Quick App: YouTube Mini 18
Looking for an enhanced YouTube experience on your webOS device? Look no further than the YouTube Mini app by JM Productions. What may seem on the surface to be a retread of the built-in YouTube player, available on every webOS device, is a portal into your personal YouTube channel/account. Logging into your account gives you the added features of viewing your uploaded videos, your subscriptions and your favorite videos. In addition to access of your personal YouTube account are enhanced search features much like those found on the actual YouTube website, allowing you to sort by relevance, date, view count and rating.
YouTube Mini uses the built-in player to handle the actual playback, running two open cards at a time. Switching back and forth between the two vs. a dedicated in-app viewer, and, the lack of visible star ratings are about the only things we’d like to see improved here. Minor quibbles aside, there is no better app to get you beyond the basic built-in player than YouTube Mini. While not a new app (first appearing in the summer of 2010) it is certainly a worth-while app. It is available in the Palm App Catalog for $1.99.
18 Comments
it still amazes me that palm users will shell out 1.99 (which it could be .99) for a Youtube app. Android and iOS youtube are full-featured already, Youtube is a standard app these days, why pay for something like that? It's ridiculous.
The biggest thing holding back webos is that companies are not interested in it because there is no one there. And when there will be people there, it will be at least a year from now, and then you will get your FREE Youtube full-featured app where you can finally log into your own account.
On a side note, I purchased an iPhone over the weekend and was flabbergasted at how robust the apps were, and how everyone was on board with an app. With Palm, sure you can overclock it until it burns your hand, but what do you do on your phone if there are no apps to play with? Play Angry Birds?
Tried it... Looks like an awesome concept compared to the "regular" youtube app. Although, going back and forth between 2 cards got old really fast. If all would be within one card I would say it is the perfect replacement for the provided youtube app. With that being said. WebOS PHONE leaks anyone?!!?
Does it also have a download option built in? Thats the kicker for me. I download and the play the music videos in my car.
I like that it uses the built in youtube app, this way I can search for another video while one is playing
It looks so much like webOS 2.0's youtube native app.
So is this app absolete when 2.0 hits?
Bout time :) I hope this is the start of a trend.
Now why couldn't the bundled youtube player be like this?
Come to think of it i find it quite unusable even on wifi. I have to use the download patch to watch vids. Crazy.
Had this app for a while, it's ok. Kinda wished it used it's own player though.
Thanks for the introduction to this app!
I was always pretty dissapointed by the built in app.
But I got one remark. You mention
"the lack of visible star ratings" as disadvantage
Could it be, that you haven't been on YouTube lately?
As far as I know, the stars are obsolete for some time now, and have been replaced by a "thumbs up/down"-button.
Perhaps you can revise this in your article.
--Helmut.
meh
This app is great. I tried the free version and other than the ads I couldn't tell if there is a difference, but there is. The free version doesn't allow you to log in to your account, is ad supported and doesn't have the search options. TOTALLY WORTH IT!
Comments system on PreCentral is... not working? Or at least not working well. I've noticed lately it says "zero" comments when there are comments and after posting comments they appear, only to disappear later on. Great.
13 more days.......
YouTube support through the browser is pretty good and offers the same utilities as YouTube Mini. I'd be interested in the difference between the runtime memory footprints of the web browser w/ the YouTube page loaded and YouTube Mini, however I don't have the skills to check that. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
What's the real advantage to this app over just bookmarking and using YouTube's touch site?
Maybe it's only minor to some, but one difference is the ability to sort. The YouTube Mobile site doesn't sort your own searches as far as I can tell. Still worth the $1.99 for me.
$1.99? Call me when its free.