“One of the more excellent aspects of Snow Leopard, actually, is its full-scale deployment of OpenCL 1.0—Open Computing Language—a framework that allows programmers to more easily utilize the full power of mixes of different kinds of processors like GPUs and multi-core CPUs,” Buchanan explains. “[An] interesting thing about this open industry standard is that it was developed and proposed by… Apple.”
Buchanan continues, “The web has always been a sore spot in the standards debate… Internet Exploder shit all over standards for years, and web programmers still want IE6 to die in a fiery eternal abyss. Enter WebKit, an open source browser engine developed by Apple based off of the KHTML engine… What’s most striking about WebKit isn’t the fact it powers Safari and Google Chrome on the desktop, but basically every full-fledged smartphone browser: iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, Symbian and (probably) BlackBerry. So WebKit hasn’t just driven web standards through its strict adherence to them, but it has essentially defined, for now, the way the “real internet” is viewed on mobile devices.”
“Apple has actually always been a booster of MPEG’s H.264 codec, which is the default video format supported by the iPhone—part of the reason YouTube re-encoded all of its videos, actually—and gets hardware acceleration in QuickTime X with Snow Leopard. H.264 is basically becoming the video codec (it’s in Blu-ray, people use it for streaming, etc.),” Buchanan writes. “Why would Apple care? It means Microsoft’s WMV didn’t become the leading standard.”
It’s “sorta similar story with AAC, another MPEG standard. It’s actually the successor to MP3, with better compression quality—and no royalties—but Apple had the largest role in making it mainstream by making it their preferred audio format for the iPod and iTunes Store,” Buchanan writes. “Another bonus, besides AAC’s superiority to MP3: Microsoft’s WMA, though popular for a while, never took over.”
There’s much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MacVicta” for the heads up.]
You should check out today’s (Wednesday 9/2) Dilbert strip.
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-09-02/
Or read it in the newspaper.
It’s related to this subject.
About time someone pointed out how Apple has used computing “standards” some homegrown, and some adopted, to beat back the Evil Empire.
…”Microsoft’s WMA, though popular for a while, never took over.”
Go outside of the developed world and into the developing one (Africa, large swaths of Asia, the Balkans and the region formerly referred to as “Eastern Europe”. Over there, nobody pays for downloaded music, and anyone ripping CDs who doesn’t do it into MP3, does it into WMA. Since almost nobody can afford iPods (they’re BMWs of MP3 players in those parts of the world, representing the very affluent), they don’t care that WMA doesn’t play back on the iPod. All other no-name Chinese devices (and name-brand knock-offs) play WMA without issues.
In the end, being popular among the masses that never show up on any radar won’t mean that much. There is not much for Microsoft to boast about here.
I keep saying this crap over and over again, that “embrace, extend and extinguish” job is going on right now with that ActiveX B.S. I think they even got South Korea to embrace that POS. Now you can only use Internet Explorer using Windows only if ActiveX is used on a site. Stupid idiots.
Microsoft has dominant market share so they’ve earned the right to define formats and standards. Call it survial of the fittest, or tech Darwinism. What MAC and all these namby pamby standards organizations practice is tech socialism. We don’t do that in the U.S. of A. If you ask me you might as well use the .WTF extension for these files.
You can pry my .WMV, .DOC & .WMA from my cold, dead hands.
Your potential. Our passion.™
Buchanan says … “Internet Exploder shit all over standards for years”
That’s a new entry for the High Tech Terminology Dictionary™ …
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BC
Zuney … Hell Yea, and not only WMV DOC etc …
Fsck them Red Commie Tech Socialists and their Hindu-Arabic Number System
They can also pry Roman Numerals from our “cold, dead hands”
If it was good enough for Cesar then it’s good enough for the U.S. of A.
XLVCMIXXLVII
BC
“Microsoft has dominant market share so they’ve earned the right to define formats and standards. Call it survial of the fittest, or tech Darwinism.”
By that rationale, Colonists had the right to kill Native Americans and keep slaves, Hitler made good use of his numbers and slaughtered millions and Man in general has turned the world into a mess several times over.
