To summarize the timeline: 2015-2021: Google and Cloudinary develop the technical foundations, work on standardization with the JPEG group and write the refere

To summarize the timeline: 2015-2021: Google and Cloudinary develop the technical foundations, work on standardization with the JPEG group and write the reference implementation 2021: Chrome and Firefox introduce experimental support 2022: The Chrome team decides to remove the experimental support, citing lack of interest in the ecosystem 2023: Apple surprises by shipping support in all their products 2024: Firefox says they don't want the attack surface of 100K lines of multithreaded C++ but they will ship support if Google implements a Rust version September 2025: Google delivers jxl-rs v0.1.0 (a Rust implementation) October 2025: The PDF Association announces they want to include the format in PDF, citing the need for HDR support in particular November 2025: The Chrome team reverses its position, citing Safari support, Firefox's new stance, Interop proposals and the PDF announcement. So while Google played the largest part by far in making JPEG-XL a thing, Apple probably played an outsize role in getting it adopted so fast. But its long-term fate? Who knows... The PDF Association might well have adopted JPEG-XL without Apple: they cited HDR support, wide-gamut, ultra-high resolution and channel number, not "works on iOS". And having it as the format for HDR in PDF would have forced Chrome's hand no matter what Apple did. (Small heads up: the "anyone with a clue agrees with me" framing is more grating than useful.)