Apple has always been a leading innovator in terms of hardware design and OS improvements. Now they are leading the way by embracing next generation web technology by being one of the few websites to implement html5 video tags on a production website.
If you go to apple.com with a webkit powered browser (Safari/Chrome in Mac or Windows) and play some of the new videos promoting the new iMac and Magic Mouse, the videos are played using html 5 video tag. When you try to play the same video using IE or Firefox the QuickTime video player kicks. Even though the latest Firefox browser support html5 video tags, its implementation is limited to Ogg Theora, the video files on apple.com are MP4.
The video player using html5 tags under webkit browser looks very much like QuickTime X shipped with Snow Leopard. With non-webkit browser the video player buttons are distinctively different, as shown below:
Under Webkit Powered Browser (Chrome/Safari):
Non-Webkit Browser using QuickTime player:
You can find out more about other interesting html 5 developments including the video tags here.
