YouTube App Removed From iOS 6 Beta4

TrueSatan writes "iOS 6 beta 4 has removed the YouTube application that existed on iOS since the first version in 2007. Apple confirmed that YouTube is gone from iOS 6. Google is apparently building its own app saying: 'Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended, customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the App Store.'"

Does there need to be an app for everything?

[Compaqt]

I'm amazed at the indolent culture spawned by the iPhone: Nowadays, you can't just go to a website. You have to have a special executable for every single different website you visit!

It seems like there are people who don't go to certain websites, until they announce "Announcing the blah.com iPhone App!"

Re:Downward Spiral

[cpu6502]

>>>relying on a third service for what is rapidly becoming a central reason to have a multipurpose phone (mapping and turn by turn navigation) when the relationship between you and that third party was never going to fly, especially when that same third party is fostering a competitor to your platform - goodbye Google Maps, hello something better.
>>>
How disappointing you don't see a problem with this. It would be equivalent to Comcast/NBC ejecting all the ABC and FOX-owned channels from our television screens. Goodbye FOX News... goodbye FX... goodbye ABC Family... goodbye Disney... goodbye Nickelodeon... goodbye A&E... goodbye Showtime... et cetera. (Don't worry: They'll soon be replaced with NBC-owned channels which are "better".)

Re:Does there need to be an app for everything?

[oakgrove]

As a part time mobile developer, I can kind of understand why. For any truly interactive site running a lot of javascript and doing anything ajaxy, the performance on a mobile device more is nothing short of ass-tastic. You go to a lot of sites and get greeted with some weird javascript popup that's almost impossible to click close on as the button just doesn't respond well. And a lot of sites take a long time to load especially blogs like theverge.com. A mobile app for those sites almost always loads the content quicker, has native controls for scrolling etc. so you don't have to rely on the craptacular javascript emulated UIs, and just does a better job of formatting the content to the screen. Of course all that could just be the fault of the website in question but I just don't see (for example) how engadget.com could ever be as good on the iPad as the engadget app. They both show the same content but the app is so much faster and has additional features that would be very difficult to do on the actual site with web dev tools. The only real issue is that if you had an app for every single site that needed one you'd have one cluttered phone. Maybe they could just disappear and automatically pop up if you put the url in the browser or clicked a bookmark. This could be done right now at least on Android since you can trigger apps to respond to custom uri's. Like slashdot://slashdot.com when clicked as an embedded link or in a bookmark could automatically open a "Slashdot" app.

Of course with suitably fast mobile devices, the speed advantage of the apps starts to get smaller and smaller. On my Xoom with Jellybean I don't bother to use any mobile site apps as the sites work perfectly well in the browser and all controls work well. My first gen iPad not so much.

Re:Downward Spiral

[AmiMoJo]

The Android app has quite a few extra features compared to the mobile site. The UI is more responsive since there is no need to fetch HTML/Javascript of course, and you get all the usual system integration goodies like the sharing menu. On-screen controls and the menu button work better while watching videos too.

If the iPhone version sucked, well, that isn't a reason to celebrate it going away. That is a reason to complain that it sucked compared to other versions.