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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."
imagine the data charges from watching youtube all day on your iphone
Man! This is what I'm talking about.
How does Apple do this? They like convert people into Apple salesmen - like zombies or something.
Look at your post, "chasing the ipod generation", "its the hippest phone ever", etc, etc..
Everybody tries to do this. Apple isn't alone. You dont think PalmOne, Motorola, Erikson, Nokia want to be considered "hip"?
First smartphone to target the market? What the hell was n-gage? You telling me that was pitched to stuffy businessmen to help organize their schedules?
I really don't understand how Apple has this affect.
The device does nothing new, features nothing new, offers nothing new. I can do all of this on my Treo right now. The only new thing is, like you said, "its the hippest phone ever", and nobody will shut up about it.
But just imagine, it wasnt made by Apple - say it was a Motorola, or Erikson, or billy magoo. It's the exact same design, exact same features, exact same software. Would we be talking about it right now?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
1) How many smartphones target consumers? The analogy here is iPod:iPhone::geeks:businesspeople
So the iPod opened up the MP3 player to nongeeks in the same way the iPhone will supposedly open up smartphones to non-business people.
2) How many YouTube players actually use H.264 instead of Flash? Right now I think it is one... for the AppleTV
3) YouTube is the next TV; that is why it is a big deal, higher quality and more widespread use. How many consumer phones play YouTube right now? My phone doesn't. I've not seen a flash capable smartphone either.
GPL Deconstructed
After the Ipod came out there was a period (and to an extent this continue) where Ipods just got nicked left right and center because of Apple's stupid idea to give you white earphones, clearly marking you out as a target to get mugged. Now with the iphone, not only have you go the earphones, but you watch videos, so you are holding out a $500 phone at roughly arms length, in public. Am I not the only person who sees this as an incredible easy target for theives? And of course, when I'm at home I just use my computer, so I question the sensibility of actually using these features while "Roaming" (Personally I think that's a silly term anyway, I would not describe anything I ever do as "Roaming")
The iPhone does have a camera. I don't know what resolution it can record video at but it should be more than capable of the 320x240 size of the Youtube player window.
H.264 encoding is pretty hard but it doesn't have to be performed on the phone- it can send the raw capture (can't be that large) to Youtube's encoding cluster and have them do the heavy lifting, so the process is identical to using it on a computer.
And sure, you can't run iMovie on the thing, but I bet it's more than capable of selecting a subset of the recording and maybe even basic titles. That covers 99% of the movies on Youtube already.
The real reason to not let the wife drive the car is not the stereotype of being poor drivers - it is the difference between the genders' behavior preferences in that women like to talk and look towards the person they're talking to. Men think that's confrontational and talk much more peacefully if they can look somewhere else. So if the husband is driving he gets a built in excuse to look somewhere else (out the front window) all the time while the wife not only gets to look at him but isn't offended that he isn't looking straight back.
If any tool requires you to use "critical thinking skills" in comparison to a competing tool that does not, than the former tool "fails" at being the best it can be. Critical thinking skills should be reserved for making actual decisions, not simply getting a product to work.
"Decent" interfaces that you point out on competing smartphones just aren't good enough anymore when something better comes along. That something better is the iPhone. All that "decent" stuff that came before is although still quite usable, now dated and obsolete. Its yesterdays news.
Your position is almost comical. People spend hundreds of dollars on these devices and you are actually opposed to a product so easy to use that its "chewing your food for you." You personally, after spending this much money on a device actually WANT to have to do mental work to get the most out of it. Thats like spending full price for a car that you have to put together yourself when everyone else's is pre-constructed and drivable off the lot. Ha ha worked a car analogy in! Damn these users for wanting to get the most bang for their buck! Why they're wimps! REAL users know better than to expect exlimplary service and products when they hand over their cash!
Perhaps you should start a company that would sell devices based on your design preferences.
1. A hammer that has a loose neck that will only stiffen strong enough to be used after you enter into a keypad on the handle the first 56 digits of Pi.
2. A light switch that requires you to recite the Gettysburgh Address in order to function.
3. A weight scale that requires you to tap dance like Fred Astaire for 15 minutes before it will tell you your weight.
4. And lastly a dishwasher with a panel on the front that will require you to specify the exact amounts of water used, at what pressure and what temperatures and what amounts of detergent to be released at 50 different intervals during the wash cycle before you can use it.
After all, we want to make sure that absolutely NO ONE is forced to use a product that makes completeing tasks TOO EASY. If you are forced to use a product that spoon feeds you everything it stifles the development of CRITICAL THINKING skills.
You could call your company, Idiot Enterprises Incorporated.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
You missed the point. Of course Apple's apps are written in Cocoa. But Google apps for iPhone (YouTube and Google Maps) are also written in Cocoa. Other companies, like Yahoo or Facebook have no access to Cocoa, so they can't build apps that are as good as the Google apps.
not the YouTube that is currently online at YouTube.com, which is Flash H.263 video that only runs on Macs and PC's and that's it. youtube works great on my wii actually