I felt the same way about webp when it came out.

In practice it doesn’t really matter:

• if you’re encoding the file you know how you’re doing it.
• if you’re receiving the file, you get the pixels you get no matter how it was encoded.
• if you’re sending the image through some third party service, they’re going to reencode and mangle it anyway so there’s no point in worrying.

Also, it turned out that even if it’s quite good, lossless webp is rarely seen in the wild because svg is more convenient.

Heif is covered by patents in the mpegla patent pool of which apple is a member. They have a vested interest in it becoming mainstream.

It would depend on whether you think elop was a Microsoft mole al along 😉.

By the time of the Microsoft acquisition, focus had already shifted to Windows phones.

This is funny to think about.

Maybe there’s somebody in China right now wondering why the customer would need something as weirdly specific as 6.35mm plate 🤣

No, the tape is an endless loop, the end is the same as the beginning.