Apple switches to a new photo format that is twice as economical, but does not work on other systems.
Photo: Business Insider
Apple likes to give up on popular but outdated things. This happened with DVD drives, Adobe Flash, classic USB-A and 3.5mm headphone jacks. Sometimes the company offers half measures in the form of adapters or additional accessories. For example, for a long time Apple I sold an external DVD drive and still offers to buy an adapter from USB Type-C to other useful connectors for new MacBooks.
When Apple gives up on something, she becomes a pioneer and all other companies follow her. At least that was the case before. Few manufacturers are now completely abandoning USB-A ports in laptops or headphone jacks in smartphones. The same Samsung is trying to play on this and at the presentation of the Galaxy Note 8 paid attention to this – 'and it also has a headphone jack!'. But it is impossible to argue with the fact that wired headphones will die out, the only question is when this will happen. It's just that Apple is not afraid to go even to extreme measures and abandon the technologies that everyone uses. And the company is clearly not going to stop at its drastic decisions.
Time for a change
Apple at the beginning of June held another conference for WWDC 2017 developers. At the main event, a new iPad 10.5, HomePod smart speaker, iMac Pro and new versions of operating systems for their devices were presented . iOS 11 attracted more attention: new features for tablets, ARKit platform for augmented reality and a bunch of small changes. Although, at first glance, the changes are not so large-scale. But I was hooked on one point – at the presentation they said that now photos and videos with iPhone will take half as much memory. I mentioned this in passing, and I didn't really understand anything, so I went to read the press release, which also does not explain the whole situation.
In iOS 11 Apple introduces a new highly efficient HEIF image file format that reduces the file size of all photos captured with iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
Who would have thought that this Apple abandons the usual JPEG photo format in favor of the new HEIF.
What is HEIF
This is an abbreviation for High Efficiency Image FIle Format. This standard began to be developed back in 2013, but only in 2015 the final release took place. This format can already be tested with the beta version iOS 11 on iPhone 7 or 7 Plus. Photos are saved with the .heic extension, the quality does not differ from JPEG and indeed take up half the space. But sometimes the savings are still less – it all depends on the particular image.
And it sounds cool – saving space on your smartphone without losing the quality of your photos. But in reality, everything is not so good.
HEIF is a new format and only Apple is now starting to distribute it in large quantities. For example, before WWDC, I hadn't heard of him at all. So this leads to the main problem – images with the .heic extension only open on devices with iOS 11 and the new macOS High Sierra. It can't even be opened on iOS 10 and previous macOS, let alone Windows 10 and Android. There is not even a program for converting from .heic to .jpeg.
A Google Play search showed only one app – Luma. But it doesn't even see photos with iPhone in the new format. I also found information on the forum Microsoft that the Zoner Photo Studio program can allegedly open HEIF images – also not true. So after September 12, when most of iPhone 7 is updated to iOS 11, users of other systems may face a problem – .heic photos cannot be opened in any way.
It only saves that when sending HEIF photos, for example, via Telegram, they are automatically converted to JPEG, but in this case the image quality drops. To preserve the quality, you need to send the photo as a file, but then in the .heic format. Plus, in the system settings, you can choose the old save format – 'High Efficiency' (HEIF) or 'Most Compatible' (JPEG). But then memory savings are lost, and not every user will know about such a possibility. We'll have to choose.
I am sure that in iOS 11 itself there will be no problems with the work of HEIF files in applications, and soon there will be programs for opening these photos on other platforms. But it is not very convenient to install a separate application to only view one or two photos. So we have to wait for the spread of this format, when all devices learn to open it in standard ways – no one knows how long it will take for this.
It only remains to wait
In the description of the HEIF standard on GitHub, I did not find information that it cannot be used anywhere – it is an open format. Then it is not clear to me why, in almost three months of beta test iOS 11, no program has yet appeared to open a photo in the .heic extension.
We look forward to September 12 and the development of the new HEIF standard.