Latest iOS 6 beta missing YouTube, but it has nothing to do with the smartphone wars
By now you’ve probably heard news that Apple has removed the YouTube from the iOS 6 beta. This is important considering there’s no other YouTube app to be had on iOS. I’m willing to bet many of you initially took this as a shot to Google.
Apple, as you know, is in a “thermonuclear” war, of sorts, against Android. While they haven’t been attacking Google and Android directly Apple has been going at some of Google’s biggest OEM partners, Samsung being the absolute biggest.
But the move to remove YouTube from iOS 6 likely has very little to do with any of that. In fact, it probably has nothing to do with that. Apple did something they didn’t usually do and explained to us why they what they did. The answer?
Simple: their YouTube license ran out and they weren’t going to renew it. It still sounds shady in that regard, no? Well Apple went on to explain that Google was in the process of making its own YouTube app and that it would eventually be available in the App Store.
This just became a lot less interesting (and relevant) for us Android folks. Not only does it not have anything to do with Apple’s animosity toward Android, it’s actually the better route for them to take considering how crappy iOS’s current YouTube app is.
Google can create the experience they envisioned this way, and users can enjoy timely updates instead of Apple just letting it sit there like the piece of trash it is. And since iOS 6 is still in beta form practically no one is affected yet.
If you decided to install the beta build then that’s on you, not Apple. Consumer releases have been untouched and will probably remain so until Google releases its own app. Now let’s get back to your regularly scheduled programming, folks, because there’s pretty much nothing to see here. [The Verge]