Apple Approves VLC For iPad | Hacker News Reader

Apple Approves VLC For iPad

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175 pointsxonder108 comments

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

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.

Have there been any recent developments in that respect, though? That also doesn’t do a very good job of explaining the ostensible sudden change. There would have been smoother and more effective ways of communicating that change. Any time Steve Jobs was on a stage in the last few month he could have announced that change and waxed poetically about the importance of developers for Apple.

There is a non-zero possibility that Jobs simply doesn't want to publicly admit he was wrong.

That’s certainly possible but – if true – pretty petty. Admitting you are wrong when you announce a policy change seems like a great move to me, at least when you are in a position of strength like Apple undoubtedly is at the moment. (Depending on your goals you might not want to admit to making mistakes when you are in a weak position so as to not seem desperate.)

Steve Jobs is never wrong. Sometimes the universe is wrong, and he has to compromise, albeit grudgingly and with bad grace.

Another reason, which I find more likely is the market pressure Apple is starting to feel from Android and the slew of new iPad-esque Windows 7 tablet devices coming to market soon (even Windows Mobile 7 is a threat). They need to make sure they can compete on the apps-level with the alternatives.

Is Windows Mobile 7 really a threat?

Not yet, but probably it in the future.

Microsoft may not have got Windows Mobile right in the last 10 years but they now have a good template to follow (user interface, user experience, even the business model) thanks to Apple. You can see this with Windows Mobile 7 - they've 'rebooted' and are following Apple's lead.

They're definitely the underdog but I wouldn't count them out.

Microsoft is launching Windows Phone 7 with a more restrictive development model than Apple.

The OS is just as locked-down as iOS, and as with Apple users are only allowed to install software from the official 'marketplace'; but Microsoft also restricts what license developers are allowed to release software under, and limits how many free applications they can offer without paying additional fees to MS.

The one advantage that Microsoft has traditionally had over Apple - the openness of their platforms - has been squandered.

Couple that with a featureset that is competitive with the first-edition iPhone, but nowhere matches current iOS and Android devices, and you have a recipe for a flop.

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.

Having a press conference is not exactly "silently".

The really amusing thing to come out of the whole 'antennae-gate' issue was Apple's messages: when launching the iPhone 4, it was revolutionary (again), but when problems emerge, it's just like every other smartphone. Cracks in the reality distortion field, methinks.

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.

> so it's becoming more practical to switch to an innocent until proven guilty model.

As far as I know, they haven't done it. They have published the guidelines (so developers can self-police as they know now Apple means business) and probably lightened the review (for the reasons you've outlined), but it's not like the AppStore has become a Market-lookalike where an upload gets online within the hour and without any review.

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

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.

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

I sometimes worry that the HN archives will eventually become so authoritative that actual discussion devolves into a chain of deeply idiomatic references to previous discussions, a la Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

Pg and the top idea. Jobs, when the walls fell.

In this metaphor, who's the invisible beast we have to work together to defeat?

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

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.

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

Well then I can't account for why it was choppy. Have to try it with some other files and see how it works.

The VLC application currently on the app store doesn't have ARM assembler optimisations enabled. Hopefully that will be fixed in an update.

MPlayer on the N810 will be using some assembler optimisations. I strongly doubt the "all kinds of SD" claim, however. There is simply no way that CPU will be capable of decoding a typical SD H.264 video. MPEG2 or MPEG4-ASP may work if you're lucky.

Why would they release non-optimized? Fail fast?

H.264 is probably hard indeed, but with right command line optimizations doable.

There was a mysterious problem when assembler optimisations were enabled. This was fixed a few minutes ago in FFmpeg.

As for H.264 on a 400MHz ARM11, no amount of command line options will magically make MPlayer manage full SD resolution. If the H264 decoder were fully optimised for ARMv6, it might get close for low-complexity videos, but hardly any such optimisations have been done. There is simply little point, as it would still be too slow in most cases.

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.

This is completely off-topic, but may I nevertheless take the chance to extend a big THANK YOU towards the whole VLC dev team for gracing us with arguably the best, platform independent media player.

You are welcome...

You know, people usually scream at us, not thank us :D

This likely because a lot of people (the majority?), like me, find VLC to "Just Work" (TM) and don't find any reason to sign up for the forums. I try and make it a point to thank authors of open source software I use, but often times I don't get around to it.

