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Posts tagged with "youtube"

The Reality Check Of Google’s New YouTube App

In an unsurprising move considering Apple’s upcoming iOS 6 update, Google released an official YouTube app for iPhone last night. Announced on the YouTube blog, the app is available for free on the App Store, and it runs natively on the iPhone; according to The New York Times, an iPad version is also in the works.

I have taken the YouTube app for a spin, and I was quite impressed with what Google accomplished in this first version. While not excellent in terms of performances, the key to this first release of YouTube for iOS is access.

One of the most controversial aspects of the former, pre-installed YouTube client for iOS was that, as Google started monetizing the YouTube platform with “official” videos from channels like VEVO, the pre-installed iOS client couldn’t display such videos due to a lack of agreement between Apple and Google in regards to ads shown to the users. On the standard desktop YouTube website, users could watch, say, music videos from official channels because the company embedded banners or pre-roll ads to monetize; on iOS devices, official videos were omitted from search results, and links to these videos would return the infamous “this video is not available on mobile” error message. As Google goes free from Apple’s restrictions with standalone apps, this is about to change. Read more

Apple Removes Native YouTube App From iOS Beta→

Apple Removes Native YouTube App From iOS Beta

The Next Web has an excellent round up of today’s news that the native iOS YouTube app will likely be removed from the upcoming iOS 6 operating system which was reported by both Macrumors and 9to5Mac. The article includes the expected generic PR response from Google and a few more details from Apple they obtained in a statement issued to The Verge.

Panzarino makes some excellent conclusions on why this change was not only inevitable, but beneficial for both companies. I won’t spoil the entire article because it is definitely worth the read however he makes one point specifically that matched my first thought when I heard the news:

Remember, though, that Google’s YouTube app will likely be at a disadvantage to Apple’s native one. The hooks that normally direct a user out to the app will now simply play in Mobile Safari, rather than bumping people out to the app.

There will be tradeoffs to an App Store specific version of YouTube made by Google and many of those tradeoffs will effect us as users. The app will likely see more frequent updates that reflect the growing features of the website, however now they are at the mercy of Apple’s rigorous approval process. Other changes, as Panzarino mentioned, include the fact that users will be redirected to Mobile Safari instead of the official app, much like the experience of clicking links for Twitter. This will likely be a negative for most users however I don’t think I will personally mind the change in which app opens to play the video. I enjoy the Mobile Safari experience and with HTML5 progressing so far, there are fewer downsides to the YouTube web app experience. I am far from a YouTube power user and find myself enjoying other services more, e.g. Vimeo.

This could change again before the final release of iOS 6, however for the reasons Panzarino mentioned, I feel this change is permanent. Nevertheless, the native YouTube app is in good hands being developed by Google. I feel Google proved they can ship a polished, native iOS app in their recent release of Chrome for iOS and I look forward to the direction they take their mobile video offerings. Perhaps they can even woo me away from my aforementioned preferred service Vimeo if they don’t flood mobile users with too many advertisements.

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FoxTube: A Great YouTube App Replacement for iOS→

FoxTube: A Great YouTube App Replacement for iOS

I don’t typically discover new apps thanks to word of mouth or by checking out my friends’ Home screeens, and yet I have my friend Andrea to thank for letting me know about FoxTube.

I’m not the biggest fan of the native YouTube app for iOS. In fact, I think it’s actually one of the worst experiences offered to iPhone and iPad users: several YouTube videos aren’t “available on mobile”, search is too simplistic, you can’t copy direct URLs for videos to share them elsewhere, and, generally speaking, it has remained unchanged for the most part since its original launch. Anyone who spends a decent amount of time on YouTube knows that the iPhone app is just a surrogate of the desktop service. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard my friends saying “You can’t watch that on YouTube for the iPhone” (quite possibly as many times as “I’m using Facebook through Safari because the app won’t load”).

FoxTube doesn’t look pretty and its icon doesn’t look good, but it is by far the best way to access YouTube I have found on iOS. Firstly, it loads any kind of video – even the ones that the YouTube app won’t open. Especially music videos from “VEVO” channels – FoxTube can display those just fine. And whilst the YouTube mobile website can open them as well, FoxTube has settings to choose between 360, 720p, and 1080p video quality. And it loads fast, unlike the mobile website.

Secondly, FoxTube comes with a plethora of other options including caching, background video player, and background audio. By default, the app caches any video you start playing while it’s also buffering, but there are some settings to adjust its behavior. Videos can be dismissed (with a button or gestures, which the app supports for many other controls) and left playing in a “mini player” at the top that runs while you’re browsing something else in the app. Search is “real” search, with suggested results, history, and sorting options. You can share a video (and also copy its URL), and easily jump to an uploader’s video page, the web video page, or the Related Videos page.

And there’s more: a popup menu on the custom video player lets you toggle mirror mode, pinch to zoom, frame-by-frame navigation, and it even enables you to create bookmarks. If you want to use the app as a music player, FoxTube does background audio (with its icon appearing in the multitasking tray).

Like I said, FoxTube doesn’t look particularly nice, and I don’t like the fact that the iPad version is a separate $4.99 purchase. Yet FoxTube is highly functional, and it brings many of the functionalities I’ve always wanted from the native YouTube app (which is not getting any better).

FoxTube is my new YouTube app on iOS, and I recommend it to anyone who’s been frustrated with the stock app. $2.99 on the App Store.

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YouTube Testing New Mobile Layout

Following the Cosmic Panda experimental design launched in July, it appears YouTube is now testing an updated mobile layout that borrows some of the color schemes and interface elements of this summer’s refresh for desktop web browsers. The new mobile layout can be enabled at m.youtube.com/new_visual_design, and I’ve noticed this by opening the YouTube website from my iPhone (running the latest iOS 5 beta, but it works on iOS 4 too) earlier today. A quick Google and Twitter search seems to confirm that the new mobile layout is a recent change that, similarly to Cosmic Panda, is opt-in and needs to be manually activated.

