7 ms·

love that this was built from the Apollo developer. Obviously incredibly talented.

futtureboomr 3y ago
[dead]
p-e-w 3y ago
I'm amazed that someone who has been this badly burned by a corporation controlling their API access would even think about writing another app that uses third-party APIs, to be honest.
- dumbo-octopus 3y ago
  Seems like a lot of the motivation was just recouping lost revenue from his existing YouTube player integration code.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  You don't need third-party APIs to make a YouTube viewer. There's a bunch of 3rd-party YouTube viewers like SmartTube, ReVanced, etc. that bypass ads and don't use the official API, plus of course the yt-dlp downloader. I'd say the lesson here is NOT to rely on official APIs. However, upon reading this blog post, it does seem he's using the official API so I guess he thinks he'll be fine as long as he doesn't block ads. Time will tell.
  - qt31415926 3y ago
    A lot of the internet would break if YouTube removed/tweaked their embedded video player so I doubt he has to worry.
    - yard2010 3y ago
      Keep in mind that this didn't prevent Facebook and Twitter doing the same, Google is just behind with these patterns, just like with everything else
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    > However, upon reading this blog post, it does seem he's using the official API so I guess he thinks he'll be fine as long as he doesn't block ads. The idea of strapping something to my face that's going to project ads into my eyeballs that I cannot look away from--well, let's say it's pretty clear technology took a wrong term some time ago. Apple should do the right thing and enforce a strong "no ads" policy for this product. Keep it premium for people who shell out thousands of dollars for it.
    - Gigachad 3y ago
      You can look away from it. The OS doesn’t give apps access to the eye tracking info.
    - Kwpolska 3y ago
      You can get rid of the ads on YouTube by paying 0.4% of the Vision Pro base model price per month.
      - shiroiuma 3y ago
        That does nothing for all the "sponsor segments" embedded in the videos.
        hunter2_ 3y ago
        Try sponsorblock, or stn which includes it.
        shiroiuma 3y ago
        AFAIK, sponsorblock isn't going to work with a 3rd-party YouTube viewer app like this.
        hunter2_ 3y ago
        Yeah, I guess STN (a viewer app in which sponsorblock works) is of the variety that TFA says makes Google "grumpy."
  - yard2010 3y ago
    I wanted my bot to "see" a youtube video and sum it up - so me being the naïve 1998 kid me, spent like 2 hours setting up the API access to get the transcript of a video only to realize I can use this API only on videos I uploaded which is a complete bullshit because as soon as that happened I ditched it and wrote a script using puppeteer scraping the the transcript of ANY video, which ironically took less time than setting up the API. So yeah I learned my lesson I should not resort to piracy, but start with it
- kccqzy 3y ago
  If you had read the article you would find that this app doesn't really need YouTube API access. It's just an iframe. It's 1998 tech.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    In that case, isn’t it a race to the bottom with just someone else doing something similar? What makes this special?
    - dharmab 3y ago
      Technology doesn't need to be "special" to be useful.
    - Kwpolska 3y ago
      Nothing makes this special, maybe a well-known indie developer.
    - notso411 3y ago
      The fact that he wrote the apollo app? I don’t know. It’s not exactly revolutionary is it
    - manquer 3y ago
