Linked List: January 15, 2011

Saturday, 15 January 2011

Haavard, of Opera Software, on the question of whether Chrome’s removal of H.264 support for HTML5 video is a step backward for “openness”:

One important thing to keep in mind is that Flash is already ubiquitous. If you want to do any kind of video on the web, you don’t have a choice. Flash is needed. However, the “battle” over HTML5 video is still raging. There is no clear winner, but with Google dropping the closed H.264, it is much more likely that an open format will prevail in the end.

So the question of Google’s bundling of Flash is a red herring which takes away the focus from the real issue: Whether native video support in browsers is based on open or closed technologies.

Regarding the “red herring” bit, MG Siegler responds:

The problem is that it isn’t a red herring. It’s just another, actually larger, issue which he’s sidestepping.

What I see as the glaring flaw in Haavard’s argument is this: “If you want to do any kind of video on the web, you don’t have a choice. Flash is needed.” iOS is existence proof that this is not true. It has no Flash, but plays plenty of video on the web. The reason it doesn’t need Flash, though, is because it supports H.264 in HTML5 video.

I.e., to be useful today, a web browser needs either (a) Flash or (b) H.264 with HTML5 video. Some browsers support both, but every browser needs at least one. In the name of “openness”, Opera, Mozilla, and now Chrome have chosen Flash.

Engadget on the iPad 2, iPhone 5, and Apple TV ★

Lots of interesting info here, including a purported SD card slot in the next iPad. If true, I’d think it’s so you can directly import photos and video from a camera, not for use as additional storage for the iPad itself:

From what we’ve been told, the thinner, sleeker tablet will sport a new screen technology that is akin to (though not the same as) the iPhone 4’s Retina Display and will be “super high resolution” (unlike reports to the contrary). The device will remain at 10 inches but will now feature both front and rear cameras (not a huge surprise), and… there’s an SD slot.

If the screen is higher resolution, my money is on the same physical size, at 2048 × 1536 resolution. It’s not about reaching some arbitrary pixels-per-inch resolution, but about being exactly double the pixel dimensions of the existing iPad, so that the math for scaling the UI works out. Just like the iPhone 4 — quadruple the pixels in the same physical space. That many pixels on an iPad, though, would require a lot more RAM and one hell of a mobile video card. I hope it’s true, because it’d be beautiful, but I’ll believe it when I see it.