According to this press release from Apple you will be able to watch the new h.264 encoded videos from Apple on your iPhone. Apple writes “iPhone will wirelessly stream YouTube’s content to iPhone over Wi-Fi or EDGE networks and play it on iPhone’s stunning 3.5 inch display.” I have a couple of issues here. First of all, based on the lack of flash support in the iPhone version of Safari, does this mean that we will have to begin streaming h.264 video in order for it to be viewable on an iPhone? Secondly, will we all have to buy quicktime streaming servers in order to do the same thing? I really hope that Apple has not become so shortsighted and completely dismissed the thousands of Web sites that are out there that are running flash video. I expect to see the iPhone version of Safari working with flash soon or there will be quite a few of us that will be dissappointed. Another issue is the video over the EDGE network. I have to see this to really give a good opinion on it, but EDGE is just slightly better than dialup. I am sure over Wi-Fi it will look great, but I fully expect the streaming video experience over EDGE to be somewhat lacking. We shall see.
UPDATE: Apple has added video of the new YouTube app for the iPhone. I have to admit it looks pretty good.
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