Me, my family and friends have been using VLC for about 4 years know and the only we've needed is to occasionally update to a newer version or download an installer for a new system.

So, thanks for that :)

Will it have airplay support?

    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...

Just guessing but I'd assume that only applies to the standard set of Apple approved codecs.

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

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

There are tons of VLC authors, only one needs to complain. This sounds like it's going to happen sooner or later.

What is there to complain about? The source code is available for anyone to download.

Clause 6 of the GPLv2 says that you "cannot impose any further restrictions" on recipients of the software. One possible interpretation of this clause is that the App Store terms of service impose further restrictions on recipients.

Thus authors of GPL software might have a basis to object to other people distributing their software through the App Store, even if full source is provided. ...at least, this was the rationale given by the FSF when they objected to GNU Go in the App Store:

http://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance

Apple doesn't own any rights to the VLC application being distributed. I thus see no legal basis for them to impose any restrictions, try as they might.

That clause in the GPL seems intended to cover distribution of a derived work, where the distributor owns the rights to additions they have made.

Edit: IANAL

My understanding was that to publish to the app store, the publishing developer must agree to certain GPL-incompatible terms and restrictions. Apple seems to think that their terms have been fulfilled but FSF has said that GPL and App Store terms seem to conflict. I think Apple is in the clear wrt GPL but the publishing developer may have violated its terms.

GPLv2 is probably ok, GPLv3 probably isn't.

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

Could you please help me find some links on the GPL3 ban in Windows 7?

I think he means Windows Phone 7

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/dfhyw/microsoft...

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.

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

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

When someone makes a bad decision I like to encourage them when they do an about-face.

No, you're right. When someone makes a bad decision let's hate on them for life; even if they do an about-face.

Apple is a corporation, and isn't human. Don't be fooled; they are only responding to market pressure.

Market pressure? Apple acted the same way for two years until this recent change in policy, and they were doing swimmingly.

No need to call out the man, just applaud a company for taking a step in the right direction.

Perhaps they know something we don't i.e. their own sales figures in intimate detail. I think this sudden openness is a response to Android.

Don't be fooled; they are only responding to market pressure.

Sure. But market pressure, when examined through a powerful microscope, turns out to be composed of thousands of individual atoms of customer feedback. Like the one above.

Agreed, but the GP has a point, you should keep perspective and realize that they can make the about-face because they were f'ing up earlier.

So we should encourage them not to make the same mistakes again, but it's not a reason to sing their praise.

It's a great reason to sing their praise and encourage them to do more of the same. I don't see why it wouldn't be.

edit: but no reason not to give them shit for anything bad they do, of course.

> I don't see why it wouldn't be.

Because it technically rewards bad behaviour, you wouldn't be singing their praise now if they had not messed up first.

1) mess up

2) do an about face

3) reap praise.

fair point

> When someone makes a bad decision I like to encourage them when they do an about-face.

The bad decision is only being reversed on a case by case basis - this isn't good enough.

You forgot "Yay Apple for allowing it on OSX"

Also, can't wait to use VLC on Windows Phone 7!

One of the only platform noone is working on from the VLC dev team is WinMo7. Some people are working on Android, some on Maemo, some on WinMo6, but noone on WinMo7 since it requires .Net and C#

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.

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

I don't know about that. I know a lot of people with jailbroken iPhones, whom we'd all think of as "computer-illiterate" at best. Jailbreaking is very much a mainstream activity these days.

Edit: I'll go so far as to speculate that the large proportion of jailbroken iOS devices is what is driving the glasnost at Apple lately. They are faced with keeping some control over their customers's devices, or losing the control they still have. With widespread jailbreaking, the market has decisively rejected Apple's attempt at total control, while simultaneously embracing the products themselves.

I would estimate the majority of users on jailbreak aren't very technically savvy--the most of the emails I receive regarding the software I have hosted on Cydia are about on par with YouTube comments.

>the market has decisively rejected Apple's attempt at total control

If it's so decisive you must be able to cite it pretty easily, eh? I'm plenty "tech savvy" but I've never jailbroken my phone. I like the safety the App Store gives me. I don't have time to vet every damn application and I'm happy that some else does, even if they fail to let few a few things I might have liked.

