The irony of Apple homepage and Safari WebP support • Hacker News Board

Re: The irony of Apple homepage and Safari WebP support

#11

Post by jamil7 » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

isoprophlex wrote: post #4

Firstly, i don't get what apple has to gain by not supporting webp... Nevertheless: The screenshot puzzles me, it shows two assets, and states that compressing these by an extra ~ 250 kb would save 2 seconds. Maybe on very slow connections? Also > Lack of proper support for [...] web notifications on mobile I can do without these i guess

The author didn't actually compare the different images in each encoding with examples of file size and image quality tradeoffs, just a screenshot from lighthouse.

Re: The irony of Apple homepage and Safari WebP support

#12

Post by jamil7 » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

mojuba wrote: post #3

At the expense of quality, at least it was Apple's argument against supporting webp. And no, they didn't ignore it, it was included in one of the previous betas of macOS and iOS and removed later. Don't remember which.

I was also wondering about this and what exactly happened there, I wonder if there are some underlying issues either technical or political there.

Re: The irony of Apple homepage and Safari WebP support

#13

Post by jakejarvis » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

Their stubbornness around WebM is even more frustrating to me, honestly.

Re: The irony of Apple homepage and Safari WebP support

#14

Post by thomasfoster96 » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

olah_1 wrote: post #5

The webp issue is truly infuriating. I'd like to support it in my own websites, but I literally can't since a huge chunk of visitors use Safari. The only hope seems to be mobile linux initiatives like PinePhone, etc. But I'm not holding my breath.

> I'd like to support it in my own websites, but I literally can't since a huge chunk of visitors use Safari.

Wouldn’t using the element[0] allow this this? It’s pretty widely supported (every browser that supports WebP and Safari)[1] and allows a fallback to a JPEG in an tag.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/pi...

[1] https://caniuse.com/#feat=picture

Re: The irony of Apple homepage and Safari WebP support

#15

Post by haydenkshaw » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

olah_1 wrote: post #5

The webp issue is truly infuriating. I'd like to support it in my own websites, but I literally can't since a huge chunk of visitors use Safari. The only hope seems to be mobile linux initiatives like PinePhone, etc. But I'm not holding my breath.

You can use HTML elements to provide provide multiple image format versions for an element e.g. preferentially use webp if browser supported, and fallback to using a widely supported format if not. Sounds like doing that might be of interest to you.

Re: The irony of Apple homepage and Safari WebP support

#16

Post by KJKingJ » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 2:25 PM UTC

olah_1 wrote: post #5

The webp issue is truly infuriating. I'd like to support it in my own websites, but I literally can't since a huge chunk of visitors use Safari. The only hope seems to be mobile linux initiatives like PinePhone, etc. But I'm not holding my breath.

If you use the element [0], then you can specify a MIME type on the srcset. Browsers will then use this to load an image they support - so if you have a set of pictures with a MIME type of image/webp and others with image/jpeg, WebP will be used by those browsers that support it and JPEG by those that don't. There's a good example at [1].

Alas although most browsers support the picture element, IE11 is the notable exception [2] and a polyfill is required.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/pi...

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/HTML/Multimed...

[2] https://caniuse.com/#feat=picture

Re: The irony of Apple homepage and Safari WebP support

#17

Post by izacus » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 2:26 PM UTC

recursive wrote: post #2

At this point, I don't think it's too fringey a conspiracy theory that Apple is opposed to the advancement of web technology, while trying to plausibly appear to be in favor of it. Their motive would be obvious. Keep the native app experience superior.

They're also financially benefiting by pushing competing HEIC and HEVC formats since they're patent owners and collect royalties for big scale implementations. In light of that, it's not surprising they refuse to support royalty free formats.

Re: The irony of Apple homepage and Safari WebP support

#18

Post by frabert » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 2:27 PM UTC

thomasfoster96 wrote: post #14

olah_1 wrote: post #5

The webp issue is truly infuriating. I'd like to support it in my own websites, but I literally can't since a huge chunk of visitors use Safari. The only hope seems to be mobile linux initiatives like PinePhone, etc. But I'm not holding my breath.

> I'd like to support it in my own websites, but I literally can't since a huge chunk of visitors use Safari. Wouldn’t using the element[0] allow this this? It’s pretty widely supported (every browser that supports WebP and Safari)[1] and allows a fallback to a JPEG in an tag. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/pi... [1] https://caniuse.com/#feat=picture

Would this be susceptible to tracking issues? E.g. place a hidden picture that loads WebP or PNG otherwise, to track which users support it and which don't

Re: The irony of Apple homepage and Safari WebP support

#19

Post by jws » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

That is to save 146KB on one image an 99KB on another, to save 2 seconds you'd have to using a 1mbps connection.

The first random internet article I pulled for real world cellular speeds suggests even unwired, people are getting 30mbps so that changes the article to:

Apple could load 66ms faster by adopting WebP

… but these are cached resources, so maybe…

Apple could perform the initial load 66ms faster by adopting WebP

… would be better.

Looking at the assets needed for an initial load, the fonts alone weigh in at about twice those images, so it probably wouldn't be noticeable.

Re: The irony of Apple homepage and Safari WebP support

#20

Post by AnonC » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 2:31 PM UTC

recursive wrote: post #2

At this point, I don't think it's too fringey a conspiracy theory that Apple is opposed to the advancement of web technology, while trying to plausibly appear to be in favor of it. Their motive would be obvious. Keep the native app experience superior.

I personally think Apple is one company that's able to keep Google in check in ways that no other company or government can do. Safari is a whip that Apple seems to use to good effect. Content blockers in Safari as a native implementation (though one could argue on the demerits of how it's implemented), advanced tracking protection, dragging its feet on PWA support, support for Google created/promoted formats, etc. These could be argued as immoral behavior, but there are some benefits to everyone in not having Google control everything.