by Jason Snell
WebRTC coming to WebKit and Safari
One interesting piece of news this week: WebRTC, a set of technologies that allow web developers to built media-driven web apps for functions like videoconferencing and audio chat without any plug-ins, is going to ship in Safari for iOS 11 and a few versions of macOS. (The first rumblings that this might happen were back in January.)
This is exciting for a few reasons—I use Chrome to play Dungeons and Dragons, for instance, because Roll20 relies on a bunch of WebRTC stuff. But the big one is that two web apps designed to make podcasting easy also rely on WebRTC. That means right now, they only work on Chrome and Firefox, but in the near future it’s possible they could also work on Safari.
Now, there are a lot of potential show-stoppers here. Is Apple’s implementation somehow different from Chome’s, in a way that could perhaps break the web apps Cast and Zencastr? Or will it be easy for Cast and Zencastr to welcome Safari users?
Most importantly, if WebRTC is supported on iOS 11—and everything I’ve heard so far says it is—this suggests that I could record a group podcast entirely on an iPad or iPhone, including a local recording, using Cast or Zencastr. That’s a big stride forward for people who want to use iOS devices for podcasting.
I don’t want to jump for joy just yet, but the signs are encouraging.