I think Apple's aim with these videos is for them to be a seamless, ambient way for the page to come alive (sorry if that sounds cheesy). Asking the user to install a plugin defeats the purpose here.
The keynote and Johnny Ive video are a little different because it's targeted towards people who are already Apple enthusiasts. They're much more likely to already have Safari or QuickTime installed (or at east be willing to install it).
Still, it does strike me as kind of odd that Apple is working so hard to make one video accessible while being pretty lazy with another one (they don't even bother to make it accessible to Chrome on Windows, which does have h.264 support, unless QuickTime is installed). Maybe those two parts of the site were prepared by different teams.
[EDIT]: Actually, I just tried again in Chome and IE 9 on Windows 7, and it works fine (without QuickTime installed). Maybe Apple fixed it?
The keynote and Johnny Ive video are a little different because it's targeted towards people who are already Apple enthusiasts. They're much more likely to already have Safari or QuickTime installed (or at east be willing to install it).
Still, it does strike me as kind of odd that Apple is working so hard to make one video accessible while being pretty lazy with another one (they don't even bother to make it accessible to Chrome on Windows, which does have h.264 support, unless QuickTime is installed). Maybe those two parts of the site were prepared by different teams.
[EDIT]: Actually, I just tried again in Chome and IE 9 on Windows 7, and it works fine (without QuickTime installed). Maybe Apple fixed it?