      Good product is first about understanding the user and the problem statement very well foremost. Most product moats are just that, everything else is a function of that. Designing a great UX to interact with the system is the other key ingredient, that requires step 1 and also a great deal of creativity. Anyone can copy same the features after someone as good as Christian Selig has made an app, Few can do similar or better starting on their own, especially indie developers, so he can always be ahead if he wants to. Christian also chooses apps to work which are third party platform controlled for a reason I think. He can operate in markets like this as a extremely talented indie developer that very few competent teams with capital funding would attempt with platform risk. Beeper is the most recent example on Apple, Christian himself got burned in Reddit[1][2]. Finally he prices at a point so low that people are just paying for the brand - for a well designed reliable software which won't crash on them. He likely will not lose all that much sales if a lower priced/free product comes out Safari browser based Youtube.com is already there . --- [1] He can afford to in the sense his monthly cash burn is very low compared to any normal company and he doesn't have 100's of employees to worry about if he gets kicked out. [2] Even then he has carefully choose an API that Google will have a hard time just blocking him ( and not every other use of embedded playback), and he also is careful not to use APIs to render the UI he has just skinned the main website with light CSS.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Nah this approach is solid. It’s web views not api. It’s basically a web browser. I imagine other iOS browsers like brave will come to vision and have YouTube etc video playback and demonstrate it’s tolerated even with Adblock probably. But maybe easier to get by if more clearly a multipurpose web browser.
- po 3y ago
  He's not selling it as a subscription so there's very little downside. Some people will send him $5 and if/when YouTube cuts it off (can they really?) he doesn't really owe anyone anything.
  - Hamuko 3y ago
    >if/when YouTube cuts it off (can they really?) It's called "Juno for YouTube" so they could definitely send a cease and desist for the YouTube trademark.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      It uses the magic word: “for” They’ll probably still send a C&D but it will be defensible.
      - yard2010 3y ago
        But.. aren't most of the c&d defensible? It's like a mafia scare tactic to dominate something - sometimes just the "or else" destroys ppl lives
- unobatbayar 3y ago
  It seems that he found a (momentary?) gap in the Vision Pro app market and promptly seized the opportunity.
  - consumer451 3y ago
    Absolutely. He's an indie product hacker who we could all learn from. "oh, he's entirely reliant on the platforms!" Meanwhile, his cap table is himself, he does quite well, and doesn't owe anything to anybody. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/largest-spca-fundraiser-1.5221693 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/largest-spca-fund...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
zyang 3y ago
I have a feeling is going to be a speedrun of the reddit saga. Google obviously doesn't want a smooth youtube experience on vision pro.
- spiderice 3y ago
  Why is that? Obviously they don’t want a third party app to be that experience, but they make native apps for everything else. Also, Christian can’t help himself but attach his apps to large companies that can cut him off overnight. Haha.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - justworkout 3y ago
    > but they make native apps for everything else. They do. But it's difficult to call anything they make "smooth." Google does some decent backend stuff but their frontend experience is not.
    - jack_pp 3y ago
      the android youtube / music app is much better than any other audio / video app i have including spotify, netflix
      - Mindwipe 3y ago
        Come on. The YouTube Music app blocks you from navigating to a different song at the same time as playing a track if it decides that the track is primarily aimed at under 18s (such as the theme from a retro cartoon). It's UI might charitably be described as a total catastrophe.
        heapoverflow 3y ago
        That is a COPPA compliance thing and is true on the regular YouTube app as well: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/01/30/why-youtube-videos-made-for-kids-wont-play-in-the-miniplayer-a-summary-of-coppa-compliance/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/01/30/why-youtube-videos-...