Just because one has the capacity to overwhelm with one’s own agenda does not make it right. It’s usually more difficult to do “the right thing.” Too bad Microsoft didn’t evolve from its devious beginning and make of itself something worthy of existance.
I just installed Snow Leopard, and I’ve notice that the pop-unders on MDN are snappier.
“Microsoft has dominant market share so they’ve earned the right to define formats and standards”
Reminds me of the old riddle:
Q: How many Microsoft Engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. They just declare “Dark” the new standard.
Sparky … thanks
Been wondering what that “poof” was behind this window …
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BC
@Predrag
Interesting WMA comment. I’m now in Bulgaria and was trying to help a friend set up the iPod touch I brought from NYC. She had a bunch of downloaded WMA DVD movie files she’d downloaded and I was trying to find a converter so she could load them on the touch.
Here in BG, Macs are nearly non-existant (except for a few academic friends who get Macs from the States). The vast majority of computers I see here are home-built WinBoxes with ALL pirated Microsoft OSes and apps. They can’t evev afford cheap Dell clones because wages are so low compared to here. So, unfortunately economics make MS warez the defacto standard. When I show people Safari for Windows, they love it!
Rut Row …
We may now have some “Standards” showing up HERE, yes, at …
The MDN Hotel, Resort, and Casino
Home of the All You Can Eat Buffett and Tattoo Parlor™
Featuring the Never Ending Virtual Wall of Graffiti™
BECAUSE …
I’d swear that earlier I typed “fsck”
And now it seems to have magically transposed itself into “fsck”
Oooo K … Bring The Family™
BC
Well this guy thinks that Apple does not follow or foster any standards:
@wedge07: perhaps you are new to MDN. Zune Tang is, I think you will discover, writing his special brand of parody or satire.
@wedge7
hook line and sinker !
@nobody & hotinplaya, I’ve been reading Zune Tang’s long enough to know I shouldn’t let it bother me… I just can’t help myself sometimes and want to shiv the guy.
Hey Nobody …
You say, “Zune is writing his special brand of parody or satire”
Is THAT a parody on satire ? …
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Cause “whatever” Zune is doing – it sure is “his special brand” …
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Now …
Folks, sorry, but seems we have to clean up our language
Or it will automatically be cleaned up for us
MDN has apparently instituted a New Feature™
Standards …
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( that sound you hear is Carlin rolling over in his phucking grave )
And MDN …
Thank You … Good Catch™
Not everyone uses those “words” with prudence and discretion
So too often we find Too Much Salt in the Soup™
But …
If we were in Britain … would “shag” become “sh*g” ?
BC
If all of YouTube is now h.264 then why do I constantly get error messages on my iPhone when trying to view YouTube videos? It says that the format is not supported. I assumed that they were Flash videos but a lot were very recent. And, yes, my iPhone is completely up to date and doesn’t even have that many apps on it. Yet.
Ideas? Others with the same problem?
Mr. Reeee:
Similar story in Belgrade… Put-together PCs, Chinese boards, cards, memory, cases… and bootleg Windows.
There IS a decent Mac community, though (macserbia.org), a major authorised reseller (and a few smaller ones), but people still have no idea what AAC is. At least, they have the sense of using MP3 for their audio (as bad as it is, at least it’s a standard).
YouTube on iPhone is a fail.
too unreliable
YouTube is in the process of converting to H.264. They’re not there yet.
-jcr
Another perfect example is Firewire. Apple invented it, submitted it to the standards body, and today, it’s the primary method for moving standard-definition video between camcorders and computers (although, since solid-state memory is now pushing out tape, and DV encoding is being replaced by MPEG-2 and MPEG4, USB2 is becoming the primary way of moving files around…).
Hey wedge, way to go to bring out the Zune Thang apologists with their classic “you must be new here but let us explain what Zune Thang does cause he is too much of a coward to have ever done so him/her self”.
It’s always a great gag to play on people more moronic than Zuney.