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iPhone's "Mystery App" Is H.264 YouTube
Rebelgecko writes "It turns out the iPhone's mystery app is a custom YouTube viewer. The iPhone will play YouTube's videos using the H.264 codec(as will the AppleTV after an upgrade) for higher quality. From the look of it, it will take advantage of the iPhone's screen design and touch capabilities much more than watching videos in the iPhone's version of Safari would. The videos can be streamed via a Wi-Fi connection or the EDGE network."
Shouldn't the inbuilt browser be able to view YouTube anyways?
Rumor has it that the iPhone will not include Flash, and it's my understanding that YouTube relies on a Flash video player.
Tweet, tweet.
Also, there's a USA Today article on iPhone today with the first new information from AT&T on the launch (even though it's not much):
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2 007-06-20-at&t-iphone-push_N.htm
AT&T girds for iPhone launch on June 29
By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY
For consumers eager to get their hands on an Apple iPhone, here's the good news: It will be available in all 1,800 AT&T phone stores at 6 p.m. sharp on June 29.
The bad news? "We fully expect one or more of our stores to run out of stock on the first or second day -- my guess is the first day," says Larry Carter, senior vice president of sales for AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive U.S. distributor.
To help accommodate as much foot traffic as possible, AT&T phone stores will stay open an extra hour -- until 10 p.m. -- on the first day.
To get "iReady" for the big day, Carter says AT&T added 2,000 extra sales people to stores. Half will be there just to help handle the expected early crush of buyers. The other half, he says, will stay long-term to help with extra customers the iPhone is expected to draw to AT&T's stores.
Crowd control on launch day is a concern. In some markets -- Carter declined to name them -- AT&T is working with local law enforcement on crowd-control plans. It also has alerted landlords at shopping malls and other phone store locations to make sure nobody is caught off guard.
Not all stores are equal
Carter would not say which stores will have the biggest iPhone stockpiles, but allowed that iPod users are a "natural market" for the smart phone. As such, he says, stores in areas with big numbers of iPod users -- such as New York City, Chicago and much of California -- will be well stocked.
Does that mean that those stores will have more iPhones than stores in, say, Richmond, Va., or Florida? "Yes," he says. "It's just common sense."
If your local store sells out, Carter says sales people will take mail orders, and devices will be shipped in 3 to 5 days, inventory permitting. "Ultimately, we will meet every customer's desire to have one," Carter says.
To discourage sCalpers, AT&T plans to limit how many phones each customer can buy. Carter declined to cite the number, saying only that AT&T would try to prevent "hoarding and reselling."
New service plans for iPhone
There are other surprises in the works for June 29. In addition to launching the iPhone that day, Carter says AT&T also will announce new service plans for it.
He declined to be specific, but says plans will be customized for the iPhone. Translation: The iPhone may offer cool features such as unlimited Web browsing, but you'll have to pay for them.
Carter says the additional fees shouldn't be a surprise. "Regardless of which device you're using today, you pay us a certain amount for (voice) minutes, and you also pay us for data units," he says. "That is also true on the iPhone."
No amount of planning will help, however, if Apple is unable to supply enough phones. "That's what we stay awake at night thinking about," Carter says.
It's also out of AT&T's control. Manufacturing is being overseen by Apple, which also maintains control of design, customer care (for the device, not monthly service), advertising and more.
Apple, famously secretive about its products, has been mum about its Apple Store sales plans. So far, it has not allowed AT&T sales staff access to iPhones so they can get comfortable using them before the big day. "Apple wanted to launch it that way," Carter shrugs.
Only as good as network
One thing AT&T does control, however, is the network on which the iPhone will depend. While network reliability might not have the sex appeal of an iPhone, it could spell the difference between the device becoming a runaway success -- or a flop.
Yeah, that would be big news.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is just an iPhone-friendly version of youtube. IPhone users will view it with Safari. It's been public knowledge since the 16th of June.
visit it here
read old news articles about it here
-- Boycott Shell
the new 10.5 will not have the old frontrow anymore it will be replaced by the appleTV application (just watch the demo on the 10.5 site) today youtube was added to appleTV so you take a guess 1+1=2.
Daniel.
The summary says AppleTV will get it after an upgrade, so presumably any desktop mac will also have that as an option.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I have my Blackberry Pearl set up as a bluetooth modem for my Macbook Pro and it is on AT&T's EDGE network in NYC. A two minute youtube video takes about four minutes to load, so you can start watching at about the halfway mark.
If they want to be considered 'hip' maybe they should release some products for the 'hip' crowd.
Have you ever tried using an N-Gage ? Have you ever used one of the high-end Nokia 'smart' phones, like e.g. the new N95 ? They suck. The user interface is a mess, the phones are slow and unresponsive, the casing feels really cheap and plastic. And these are expensive phones.
