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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."
This is more evidence that if you want to write a killer iPhone app, Safari+AJAX may not have the power you need. Apple sure didn't find that combo to have the horespower when it went to implement Google Maps and now YouTube.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
if they could only make it to, like, surf myspace too. that'd make it totally worth the money. i'd buy two of them just so i can do both at the same time.
I don't know how many times my wife has been driving and I, sitting in the passenger seat bored out of my mind, thought to myself...
{dream sequence}
Damn I wish I could see a short clip of kittens doing cute things or kids doing lightsaber battles
{/dream sequence}
My life is now complete.
load "$",8,1
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.
Actually, I think the killer app will be uploading to YouTube from the iPhone. It would be predicated upon the chipset having H.264 encoding capabilities as well, but I see this being a potentially huge win for Apple if they could pull it off. It's the logical extension of what they're attempting to do with the platform, and it would transform video blogging and bring it to the mainstream.
1) Apple manages to do this by making the iPod as perfect as they can. People actually like using it.
2) No one else has managed to be "hip". So yes, everyone tries, but so far Apple is the only one that has managed, with the iPod. Nintendo is a close second with their DS and Wii.
3) The n-gage was a disaster. Comparing the n-gage to an iPhone is like comparing a sour grape to an orange.
4) Apple has this effect because they do things right, with the iPods, iTunes, and iTunes store.
Your Treo is not targetted at consumers. Are there ads for the Treo on billboards, subways, or prime time TV shows? 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! Does the UI make it easy to access all those features? Not being able to access a feature is about the same as not having a feature in the first place.
Then the killer... is this something your parents can do? Your neice? Your next door neighbor?
That's Apple's secret. The iPod is accessible to everyone, not just geeks.
GPL Deconstructed
Looks like they're excellent at partnering with Google(YouTube). And pretty smart about it, too. That H.264 hardware decoder in the iPhone won't sap the battery like a crappy flash player would do.
Well, YouTube videos are delivered at 320x240 resolution, whereas the iPhone has a 480x320 display to work with... of course, much of the source material uploaded to YouTube may be in a lower resolution anyway, since the content authors may not have anticipated having higher resolutions available for their videos later on.
Even at the same resolution and bitrate, however, H.264 is a very high-quality codec and is bound to have higher video quality with less blurring and blocking than Flash Video. The reason YouTube uses flash is that it's loaded on damn near every desktop computer and doesn't require spawning a separate player, installing decoders, etc. But it actually makes sense when targeting a fixed platform like the iPhone or AppleTV to take advantage of the better video formats that are available.
Also, I'd personally love it if YouTube let me set an option in my profile to view H.264 videos as I'm browsing the website. Keep the videos in flash by default, but let people who know they can view embedded H.264 take advantage of it.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
...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..
The only new thing is, like you said, "its the hippest phone ever", and nobody will shut up about it.
damnit someone should steal that shirt and sell it on ebay
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
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
You don't understand how Apple has this effect because you, like everyone else who's a registered member of Slashdot, are a geek.
Geeks have a higher tolerance for poor user interface design, I mean heck look at how popular Linux, BSD and Unix are amongst the geek set. The "CLI" or Command Line Interface is actually PREFERRED by this set. You take two computers, say either a Windows based PC or Macintosh and compare it to a GUI'less Linux setup and a geek would know that both computers can do anything. A regular person however would consider the Linux computer to be useless because they wouldn't know how to nor would they be interested in taking the time to learn how to use it. If it isn't point and click, it loses. Geeks don't mind investing the time though, they LOVE to tinker.
This is why you consider the iPhone to be nothing special. I own a Treo 700p that can already do all the things the iPod can do just about and there are certainly Windows Mobile and Symbian phones that also do most of what the iPhone does at a much lower price. But thats NOT THE POINT. Its not about matching features for features. Its about making sure that people will actually be able and WILLING to use the features that your product DOES have.
I am absolutely positively certain that regular folks will get more use out of their iPhones then they will out of their Treos, HTCs, Motorola Qs, Blackberries, Nokias...etc simply because the iPhone has the better interface. Regular folks have higher standards when it comes to interfaces. Either its going to be well designed or it won't be used. Geeks on the other hand will put up with crappy user interfaces because they are blinded by the features underneath. The truest test is when a user buys a device on their own and no longer needs their "geek" friend/neighbor/co-worker to set it up for them. Thats the iPhone.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Yes, it is the "mystery app." The "mystery app" was caused by the application icons being slid down one slot in a brief section of an iPhone ad. Well, they've updated the iPhone website and the new iPhone graphic shows all twelve application icons. They are, in order:
YouTube is the app that's been added. It's the "mystery app" that was missing from before.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
---k--
</stupid>
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
Everybody tries to do this. Apple isn't alone. You dont think PalmOne, Motorola, Erikson, Nokia want to be considered "hip"?
The difference is, apple actually succedes at it.
Now before you flame the fuck out of me, think about what I'm actually saying... I am NOT saying that apple is better than these other companies, I am not saying that their technology is any different or better or anything. I am simply saying that while Motorola, Nokia, Microsoft, Creative Labs and all those other clowns want to be considered "Hip", Apple actually IS considered "hip" and that makes a big difference.
They didn't get into that position just by marketing, they didn't get there by having superior technology. They got there by figuring out what features and interfaces the majority of people would really dig and then selling that. Nobody else seems to do it as well as they do.
That is what makes apple different, if you don't understand that you will not understand what makes them successful.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I was pretty close to adding a Flash version to the existing QT (H.264) and WMV formats I currently offer clients, but the quality just wasn't there. It's great for talking head and animations, but try boosting the bit rate to make it useful for "full-motion" clips longer than a minute or so and the file sizes get too big to do anything with.
I think YouTube has done the right thing to go with H.264, and it's a really big deal for Apple on so many levels...and yet another nail in Microsofts all powerful wmv.
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."
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.
Absolutely. The low EDGE speeds are supposedly mitigated by the fact that the phone will automatically use wifi if it is available. I don't see this working well, in practice. The reason I got an internet plan with my cell provider was precisely because most of the time, I'm not in an area with wifi, or I'm in an area with locked down wifi. Add to this the recent problems people have been having for using wide-open wifi without the permission of the owner, and this just looks like a disaster waiting to happen (though, perhaps, the iPhone will spur people to either lock down their access points, or will spur legislation explicitly defining when it is ok to connect to a wide-open access point.)
When I'm at home, I'm going to use my own Internet connection. When I'm at a coffee shop, I'll be using my notebook. At work, I'll have the work's connection. I guess if I'm at a friend's house without my notebook, this might be useful, but hey, I could just borrow his computer.
No, I think that Youtube won't be the killer app that Apple expects it to be. Although, who knows? If people don't think about how slow it's going to be over EDGE, it might be just enough to convince some people (who otherwise wouldn't) to buy. But I doubt it.