Tech standard are important . They ’re , well , standards . They form the room the world run , ideally . So if you wanna charm your piddling world , you probably wanna anatomy ( or maybe even produce ) standards . Take Apple , for lesson .
They Call It “ undetermined ” For a Reason
One of the more excellent aspects of Snow Leopard , really , is its full - scale deployment of OpenCL 1.0 — Open Computing Language — a fabric that allow for computer programmer to more easily utilize the full baron of mixing of unlike sort of processors like GPUs and multi - core central processor . ( Much of the excitement for that is in leveraging the GPU fornon - graphic applications . )
https://gizmodo.com/giz-explains-gpgpu-computing-and-why-itll-melt-your-f-5252545
OpenCL lives up to its name : It is a royalty - innocent opened standard managed bythe Khronos Group , and supported by AMD / ATI , Apple , ARM , IBM , Intel , Nvidia , among others . Interesting matter about this open industry criterion is that it was develop andproposed by … Apple .
What Is a Standard ?
By “ standard , ” we ’re talk about a data formatting , interface or programming fabric that a bunch of companies or people or establishment agree is the way of life something ’s run to get done , whether it ’s how a movie is encoded or the way of life websites are program . Otherwise , nothing works . A video that plays on one computer wo n’t play on another , web sites that operate in one browser app do n’t work in another , etc . With increased connection between different machines and unlike platform , standards are progressively full of life to progress .
Standards can range from open ( anybody can use them , for innocent ) to open with precondition ( anybody can apply them as long they trace conditions X , Y and Z ) to close ( you got ta have permit , and most likely , pay for it ) . Some company view touchstone stringently as royalty machines ; others do n’t make much money on them , or else using them to make certain developer do things the fashion they require them to . Apple falls into this latter category , by option or possibly just by fate .
kick the Big Guy in the shinbone
Of course , OpenCL is n’t the only exposed standard that Apple ’s had a hand in creating or plunk for that actually go industry - wide . When you ’re the petty guy — as Apple was , and still is in electronic computer OS marketshare , with under 10 percent — take a script in larger industriousness standard is crucial . It keep your platform and programming finish from getting steamrolled by , say , the de facto “ standards ” implement by the bigger guy cable who grips 90 per centum of the securities industry .
If you come through in creating a criterion , you ’re fix everybody else do matter the manner you want them done . If you ’re doubting how important standards are , attend no further than the honest-to-goodness Sony hurl a newfangled one at the wall every week hop it ’ll stay . Or Microsoft get essentially everybody but iTunes to use its PlaysForSure DRM a twosome years ago . Or itsalternative codecs and formatsfor essentially every genuine manufacture standard out there . To be trusted , there is money to be made in standards , but only if the banner is adopted — and royalties can be collected .
https://gizmodo.com/giz-explains-every-video-format-you-need-to-know-5093670
entanglement Standards : The Big Headache
The vane has always been a tender spot in the standards debate . The entanglement is a “ oecumenical OS , ” or whatever the swarm - softheaded pundits call it , but what mold your experience is your browser app and in part , how compliant it is with the tools WWW developers practice to construct their ware . Internet Exploder shit all over standard for years , and web computer programmer still desire IE6 to die in a flaming eternal abysm .
Enter WebKit , an unresolved source browser app engine develop by Apple based off ofthe KHTML engine . It ’s so standards - compliant it tied with Opera ’s Presto railway locomotive to be the first topass the Acid3 test . What ’s most prominent about WebKit is n’t the fact it powers Safari and Google Chrome on the background , but basically every full - mature smartphone browser app : iPhone , Android , Palm Pre , Symbian and ( believably ) BlackBerry . SoWebKithasn’t just driven connection standard through its strict adhesion to them , but it has essentially defined , for now , the way the “ real internet ” is reckon on mobile devices . All of the crazy cool web programming you see now made is made possible by standards - compliant web browser .
