This release does add AV1 support, just only for devices with hardware decoding support [1]. I’m not entirely sure that restriction applies to desktop as well as mobile, it doesn’t work on my Mac without hardware support even after enabling the disabled feature flags, but I only upgraded Safari, not macOS.
Hardware-only is the right move IMO. Literally earlier today I was dealing with stuttering video that turned out to be caused by Chrome putting me on a software implementation of a “better” codec. These new codecs are only better on devices that can run them without stuttering, heating up, and chewing through battery.
<pendantic>That's not a macOS update, but a Safari update, and it wasn't there when I wrote that</pedantic>
Wow, that's actually great news. It's the first I have seen of Apple actually supporting it in any way (despite being a member of the consortium that created it).
I don't disagree wrt. phones and tablets, but my MBP laughs at decoding AV1 videos; it's really not that taxing for an M2. Anyway, the more important story here is that A17 (based on this) appears to have AV1 hardware. That's an important first step.
Hardware-only is the right move IMO. Literally earlier today I was dealing with stuttering video that turned out to be caused by Chrome putting me on a software implementation of a “better” codec. These new codecs are only better on devices that can run them without stuttering, heating up, and chewing through battery.
[1]: https://webkit.org/blog/14445/webkit-features-in-safari-17-0...