Worse, some apps on iOS take it a step further by converting animated GIFs into static images. For example, if you paste an animated GIF into Notes—which also shows it as a static image—and then save that image to Photos, you’ll actually end up with a motionless PNG instead.
I don’t want any GIF support in OS X. If I want a motion picture, I create an MPEG. If I want a picture, I create a JPEG. Case in point, the Gizmodo RSS Feed:
Reeder 3, Gawker RSS Feed, there are 4 GIFs and One YouTube Video. I can’t watch the video at all even on their website. Why? Because I’m distracted by 4 GIFs moving constantly. To top it off, if I go Full-Screen with the YouTube video, my machine is still busy processing GIFs in the background. The single worst thing that happened to the Internet is the popularization of GIFs. These were a thing we all used in 1996 because Internet speeds were too slow for video to load in an efficient amount of time. Want motion? Here are 30 images compiled to make motion and it loaded pretty fast. Why we decided that looping 10-frame clips on our 150 megabit connections were a good idea is beyond me. The fact people actually click on GIFs on Reddit is also amazing. Video. GIF was a thing 20 years ago. We have videos now.
I want to yank all GIF support out of OS X and at the very least stop GIFs from playing automatically system-wide. I hope someone at Apple can make that happen.