Apple introduces new Macs… but more importantly, it now uses HTML5 video on their website

Yesterday Apple introduced a new range of iMacs, Mac minis and a new Macbook. They look all great, but the first thing I noticed when looking at the product pages on the Apple website is the new video player. Previously Apple used an embedded QuickTime video player which was controlled using HTML and JavaScript. The new video player is a regular HTML5 video element with a nice HTML based controller.

Also considering the position Apple took on supporting Ogg Theora as a baseline codec for the HTML5 video element, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the video stream is only provided in H.264 format. This means the HTML5 based video player will not work in Firefox, which only supports video streams in the Ogg Theora format. The solution is simple, for those browsers it will show a plain embedded QuickTime player. No special controls, just the plain ActiveX or browser plug-in. One strange thing though… The videos won’t play in Google Chrome 3.0, even though that browser should support both HTML5 video and H.264.

Wednesday, 21 October 2009