Joost: 46K videos for iPhone, touch
By Ronald O Carlson
When it comes to smart phones, without the iPhone there would have been zero growth in the segment last quarter and the force driving Apple’s latest world beater is the AppStore and software.
The latest killer application—my list includes Sol Free (solitaire), FaceBook, AOL Radio and Google Earth—to hit the App Store is Joost (iTunes), an iPhone / touch port of the popular flash-based (bleck!) online video service that offers 46,000 titles, including 18,000 music videos, 400 TV series and 1,200 movies and short films.
“iPhones are a prime example of great innovation blended with amazing design. And what’s even more is that they create an experience—you don’t think about using a piece of software on a piece of hardware. You touch it, you use it, and your face lights up, you ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’”–Henrik Werdelin, Joost.
There’s no business like the iPhone
Quoting a Needham & Co write up, AppleInsider reports that worldwide smartphone shipments increased 28.6% during third quarter, raising the devices’ share of the overall market from 12.2% in June (11.2% last year) to 13.8%.
“Apple’s iPhone 3G, introduced in July, is the only reason smartphone growth did not slow in September,” explained Needham analyst Charles Wolf. “Apple shipped almost seven-million iPhones in the quarter, accounting for all of the sequential shipment growth in the quarter and then some.”
However, Wolf acknowledged that 2-million of those near 7-million Apple 3G handsets represented shipped, but unsold, channel inventory. Still, he expects the iPhone to maintain or grow its share of the market on the back of Apple’s tightly hardware / software ecosystem with Windows Mobile and Symbian OS handset makers suffering the most through the current downturn.
So, how well does Joost work? Is your face gonna light up to the accompaniment of oohs and aahs?
I gonna give a qualified “yes!” That is, watching short-form content (TV, music videos, etc) is great via Joost on the small, small screen of the iPhone / touch, which is the majority of titles available. I found that the browser loads fast and content loads fast, too. And, the quality is really as good as you could expect—crisp n’ smoooth—given the physical constraints
Still, movies like The Fifth Element (free, baby!) do load quickly and, yes, the playback is crisp n’ smooth, but it suffers from the same issue that any other full-length feature film does on a handheld—the screen’s too darn small to watch for long. But, heck, you can always put it aside for a couple minutes and come back to it later. That said, although there aren’t scene or chapter markers, you can drag the progress indicator to whatever place in the movie / video / program that you want. Imprecise, but functional.
Another caveat is that Joost for iPhone is wifi only, which is understandable given the bandwidth requirements. So, you’ll need to be on a fast connection to get the near “instant on” performance I experienced on my home network (7Mbps RoadRunner, 802.11g router).
That said, on a fast network Joost is responsive and did I mention Joost for iPhone is free? Moreover, the hours I’ve spent so far watching Joost have yielded zero commercials. Awesome.
I’m loving Joost. Give it a shot (download now) and come back to share your impressions…
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