Great engineering work but as a user I don't get why we need these: I just want the OS native widget that allow me to play pause seek and maybe choose captions. Especially on iOS 99% of these web players behaves awkwardly when you tried to pinch to zoom to full screen (usually it zooms the whole webpage, iOS native player just works)

The main incentive to have these custom controls I see is anti adblocking

Until recently HLS support was not great without a custom player. https://caniuse.com/http-live-streaming

> I just want the OS native widget that allow me to play pause seek and maybe choose captions.

You're not asking for the OS native widget though, you're asking for Apple's native OS widget to support that. The problem is that makes it up to Apple to lift a finger to support it. And Apple does whatever it wants. Sometimes those things are aligned with you as a user, sometimes not. And yes, showing ads is one reason some parties have for this. The other large one though, is codec support. If you're not in the game, codec support seems like such an inconsequential detail that it can't possibly be the real issue, but with money on the line, it's a bigger deal than you'd thing.

The thing is, unless you get in the weeds, the codec support is paid for when you buy the hardware. You don't have to deal with it. But when you're not Mr. Beast, showing videos on the big platforms, you aren't making giant piles of money. Thus, you need to optimize smaller details to make smaller amounts of money.

Which codec is being used becomes material because you can save money there with encoding and you can save money with content delivery as well. It's just about money. So it's not (just) about ad blocking money; it's about content creation and distribution costs.