[dead]

I'm amazed that someone who has been this badly burned by a corporation controlling their API access would even think about writing another app that uses third-party APIs, to be honest.

dumbo-octopus 3y ago
Seems like a lot of the motivation was just recouping lost revenue from his existing YouTube player integration code.
shiroiuma 3y ago
You don't need third-party APIs to make a YouTube viewer. There's a bunch of 3rd-party YouTube viewers like SmartTube, ReVanced, etc. that bypass ads and don't use the official API, plus of course the yt-dlp downloader. I'd say the lesson here is NOT to rely on official APIs. However, upon reading this blog post, it does seem he's using the official API so I guess he thinks he'll be fine as long as he doesn't block ads. Time will tell.
- qt31415926 3y ago
  A lot of the internet would break if YouTube removed/tweaked their embedded video player so I doubt he has to worry.
  - yard2010 3y ago
    Keep in mind that this didn't prevent Facebook and Twitter doing the same, Google is just behind with these patterns, just like with everything else
- ryandrake 3y ago
  > However, upon reading this blog post, it does seem he's using the official API so I guess he thinks he'll be fine as long as he doesn't block ads. The idea of strapping something to my face that's going to project ads into my eyeballs that I cannot look away from--well, let's say it's pretty clear technology took a wrong term some time ago. Apple should do the right thing and enforce a strong "no ads" policy for this product. Keep it premium for people who shell out thousands of dollars for it.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    You can look away from it. The OS doesn’t give apps access to the eye tracking info.
  - Kwpolska 3y ago
    You can get rid of the ads on YouTube by paying 0.4% of the Vision Pro base model price per month.
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
      That does nothing for all the "sponsor segments" embedded in the videos.
      - hunter2_ 3y ago
        Try sponsorblock, or stn which includes it.
        shiroiuma 3y ago
        AFAIK, sponsorblock isn't going to work with a 3rd-party YouTube viewer app like this.
        hunter2_ 3y ago
        Yeah, I guess STN (a viewer app in which sponsorblock works) is of the variety that TFA says makes Google "grumpy."
- yard2010 3y ago
  I wanted my bot to "see" a youtube video and sum it up - so me being the naïve 1998 kid me, spent like 2 hours setting up the API access to get the transcript of a video only to realize I can use this API only on videos I uploaded which is a complete bullshit because as soon as that happened I ditched it and wrote a script using puppeteer scraping the the transcript of ANY video, which ironically took less time than setting up the API. So yeah I learned my lesson I should not resort to piracy, but start with it
kccqzy 3y ago
If you had read the article you would find that this app doesn't really need YouTube API access. It's just an iframe. It's 1998 tech.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  In that case, isn’t it a race to the bottom with just someone else doing something similar? What makes this special?
  - dharmab 3y ago
    Technology doesn't need to be "special" to be useful.
  - Kwpolska 3y ago
    Nothing makes this special, maybe a well-known indie developer.
  - notso411 3y ago
    The fact that he wrote the apollo app? I don’t know. It’s not exactly revolutionary is it
  - manquer 3y ago
    Good product is first about understanding the user and the problem statement very well foremost. Most product moats are just that, everything else is a function of that. Designing a great UX to interact with the system is the other key ingredient, that requires step 1 and also a great deal of creativity. Anyone can copy same the features after someone as good as Christian Selig has made an app, Few can do similar or better starting on their own, especially indie developers, so he can always be ahead if he wants to. Christian also chooses apps to work which are third party platform controlled for a reason I think. He can operate in markets like this as a extremely talented indie developer that very few competent teams with capital funding would attempt with platform risk. Beeper is the most recent example on Apple, Christian himself got burned in Reddit[1][2]. Finally he prices at a point so low that people are just paying for the brand - for a well designed reliable software which won't crash on them. He likely will not lose all that much sales if a lower priced/free product comes out Safari browser based Youtube.com is already there . --- [1] He can afford to in the sense his monthly cash burn is very low compared to any normal company and he doesn't have 100's of employees to worry about if he gets kicked out. [2] Even then he has carefully choose an API that Google will have a hard time just blocking him ( and not every other use of embedded playback), and he also is careful not to use APIs to render the UI he has just skinned the main website with light CSS.
wahnfrieden 3y ago
Nah this approach is solid. It’s web views not api. It’s basically a web browser. I imagine other iOS browsers like brave will come to vision and have YouTube etc video playback and demonstrate it’s tolerated even with Adblock probably. But maybe easier to get by if more clearly a multipurpose web browser.
po 3y ago
He's not selling it as a subscription so there's very little downside. Some people will send him $5 and if/when YouTube cuts it off (can they really?) he doesn't really owe anyone anything.
- Hamuko 3y ago
  >if/when YouTube cuts it off (can they really?) It's called "Juno for YouTube" so they could definitely send a cease and desist for the YouTube trademark.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    It uses the magic word: “for” They’ll probably still send a C&D but it will be defensible.
    - yard2010 3y ago
      But.. aren't most of the c&d defensible? It's like a mafia scare tactic to dominate something - sometimes just the "or else" destroys ppl lives
unobatbayar 3y ago
It seems that he found a (momentary?) gap in the Vision Pro app market and promptly seized the opportunity.
- consumer451 3y ago
  Absolutely. He's an indie product hacker who we could all learn from. "oh, he's entirely reliant on the platforms!" Meanwhile, his cap table is himself, he does quite well, and doesn't owe anything to anybody. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/largest-spca-fundraiser-1.5221693 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/largest-spca-fund...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

zyang 3y ago

I have a feeling is going to be a speedrun of the reddit saga. Google obviously doesn't want a smooth youtube experience on vision pro.

spiderice 3y ago
Why is that? Obviously they don’t want a third party app to be that experience, but they make native apps for everything else. Also, Christian can’t help himself but attach his apps to large companies that can cut him off overnight. Haha.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- justworkout 3y ago
  > but they make native apps for everything else. They do. But it's difficult to call anything they make "smooth." Google does some decent backend stuff but their frontend experience is not.
  - jack_pp 3y ago
    the android youtube / music app is much better than any other audio / video app i have including spotify, netflix
    - Mindwipe 3y ago
      Come on. The YouTube Music app blocks you from navigating to a different song at the same time as playing a track if it decides that the track is primarily aimed at under 18s (such as the theme from a retro cartoon). It's UI might charitably be described as a total catastrophe.
      - heapoverflow 3y ago
        That is a COPPA compliance thing and is true on the regular YouTube app as well: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/01/30/why-youtube-videos-made-for-kids-wont-play-in-the-miniplayer-a-summary-of-coppa-compliance/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/01/30/why-youtube-videos-...