>The main reason they don't allow WebM is because only H.264/H.265 are hardware accelerated on iOS devices.
And the only reason they don't support VP8/VP9 is because they can't lock it down like H.264. It's the same reason webGL support in iOS Safari took forever. Apple didn't like the idea of developers being able to create and distribute really advanced hardware accelerated 3D games on the iPhone outside of the official app store ecosystem. They need to support open standards for the sake of developers.
The two things you cited are completely unrelated.
edit: the parent replied to me but deleted their post by the time I finished my response; since I spent the time to write it, I guess I'll put it here:
> My point is that Apple repeatedly resists open web standards for the sake of maintaining their walled garden. This new 'feature' is just another example of that.
> What is this even supposed to be beyond webm/gifv anyways?
WebM is a standard for video.
"gifv" is not a standard or even a format; it's just what imgur puts in their URLs for pages that play looping silent videos, simulating the GIF experience. You can only watch "gifv" on imgur, though of course any site can play a looping silent video.
"Live Photos" is a broadly similar concept to "gifv", in the sense that both are basically just a proprietary brand for a basic UI on top of a video player, not anything with deep technical content. However, the UX is somewhat different. Live Photos combine a high-resolution photo with a lower-quality video, and the video doesn't play until you mouse over. (The actual photo and video are just JPG and MP4, respectively.)
In theory, the idea of treating a photo-video pair like a photo could be standardized, but it's not any less standard than gifv, and at least when it comes to display on websites (as opposed to, e.g., photo gallery apps), it's a simple enough concept that there doesn't seem to be much benefit in standardization. Apple released a small bit of code, for anyone to use on their own website, to do the job of drawing the UI and transitioning between the photo and video; of course, this is implemented on top of open web standards. Not sure why you want to crucify them over that.
And the only reason they don't support VP8/VP9 is because they can't lock it down like H.264. It's the same reason webGL support in iOS Safari took forever. Apple didn't like the idea of developers being able to create and distribute really advanced hardware accelerated 3D games on the iPhone outside of the official app store ecosystem. They need to support open standards for the sake of developers.