It’s not the route I’d take, after all, the video tag in html supports specifying multiple sources (including different formats/encodings), and with full control of the stack (they vend Safari) you could have logic on devices without AV1 hardware that prefers the AVC/HEVC/VP9 sources instead — then fallback to AV1 SW if it’s the only option. That seems a better user experience than just failing to display content.
I’m not sure demand for AV1 is enough to ship units
Probably either laziness or they want to avoid software decoding in general for performance reasons
I think that’s a reasonable way to look at it.
It’s not the route I’d take, after all, the video tag in html supports specifying multiple sources (including different formats/encodings), and with full control of the stack (they vend Safari) you could have logic on devices without AV1 hardware that prefers the AVC/HEVC/VP9 sources instead — then fallback to AV1 SW if it’s the only option. That seems a better user experience than just failing to display content.