Re:What Went Down at WWDC 2019
by eugeniub on Monday June 17, 2019 @12:33PM
(#20204644)
Who still uses the stock iOS app to watch videos? There are a thousand other ways to put video files on your iPhone or iPad and tons of great apps like VLC for iOS, Infuse, etc. that offer many ways of adding video files. I don't fault Apple for not adding new features to the legacy iTunes-iOS media sync system.
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Who still uses the stock iOS app to watch videos?
Literally everybody I know, including myself.
VLC has really offered outstanding support for transferring content onto the device.
SMB, FTP, Plex servers, all the well known cloud services, even a built in web server so you can connect any web browser to your device's IP address and drag and drop files onto the device.
VLC is great and I use it personally. But it's too complicated for my kids and doesn't integrate with the parental control system. And also, millions of people use Apple's apps to consume content and my objection was that they made that process worse.
I do. It’s the best way to let my kids watch videos on planes and car trips while honoring parental controls and guided access.
Pretty much all of my non-technical family members, who are (rightfully) scared to download shady apps that promise free services with no downside.
I think a better question would have been "who uses a computer to sync iTunes videos to an iOS device?", but even that falls down when you start factoring in Internet caps and suchlike.
I’m not talking about iTunes videos. I’m talking about my other videos, like all the ripped kids DVDs that I use to entertain them.
I'm not talking about iTunes videos either. An app like VLC for iOS will be able to play anything you throw at it.
An app like VLC for iOs isn't appropriate for my two year old because it's too complicated and doesn't follow all the parental controls, but that's really not the point anyway. The point is that millions of people still use Apple's apps to watch video, and they made that process worse.