YouTube for iOS Review

Apple's most recent iOS 6, most notable for the seemingly "horrific" new Maps app (which we disagree with, right here), is doing away with any ties to Google. The YouTube app is gone (okay, I admit, that app was bad, very bad), but unlike Maps, nothing was left to fill the void. So Google came out and quickly rolled out its new and improved YouTube app.

The new YouTube app

How does it look?

After signing in with your Google account, you'll see typical Google. Very minimalistic, with a simple list of videos from your subscription box which sport huge icons along with a search button and sidebar. That's pretty much all there is. When watching a video, you can now view a video while reading the comments or description. Turning your device automatically hides the description and puts you in full screen mode. It works pretty much exactly how you expect, and in this regard, Google has done a great job.

New YouTube App Subscriptions

Old YouTube App Subscriptions

New YouTube App Video

Old YouTube App Video (Hint: You can't
watch a video and read the
description at the same time

Performance

One thing that really bothered me to no end with Apple's Youtube app was that no matter how bad my connection speed was (and it's notoriously bad in my area), it insisted on playing the high quality video wherever possible. This meant that I couldn't watch a video without it constantly buffering, frustrating me to the point of giving up. Thankfully, Google's new YouTube app knows better than to download more than it can handle, and uses standard quality whenever connection speeds are slow.

Long way to go

Unfortunately, after the first few weeks, letting the excitement of the new app settle down, I've come to realize that all that praise ends there. Google has a long way to go with their YouTube app to be really killer. What about annotations? Back in 2007 when the original YouTube app was made, there were no annotations, and its understandable that they were never included back then. But there are a lot of YouTubers nowadays who make really high quality videos now and many like to include links in their videos for easy access. To those on mobile devices, there's absolutely no ways of seeing annotations. It's really a major let down for the YouTube addicted like myself.

Usability could also be improved as well. Categories are stored underneath subscriptions in the side bar. That's a huge mind blank by Google. What if I have 300 subscriptions? I'm going to scroll forever every time I want to choose a category. And those video icons. I initially thought I'd like the size, but they take up literally half the screen. That's not really surprising, because their desktop YouTube page is notorious for being very unorganized.

Conclusion

Don't confuse the fact that I spent half this review ranting about the new YouTube app. It works just fine and watching YouTube videos works just perfectly. It's just that YouTube has been around for the entire life of the iPhone, it's a little frustrating that their isn't a way of watching YouTube videos on a mobile device that feels like a pleasurable experience. But it's exactly what you expect, and it's definitely hands down better than Apple's five year old app. But personally, I'm going to stick with the mobile web app.