This week Apple embraced adaptive bitrate streaming over HTTP at its developer conference in San Francisco. It will be available with the new iPhone OS 3.0 on June 17 and in September with the new version of QuickTime for Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

After the Apple presentation Monday, we chatted with one of only a couple developers who was given early access to Apple’s HTTP streaming. He gave us the lowdown on how Apple will implement the technology.

First, a bit of a refresher. Adaptive bitrate streaming, brought to the fore by Move Networks and now being pushed by Adobe, Microsoft and Apple, is one of the more interesting things going on in video today. I just finished a research report for our paid GigaOM Pro service on the topic and I’d love for you to check it out (only $79 for unlimited access). Here’s a bit from my intro describing the concept:

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to clean up [problems with video quality and delivery], especially because many of them result from complications and hang-ups on the video watcher’s computer or Internet connectio