Once enabled, the new design brings a much darker color palette that presents videos against dark toolbars and buttons – I assume this should make videos a little easier on the eye, but the effect is sort of ruined by Safari’s blue address bar. Unlike the standard mobile layout, launched last year, when saving this new design to the iPhone’s Home screen you won’t get a Retina-ready icon or full-screen web app. This, again, should be related to the experimental nature of the design.

The new mobile layout brings updated buttons and a new toolbar to toggle HQ on videos, give them a thumbs up/down, and share them. The HQ toggle comes with a neat fading animation and the video thumbnail has new loading and Play controls, too. Read more

FlashtoHTML5 Turns YouTube In To A Flash-Free Zone On Safari

No-one really likes when their Mac’s fan decides to emulate a jet engine after you’ve been watching YouTube for a while because Flash has been running. It is particularly frustrating when you know that YouTube has been rolling out an experimental HTML5 video player that could work perfectly in Safari. Thankfully a new Safari plug-in, FlashtoHTML5, forces Safari to use that HTML5 YouTube whenever available (which is most of the time).

The plug-in from Juris Vervuurt will automatically choose the maximum video resolution available, up to 4K, although this can be manually changed. There are three minor caveats with FlashtoHTML5: this plug-in only works for Safari,  not all YouTube videos yet support the HTML5 version and subtitles and captions do not work in the HTML5 version. You can download FlashtoHTML5 for free.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

YouKu To Replace Pre-Installed YouTube App On Chinese iPhones?

Over in China, iPhones and iPod Touches don’t come with the in-built YouTube app because of that infamous ‘Great Firewall of China’. Like various other websites and social networking sites, YouTube is blocked in the country. But reports today suggest that YouKu, effectively China’s version of YouTube, may soon have an app that comes pre-installed on Chinese iOS devices, just as YouTube currently does in the rest of the world.

TechNode claims, based on information gathered from a trusted source, that the YouKu founder, Victor Koo, met with Steve Jobs over the possibility of having a YouKu app pre-installed on Chinese iPhones and other iOS devices. YouKu, like YouTube is for the rest of the world, is a pretty dominant and popular videa sharing site, allowing users to upload videos of unlimited length and even has licenses with over 1,500 television stations, distributors and film production companies which are a large part of the site.

Apart from the TechNode report, information on this is scarce, but the fact that YouTube is banned in China does lend credence to the possibility that Apple would want to build in another online video streaming app directly on their devices.

[Via TheNextWeb]

 

Watch Youtube Live Streams On iOS Devices

Youtube has been experimenting with live streams for concerts and other events for a few years now, but it was only earlier this month when the service officially unveiled Youtube Live, a new section of the website that integrates live streaming capabilities into Youtube’s standard interface to allow broadcasters to share their live video content similarly to how other platforms like Ustream and Justin.tv enable users to start a live video recording, and share it with the rest of the world.

Youtube Live, however, has one major limitation: the stream is entirely Flash-based and Live videos don’t work on mobile devices like iPhones and iPads. YTLive, a new web app launched this week, aims at fixing this problem by providing live conversion of the Flash stream to generate an embedded live video that’s playable on iOS devices. To use the web app, you only have to paste the URL of a Youtube Live video here, and wait for the YTLive to process it. Once the service has generated an embedded video like the one in the screenshot above, you can tap Play and start streaming. The live feed is the same, but from what I understand the Flash stream is being converter through YTLive’s servers before it’s delivered to an iPhone or iPad. I don’t know how the service will hold up in the coming weeks as more and more iOS users start using it (the Royal Wedding is going to be an interesting first test), but it works fairly well right now.

Head over Youtube Live, pick a channel, and try it with YTLive on your iOS device now. [via TUAW]

Squrl: Collect Videos From The Web, Watch Them Later on iOS

Released yesterday on the App Store and the web, Squrl is a new service powered by an HTML5 interface that allows you to save videos from several supported services, collect them on the iOS and web apps, and watch them later at any time. The concept behind the service is very simple and attractive: much like an Instapaper for video, Squrl enables you to save videos from Youtube, Vimeo, Hulu, Netflix and many other providers with the click of a bookmarklet (which you have to install from the website). Unlike Watchlater, though, Squrl doesn’t stop at collecting videos in a single place, it also packs social functionalities and organization features to let you create galleries and collections of videos, share them, or even subscribe to collections shared by other users in your social graph. Read more

YouTube is going LIVE→

YouTube is going LIVE

Today we’re announcing the initial roll out of YouTube Live, which will integrate live streaming capabilities and discovery tools directly into the YouTube platform for the first time. This begins with a new YouTube Live browse page (www.youtube.com/live), where you can always find the most compelling live events happening on YouTube and add events to your calendar. Subscribe to your favorite YouTube live-streaming partners to be notified of upcoming live streams on your customized homepage.

Broadcasters like TWiT already stream their content live when it hits the air, but imagine how much exposure independent or amateur content creators can get through the power of YouTube. We’ve started to see the shift from traditional news outlets to independent blogs and journalists, and the same disruption is happening with consuming video. While Hulu, Netflix, and others are making strides to offer content outside of traditional cable media, the launch of live video on YouTube will make this transition more apparent and continue to deliver more options to consumers. I’m not surprised that Hak5 is already streaming, and Geek Beat will also have upcoming programming this evening. Also of interest: there’s already sports programming for the NBA Playoffs. Could good independent vloggers unroot traditional news channels like ESPN? The exposure YouTube brings, plus what it chooses to feature on their live page, will be significant.

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