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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."
They are using H.264 instead of Flash for the iPhone and Apple TV.
Steve Jobs @ D5 about what Microsoft does better than them: "we weren't so good at partnering with people".
Looks to me like they still aren't.
Sheesh... If you want to write a killer iPhone App, go get a job at Apple!
Does it make it trivial to synch your data, your email, your bookmarks, your movies, and music? By trivial I mean, no user action, just plug into your computer!
OT, but yeah, my new 700w does. ActiveSync just does it as soon as I plug it in. The old PalmOS based 650 I had, I had to push a button though.
It's kind of a shitty feature, since I have to make sure to weed out all the spam before I plug my phone in to charge, else I have to sort through it there. But then, it's only shitty as a MSFT feature. It's hip and cool for an Apple feature, I'm sure.
As for advertisements, etc. No, I dont see the Treo pushed hard. But every other TV commercial I see is for "the hippest cell phone evar"!!! Like those "music hunter" dudes or whatever.
The build quality thing is debatable. I never had any other phone I owned fall apart or anything, and see no need to improve here. The first gen iPods had some pretty unforgivable (IMO) sound quality issues. I don't see Apple as better than any other player here - though they're certainly seen as such.
You sort of gloss over point 2. I know Apple is viewed as "hip" where everyone else isn't. What I don't get is why. Point 3 is obvious, but why was n-gage such a failure? I submit to you, if it had an Apple logo, it would have succeeded. We both know there's a huge number of people who would be happy with a dried up dog turd in a box, if it was from Apple.
You got two companies, both started in the garage by some dropout hippies. Apple and Microsoft. Today, both companies are huge. Microsoft is huger, sure, but Apple is ginormous huge. Somehow, though, Apple managed to retain it's "small time friendly hippy garage outfit" status. Not only retain it - pass it on to another generation!
It's fascinating. What other company, in any field, has managed to do this?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Really Big F-ing deal. I would be a lot more impressed if the mystery application turned out to a fully documented and open API.
Fuck iGoogle. That is all.
The Farewell Tour II
The iPod isn't as perfect as you make it out to be. Plenty of them go wrong, there are all sorts of problems with the battery, some stop being recognised, etc. Windows smart-phones sync with their desktop host without user action, btw. And Windows is more than 10% of the desktop market, and the Treo supports corporate email software. And has other custom apps. I'm not bashing the iPhone, I'm just getting a bit peeved that people are making it out to be some sort of holy grail of telephony, when in fact it's crippled by design, and only does a few things really well, and those few things are only available to a tiny minority of desktop users out there.
The Treo obviously is targetted at consumers. It's a piece of consumer electronics. Trying to equate the amount of marketing dollars spent advertising a product with how good the product is smacks of naivety somewhat.
I'm sure your cell phone service provider would be thrilled for you to upload uncompressed videos over their slow expensive internet connection, because Steve Jobs decided they only programming language you have access to is JavaScript.
How far will Apple fan-boys go to justify Apple's horrible designs and stupid decisions? Will you pay $500 for the airtime it takes to upload an uncompressed movie, while your phone line is tied up for three days sending data? You'd better get two iPhones if you want to receive any calls.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com