say the netbook is done. With devices like Alienware's M11x – a full blown laptop with a high-end gpu you can turn on and off with a switch – coming out there is lots of room for this form factor to grow.

The iPad is definitely an interesting device and for certain tasks I think it will be great. But it is a VERY long way from being the ultimate portable computing device.

Posted by Rick Mason at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)