Let’s try this again: in a world where Apple is not a dick, what modern image format do they use that isn’t subject to these same codec requirements?
If they were doing this just to be dicks, they’d spin off one of their own formats like they did with ALAC. They didn’t, they used HEIC which was also used by Android (which is now using AVIF).
I rode back from a Phish show in Albany, NY when there were big fat flakes coming down at night on I-90. It was my first show and also first mushroom chocolate. It was like going warp speed the entire way home, long white snowflake tracers across a black background. Very fun to watch, although the trip home took a lot longer because we could only do 45 rather than 65.