Apple Approves VLC For iPad

[ugh]

I would be really interested to know what triggered that massive policy change. (Not just VLC but also all the other stuff.) It came out of nowhere. No advance warning, no step by step relaxation, no big reveal.

Fairly recently Steve Jobs defended Apple’s old App Store policy [+] – just imagine the hearts and minds Apple could have won if Jobs had announced their big policy change right then and added a big mea culpa. Why didn’t that happen? This seems a lot like some sort of last minute decision, something happened and caused Apple to move quickly. Ah, well, we will probably never know.

[+] D8 interview, july this year

[jad]

The risk of government intervention seems the most likely reason to me. Better to maintain control and relax restrictions on your own terms than risk having the terms dictated to you by a judge.

[jsz0]

I think it's just a byproduct of a maturing platform. Apple has nurtured the platform into a certain direction and more or less set a standard for what an iOS app is going to be. (look & feel, stability, security, etc) Now that users also have high expectations the App Store is probably starting to police itself to some degree. I'm guessing they reached a point where only 1-2% of apps had any approval issues so it's becoming more practical to switch to an innocent until proven guilty model.

[char]

I feel like this is exactly how Apple responded to the whole iPhone 4 antenna problem: by not really mentioning it, acting as if there were no big issues, and then silently providing a fix. There seems to be a pattern here.

[pieter]

This really doesn't indicate any policy change, as apps with similar functionality have been approved for a long time now.

[jonknee]

I wonder what the battery life hit is like. Apple has maintained that hardware H.264 decoding makes a huge difference and is why that's the only format supported.

[wmf]

Previously asked and answered here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1676756

[thewileyone]

Wow! I can stop converting all my fricking video to H.264 AAC now!

[mgrouchy]

So just tried this with divx episodes of mad men, The software was great and syncing files from itunes was a breeze(Same interface as syncing files with pages and keynote). The video itself though was pretty choppy. Not sure how it will work for other filetypes but not super impressed, but I imagine it would be hard to do any better with similar hardware.

Kind of really lets you see the value of apples H.264 hardware decoding on the iPad.

[jbk]

Disclaimer: VLC dev here

This is the first version of VLC on iOS and it isn't the best yet, especially for performances... The important was to put one version of VLC out on the AppStore and iterate quickly small updates and fixes... (you should understand this way of thinking, being on HN ;-) )

It will get better and faster.

[borism]

Dude, my 3 year old Nokia N810 with 400mhz CPU plays all kinds of SD video with MPlayer just fine.

[equark]

Will it have airplay support?

[grinich]

    Apps using the built-in media controller views 
    get AirPlay out for free. Apps that don’t (like 
    Hulu) need to roll their own using AVFoundation.
 

via http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/09/17/weintraub-airpla...

[patrickaljord]

Isn't VLC GPL? I thought the AppStore was not compatible with the GPL.

[jbk]

Disclaimer: VLC dev and VideoLAN Chairman

Truth be told, it is a grey area. The AppStore is clearly not compatible with the GPLv3. About the GPLv2 it is more complex, because what matters is if the AppStore terms are stronger than the Application License. And noone except a judge can tell...

Therefore, we release on our website, videolan.org, both the source and the binary so that the GPL spirit is kept intact. People can modify their VLC, patch it, modify it and put on their iOS devices as they wish.

[orangecat]

GPLv2 is probably ok, GPLv3 probably isn't.

[mansr]

The VLC authors seem not to think so. It's their call.

[forgottenpaswrd]

I think this is only applicable to Windows, MS said GPL3 is banned in Windows 7, Apple just reject what he doesn't like.

[shawndumas]

Google Voice, C64 BASIC, and now this! Yay Apple!

[someone_here]

Yay Microsoft for allowing those on Windows! Yay Google for allowing it on Android! Yay Canonical for allowing it on Ubuntu!

[sullichin]

This is amazing news; I feel like Apple's lifting of restrictions has something to do with modifying your phone's software now being legal in the US. It's probably only beneficial to them to have all of this content available through their App Store outlet if people can easily get it anyway.

[city41]

I think you greatly overestimate the percentage of iOS users that even know what jailbreaking is.

[Flemlord]

I wonder if Apple's policy changes are from worries about Windows Phone 7. They largely eliminated Microsoft's biggest selling point to app developers and redirected a lot of development talent that may otherwise have spent the next two months building apps for the WP7 launch.

[wmf]

I doubt WP7 is even on Apple's radar. My favorite theory is that now everyone can see that Flash for phones sucks so there's no need to ban it; it will fail on its own. That and the FTC investigation.

[cschep]

I thought I had to convert the videos to get them on the device at all? This is awesome.

[vkdelta]

Quick question: I dont have an ipad in hand right now. Does iOS 4 support multicast? If yes, does this VLC version receive multicast from LAN or WAN?

[jbk]

This hasn't been tested yet. But, it should.

[joezydeco]

So combine this with a HDHomeRun, which encodes over-the-air HD and turns it unto a UDP stream.

Broadcast TV in your lap. Nice.

[aditya]

HDHomeRun does want a dual-core box...

[damienfir]

Too bad we can't remotely access video files on the computer.

[d_r]

For that, Air Video has worked great for me. (There's a free version that shows up to N files in a folder, if you want to try it out first.)

[bphogan]

I recommend StreamToMe. It's the best $3 I've spent. Transcodes on the fly, works great. We watched cartoons in the car. (iPad tethered to my 3g android phone).

[daniel02216]

Check out 'Air Video', plays anything from your machine to your iPad over wifi without syncing. Works remarkably well.

[jbk]

yet.

;-)

[zentechen]

Does it support .rmvb format?

[warwick]

It doesn't seem to. I put three videos on: an avi, an rmvb, and an mpg. Only the avi is showing in the app, and it's only playing audio properly, though it does generate a thumbnail correctly for the menu.

(Edit: wrote 'auto' instead of 'audio' originally)

[jbk]

It could.

Just file a bug on http://trac.videolan.org/vlc if it doesn't.

[lotusleaf1987]

Is there a reason there isn't an iPhone version?

[jbk]

Disclaimer: VLC dev here

Yes, a very simple one... Someone needs to patch the interface to scale nicely on the iPhone :D

You have to understand that we are volunteers working on our free time. People work on what they want/care/need, not based on external thoughts (no market research, no marketing, no boss orders... just fun)

[timdorr]

It's easier to target the iPad right now because there is only one released hardware revision at the moment. The iPhone has 4 so far, all with varying capabilities in software and in hardware. They need to test for that.

[forgottenpaswrd]

Probably is going to be so slow without hardware acceleration on Iphone.

[photon_off]

This is why it pays to be the platform.

[Swizec]

WOOHOO! \o/