True , OpenCL and WebKit are undetermined rootage — Apple ’s been clever about the way it utilize undefendable source , look no furtherthan the guts of OS X — but Apple is hardly devoted to the whole “ free and open ” matter , even when it amount to web standards .
All the AV Codecs you’re able to Eat
Therecent debate over video in the next web standards , known collectively as HTML5,shows that : Mozilla supports the capable - source Ogg Theora video codec , but Apple says it ’s too stinking to become the web ’s default TV standard — release everyone from the tyranny of Adobe ’s blink of an eye . Apple says Ogg ’s lineament and computer hardware speedup bread and butter do n’t match up to the Apple - supportedMPEG-4 similar H.264 codec , which is tied up by license issue that keep it from being freely distributed and open . ( Google is playing it up the middle for the minute : While it has dubiety about the performance of Ogg Theora , Chrome has build - in keep for it and H.264 . )
Apple has actuallyalways been a boosterof MPEG ’s H.264 codec , which is the default TV format stand by the iPhone — part of the reasonYouTube re - encoded all of its video , actually — and get ironware quickening in QuickTime X with Snow Leopard . H.264 is basically becoming the television codec ( it ’s in Blu - ray , people use it for streaming , etc . ) .
Why would Apple care ? It mean Microsoft ’s WMV did n’t become the direct standard .
A sorta like story with AAC , another MPEG touchstone . It ’s actually the successor to MP3 , with better condensation quality — and no royalties — but Apple had the orotund function in making it mainstream by making it their preferred audio format for the iPod and iTunes Store . ( It see some limited use in portable a little earlier , but it did n’t become fundamentally mandatory for audio player to patronise it until after the iPod . ) Another bonus , besides AAC ’s superiority to MP3 : Microsoft ’s WMA , though popular for a while , never take over .
FireWire I Mean iLINK I think IEEE 1394
Speaking of the early day of the iPod , we ca n’t will outFireWire , aka IEEE 1394 . Like OpenCL , Apple did a lot of the initial growth workplace ( Sony , IBM and others did a heap of work on it as well ) , presented it to a large standards body — the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers — and it became the basis for a standard . They attempt to commit a royalty for it at first , but that did n’t go out . It ’s a successful touchstone in a plenty of way — I have in mind , it is still on a lot of stuff like concentrated drives and camcorder still — but USB has turn out to be more universal , despite being technically inferior . ( At least until USB 3.0 comes out , hooray ! )
https://gizmodo.com/giz-explains-an-illustrated-guide-to-every-stupid-cabl-5030810
Update : Oops , forget Mini DisplayPort , Apple ’s shrunken takeon DisplayPort — a royalty - free telecasting interface standard from VESA that ’s also notably underpin by Dell — which’ll bepart of the official DisplayPort 1.2 specification . orchard apple tree certify it for no fee , unless you process Applefor patent infringement , which is a liiiiittle dicey . ( On the other script , we do n’t see it going too far as industry monetary standard , which is why we forgot about it . )
https://gizmodo.com/apples-mini-displayport-will-be-official-part-of-displa-5131032
That ’s just a comparatively quick overview of some of the standards Apple ’s had a deal in one manner or another , but it should give you an idea about how important standard are , and how a company with a relatively small marketshare ( at least , in sure markets ) can use them wield a lot of influence over a much broader arena .
Shaping standards is n’t always for royalty checks or dominance — Apple ’s billet does n’t allow them to be in particular covetous when it comes to ascertain how you observe stuff or browse the internet generally . They ’ve in reality made things better , at least so far . But , one glance at the iPhone app approval cognitive process should give anybody who retrieve they ’re the most gracious technical school fellowship second idea about that .
Still something you wanna know ? Send questions about standard , things that are open other than your mum ’s legs or Sony Ultra Memory Stick XC Duo Quadro Micro Pro II to[email protected ] , with “ Giz Explains ” in the subject line .
AppleGPUsH.264HTMLNvidiaWebKit
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