The biggest bummer of these machines is apples lack of vp9 hardware decoding in macos, it makes 4k youtube unwatchable. For high motion content (mountain biking videos) 4k is the only way to watch even on a tiny laptop screen due to youtube’s horrific compression. Its an absurd limitation considering the hardware has full support for it! I know it sounds insane but I returned mine for a quad core 13” mbp just to brute force software decode playback of these videos.

Google could support H.264 or H.265.

The only reason they don't is because they want to push their format.

I wouldn't say it's the only reason. H264/5 are not royalty-free codecs. YouTube is a powerful tool Google can use to push a royalty-free codec, much like Apple used the iPhone to push people off Flash. It's one of few areas I agree with Google being heavy handed.

What, over and above the H.264 licensing that covers them for 1080p content?

It’s google doing what google always does: pushing a google controlled thing to become a “standard”.

It's an open source, royalty free codec. I'd much rather use that than one owned and licensed by a private organisation, no matter whether Google develops it or not.

It’s still patent encumbered, and if you happen to sue Google, because they do something shitty, you lose your patent grant.

How does that make H264 preferable?

It's not operated by a company with a penchant for abusing its 800 pound gorilla status?

Apple's MacBooks also got VP9 hardware decode support since several years, Apple could just enable it on the software side.

But they don't, so Safari users have to suffer.

Is it unreasonable of Google not to want to use a royalty free codec that's controlled by the MPAA?

They could, but they don’t, so what is your point? It still means that watching YouTube on the Mac device in question is a crappy experience.

Not the perfect solution, but I think changing your user-agent to iOS makes youtube deliver x264 instead of vp9

This Chrome extension will do it in a cleaner way: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihd...

Does anyone know of a similar Safari extension? Battery life remains a concern, and switching from vp9 to x264 is great, but then having to deploy Chrome instead feels like a 1 step forward, 2 steps backwards situation.

Using Brave or FF I can watch 4k no issues on my MacBook, though I wouldn't turn down lower power usage when doing so.

Do hardware decoders for vp9 even exist?

Any Intel GPU since Kaby Lake can decode VP9 in hardware. So can AMD since Raven Ridge[1] and Nvidia since GM206.

On Android, it has been mandated by CTS for several years already.

[1] Except Radeon VII, which is technically Vega.

There's accelerated decoding on at least some of the modern mobile platforms, and from all the major graphics providers on laptop/desktop.

I am guessing for high motion content you mean 60fps video?

No, they mean content where things are moving a lot. (Imagine how fast the picture is changing on a mountain biker’s GoPro...)

I don't see the relation of High Motion Video, ( Sports ) to Video Codec and Resolution. Why cant H.264 not be used? ( Which is the standard used world wide now for All Sporting Events )

For 4k video, H.265/VP9 have better quality at the same file size, or equivalent quality at a smaller file size. Bandwidth usage matters for keeping people on the website and viewing Google's ads, so Google wants to ensure a smooth streaming experience. And since YT compresses so heavily, uploading in 4k increase the quality at lower resolutions (it seems weird but a 4k video uploaded to YT and streamed at 1080p will look better than a 1080p video uploaded to YT and streamed at 1080p).

And as xnyan said, high motion video really destroys video quality on YT, this video really shows how bad it can get: https://youtu.be/r6Rp-uo6HmI

Thanks. So it really has to do with Google's / Youtube H.264 implementation rather than the codec in itself.

It's a huge topic and I'm not a professional, but tldr Google's implementation of h264 compression is not suitable for high motion video and the changes they would need to make in order to make it suitable are not worth it in view of the trade offs of size and other factors.

Why can't a $1K general purpose computer efficiently decode a royalty-free codec (hint - it may have something to do with the fact that apple has a major stake in a competing for-pay closed codec). I really do like apple, but I see apple as microsoft 2.0 in this.

>Why can't a $1K general purpose computer efficiently decode a royalty-free codec

Well the Codec is Royalty Free but not Patents Free. You only get to use it as long as you don't engage in patent litigations against Google.

And Apple does not have an major stake in H.265 or H.264 or every H.26x codec. It has a very minor stake, in the an Open Codec, not closed. Comparatively Speaking every H.26x Codec is more open than VPx and even the new AV1 Standard [1] . So this is far from WMV or RMVB.

I wonder if Google will support EVC / MPEG-5 as it is Royalty Free.

[1] https://codecs.multimedia.cx/2018/12/why-i-am-sceptical-abou...

I have a 2014 MBP 13 as well, any other differences (positive and negative) you noticed in switching to the new MBA?

The keyboard... I miss the chiclets. But it's lighter & smaller, TouchID is amazing, despite being a "downgrade" in model it's substantially faster for the things I do (raw photo editing, photoshop, web coding). Truetone is great, I don't feel a need for flux anymore. Also fewer bugs with iCloud - I could never get my airpods to show up in the sound menu on my mbp 13 but they work perfectly on the mba.

Truetone doesn’t work with external displays, unfortunately.

Keyboard is a big difference.