If it's so decisive you must be able to cite it pretty easily, eh?

Google returns "about 1,150,000 results" for the term jailbreakme. I think that'll do.

You're pretty easy to convince. Even if every single one of those results represented a person who jail broke their phone then there are still several times more people who haven't then have. I don't think the phrase "decisively rejected by the market" means what you think it means.

Translation: "I don't like the data."

what data? One Google query? Again, you seem to not understand how this whole "research" thing works. I really hope you're not a real life reporter because you're either being extremely intellectually lazy with your "argument" or you're trying to be purposely deceptive (again, in an extremely lazy manner). The only real data that's actually been provided shows the exact opposite of your ignorant "decisively rejected" quote.

It's funny when people spend so much effort trying to defend an obviously nonsensical statement. You were wrong. So what? We all say things that turn out to be incorrect, it's no big deal.

A friend doesn't know what a browser is, yet he has a jailbroken iPhone so he can use winterboard. He paid someone to do it for him.

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.

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.

except that it doesn't. Flash works wonderfully well on my Android.

I don't buy it ... on my iPhone I only have apps that have been approved prior to this change of policy, and the battery is piss-poor already.

Having owned multiple lower-end Nokias + I currently also have one E71 + one N97 ... I kind of assumed the iPhone's battery can last for 2 days or even 3 if I'm only using it for phone calls.

Phones like the iPhone / Motorola Droid ... are too powerful for their own good. If I touch it in any way other than making simple phone calls, or if I'm activating 3G, it lasts less than 24 hours. When playing with it, then it doesn't last more than 3 hours.

So sorry, but I don't buy that Flash works wonderfully well, quite the contrary ... but as I said before, it's better to just let customers decide for themselves and good devs can probably create good apps even with Flash, and banning alternative frameworks makes no sens.

The other argument was that it's better for apps to use native UI elements, instead of dropping to a common denominator. Personally I get annoyed when an iPhone app doesn't have standard behavior when interacting with it, and it's a lot more annoying than on a desktop because of the small screen real-estate ... so that demo of the Flash app that ran without changes on iPhone / Android wasn't very flattering.

Dude, you may not buy it all you want - I just watched hour worth of cartoons from YouTube with my daghter so I don't care.

using html 5 on your ipad ??? ;-) You don't need Flash to watch video on the web. The problem is that most flash content out there is designed for big screens and mouse interaction. Therefore the flash experience on mobile devices is far from optimal.

The 'designed for mouse interaction' thing is total nonsense. This has been debunked repeatedly, but people still believe it because Steve Jobs said so.

no, using mobile flash on my android of course, thank you very much.

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

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?

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

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.

HDHomeRun does want a dual-core box...

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

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.)

Air Video is nice, but you can't store movies for travelling.

ZumoCast has that functionality (a download button, for offline viewing).

Or just use Plex - a bit smarter than AIR Video - it includes placeholders so you can stop watching in the living room (via computer) and start from the same spot in bed (via iPad/iPhone).

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

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).

yet.

;-)

Does it support .rmvb format?

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)

It could.

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

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

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.

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

I don't believe there is hardware acceleration for the iPad.

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)

Awesome thanks for answering my question, I was just curious, not trying to be snarky and you answered it well. I really do appreciate the response. I love VLC I would be willing to pay for it on the iPhone, so think about charging $1.99-$2.99 for it, I'm sure others would pay also.

I do agree, but the issues are multiple:

- This isn't the usual VLC philosophy (that can change, yes)

- The application is still not very mature yet, it will get better, but that will depend on the patches...

- As you can see in an above comment of mine, the situation regarding GPL is complex, adding a cost could make a shift in the development community, that we don't want...

- Many other stuffs, that I don't have time to answer right now ;)

I understand and I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my question. Thanks!

Don't disclaim that, proclaim it! Clearly it adds credibility. Thanks for the info. I'd consider working on VLC.

Still, I have to mention it on those comments, so people know I am biased...

Biased? Maybe, but in a good way. In any case, it definitely brings a degree of relevant authority to the topic.

Thanks for joining in :)

This is why it pays to be the platform.

WOOHOO! \o/

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