Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"Sticking a couple big ones up Adobe's way, Vimeo's embeddable Universal Player allows for playback of Vimeo videos on iPads and other non-Flash-supporting devices, using HTML5-but also detects other supported video formats, playing in Flash or native too."

I'm not really surprised by this. It's just a matter of time until all video providers of any reasonable size and popularity will move to HTML 5. While the iPad and the iPhone are significant reasons for this push, they are certainly not the only reasons. Being able to play videos without the need for a plug-in makes for a simpler user experience, and simpler is almost always better. I don't really see this as an attack on Adobe. It's just a natural evolution of the internet, pushed along by some of the big players, including Apple.

"If you have a recent browser build of WebKit nightly, you're going to love this movie trailers demo I've been hacking on. Click on the image above, select a movie trailer, and check out Safari 4's video reflections using CSS Effects. Recent WebKit nightlies with the latest QuickTime installed give the best experience, with flawless transitioned video reflections. Safari 4 Beta also provides a decent experience, but doesn't transition reflections."

I think I'm finally starting to understand why Apple doesn't care if it implements Flash in the iPhone; they want to go open standards on HTML 5 instead. After seeing this demo, there's no reason to think that it can't be done quite nicely. The possibilities are pretty impressive when you consider that all of what you see on this demo site is done without any embedding of any third-party plugins.

Nice thought, no?