Every high end phone on the market right now sucks ass. They are a pain to work with, they are slow, unstable and feel flimsy. The phone manufacturers are trying to beat the competition by rushing out new phones with all the newest features as soon as they can, with no regards to quality or user experience.
It's no wonder people are exited, given Apple's reputation.
Yes, we would. The sad fact is that other companies are not making an iPhone. Motorola's RAZR was 'hip' and 'cool' years ago, but they seem to have fired their design team because they keep coming up with variations of the same design. I don't want the gazillionth incarnation of the RAZR. I don't want a windows smartphone with the ugly and non-intuitive interface. Not to speak of the chaotic mess that is Series60 and UIQ.
I work as a software developer and we build a lot of stuff for mobile phones, it's not uncommon for us developers to get puzzled by a phone. How would you think Joe User would react ?
The sad fact is that the user experience for any modern phone is absolutely horrible.
Wow, your 700w will sync your music, movies, address contacts, bookmarks, and other miscellany without user action? That's a huge improvement over the Palms I used in college :)
Rather, the Palms synched at the push of a button, but I still had to set up the software and such on my desktop.
ANyway, re: build quality. I don't know that build quality is better, but in 2001 when comparing a 5gb iPod to a 6gb Creative Nomad Jukebox, the iPod won based on:
1) Size
2) Form factor
3) Usability
4) UI
5) Durability (stainless steel+acrylic vs injection molded plastic)
Re: Hip. Why is the iPod, and Apple, hip? Because they targeted consumers with the iPod! All the other MP3 players, with their arcane use models, buttons, and software, self selected for geeks. Unfortunately geeks aren't hip.
Re: n-gage. You had to remove the battery to change games... On a cell phone. Why not just download games over the network (which happens now). The n-gage was decimated because the competing GBA was half the price, with 10x as many games. In two years the n-gage only had 50 games; by the time it hit 50 games, Nintendo had the DS out, and that is killing everything right now.
If Apple released the n-gage, besides the Apple logo, it would have had:
1) Integrated storage instead of cartridges (see iPod, iPhone, vs memory cards/cartridges)
2) Touch screen (see DS, iPhone, iPod's touch scroll wheel, vs buttons)
3) Larger screen (The n-gage screen only takes up 1/3 of the device. The GBs take half, the iPhone takes 4/5s, and the iPods take 1/2)
4) Apple would make the games downloadable (see iPod+iTunes store, for music, games, and movies)
Of course... this describes the iPhone, doesn't it?
GPL Deconstructed
Actually, Sorenson Spark and TrueMotion VP6 are highly competitive with the H.264 codec. My guess is that the H.264 transition has less to do with bandwidth and more to do with the iPhone's design. Apple currently uses H.264 for all of its downloadable movies and videos. (Sans a few minor exceptions like the Aquaman pilot.) Thus the iPhone already has software/hardware to support high-quality playback of the H.264 codec. This allows the phone to provide more features with the video stream (e.g. live resizing, preview in place, fast-seek, etc.) than are possible with the Flash toolkit.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
He was mocking Steve Jobs' use of the word "sweet" over and over at WWDC...
-William Brendel
Obviously you can use it for streaming as well, though I don't know if you get the same bandwidth comparisons vs. the most popular streaming-video codecs, since there are so many of those out there. According to one of the Wikipedia pages, newer iPods support H.264 video formats, so they're capitalizing on those sales. And they're probably cutting down on the bandwidth required for YouTube, which is really important in a mobile data environment.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Well, properly implemented H.264 hardware encoders shouldn't "zap batteries in their sleep" and should be much more efficient than Flash decoding on the CPU. I'm sure that it's also possible to design one poorly, but my guess is that Apple was aware of this potential. Incorporating a hardware decoder in the design also offloads work from the CPU, leaving it free to do other stuff while the video is playing, which probably also results in smoother video playback on a lower powered device like iPhone.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Yes, it is, in fact. It uses the same 30-pin dock connector as all current iPods and will physically fit in Made for iPod products. Whether or not they do some weird things with the software that prevent the iPhone from responding to these accessories is something no one outside of a very small number of people at Apple know, but I'd guess no.
They're selling this thing as a full-featured iPod nano (with some new features, even). I'd imagine that the small reserve of people who still haven't bought an iPod (ignoring those who never, ever will, no matter what) would further translate into an accessory market. The thing is almost exactly the width of a current iPod, the dock connector is the same and in the same location, and it syncs with iTunes and not some new application just for the iPhone. All signs point to "yes, it will work with iHome and all of those other dock accessories."
'cause it has wifi.