BBC news apps squeeze onto iPhone, iPad The BBC Trust has waved through a Beeb news app for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, just a few months after the Corporation’s governing body mulled whether development of the software could be justified. Auntie announced today that apps had been launched for the Jesus Phone and the Jobsian fondle slab in the UK. The BBC had …
So not only content with old Maggie Shiels pretty much worshipping at the feet of old Jobsy they also have to go a launch an app for it.
Dont get me wrong, I am not an iPhone hater or lover, its just a phone.
What I dont like is that fact that companies (especially one paid by the british public) is choosing one platform over another. Why instead, cant they spend money on their mobile site for all smartphones instead of locking into a specificed ecosystem.
If I remember rightly (feel free to correct me) most android and iOS devices can support a wide range of modern web formats and standards so making "pretty" online portals shouldnt be too difficult.
Let's see :
I don't watch East Enders (or any soap) so why should I pay for that ?
I don't watch terrestrial TV, so why should I pay for that ?
I don't read the Guardian so why should the government pay to advertise in that (a single supplier in a large market place ?
Oh yes - let's all just pay for only the government (tax payer funded) stuff we actually use
"What I dont like is that fact that companies (especially one paid by the british public) is choosing one platform over another."
They're not. They're just making it a little easier. You can still visit the mobile site (or indeed the full BBC news site) using Safari on the iPhone and I'm guessing it's the same with all phones.
Not having a TV or a licence I can safely say this means little to me :-) Except I have a mobile phone and a computer with net access - this is where it starts to get messy.
This is because a little london based web-birdy suggested that the BBC is pushing harder than ever to get live broadcast content on net enabled devices such as Iphones so that they can request that anyone with a net enabled device must purchase a licence as any such equipment constitues broadcast reception equipment. Yes that old chestnut looks to be seen as the saviour of upper managements >20Kpa expense budgets. Canvas is part ofthe same strategy.
Already there have been cases where small business have been conned into paying over 500UKP per annum for a "commercial" TV licence because thier *laptops* that sales staff use came with a builtin TV decoder. From the guidelines battery operated (standalone) devices do not require a licence but TVL^WBBC enforcer/threats/nastysell still gets the dosh.
I would like this, except that the app doesn't work very well, and the BBC News mobile site is already excellent.
There will always be competing standards, it's just something we have to live with. The likes of the BBC choose to develop for iOS because of user numbers. If you want to access the services on a variety of platforms - there's always HTML.
Nice to see the BBC releasing an app (and two others next in the line) for a three month-old device (the iPad) before even considering a platform which had it's first device in late 2008 (Android), especially when they've only just delivered an official way of accessing the iPlayer on Andorid, but via Flash, thereby limiting it to 2.2 (and ARMv7-capable) devices (not to mentioned that they C&D-ed the unofficial BeebPlayer app that worked on all versions of Android in the process...).
We've had this sort of thing with the BBC before... it was called developing the video delivery of iPlayer with Windows Media, and eventually they took our advice, and found everyone much the happier because of it...
Where is the Symbian app, or better still, the app wrote in QT to support Symbian and Maemo and MeeGo? 3 million fondle slabs sold and it gets an app, how many Symbian mobiles are there out there?
Oh well, I'll just visit the bbc website on my N900 using Opera and having flash, though I can see no justification in making an app for a system with only 3m units worldwide, that's pretty stupid.
Because there are so many shipped devices using Meego!
Or Maemo really, compared to other platforms.
Symbian I can understand, and the BBC have actually shipped iPlayer applications for some Symbian platforms (N97 etc.).
This is old news, but I still feel the need to nag. I can understand the BBC shipping iPhone apps now, but was a bit annoyed when iPlayer was released for it when it was a very rare device in the UK with only a single network selling it. Not really investing in technology to benefit the majority of license payers.
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The app is a good idea - but poorly implemented. It spends most of it's time displaying a blank white screen, runs *incredibly* slowly and tells me that live video streaming is only supported in the UK (when I'm actually sitting in the UK on good 3G and wifi connections). Come on BBC - you need to do better than this! How much licence fee money was squandered on this poor effort?
Either the Live button dont work, or whoever programmed the code that works out where you are didnt do it correctly
My IP range is in the UK (as it's from my ISP), yet the nice BBC app says I'm not in the UK
Thank you BBC for thinking I'm not ... can I have my license fee back please
"Is there any specific bias towards Apple products on the BBC either in program content or the direction their output is being channeled?"
I dont think so. There is a bias, in the case of the iPhone app, towards the most popular smartphone.
It really is a no-brainer isn't it? Given an unlimited budget, you'd release apps for all the smartphone platforms at the same time. Or you could do the sensible thing and release an app for the greatest possible audience first, check that it's viable, update same and release for the second tier and so on. That'll be why an Android app is coming later in the year. And why meego, symbian and bada are going to have to wait longer.
A little realism instead of continual carping wouldn't go amiss.
And no, I don't work for the BBC and equally, no, I don't own an iPhone or any iPad or even an Android phone.
Last time I looked, Apple were third in the smartphone sales figures for 2009 *by platform*, behind Symbian (which has nearly 50% of the market) and Blackberry. So, yes, by all means write and release apps in popularity order, but make sure you use the correct figures.
The reality, of course, is that the iPhone appeals to a certain type of personality, which is over-represented in the decision makers within media companies. Which is good, 'cos it keeps the little buggers off the streets....
GJC
...the iPhone is a popular news story, but it definitely does not have the biggest market share.
Any BBC news application should've been built for Symbian first, then Blackberry, before the iPhone platform.
The BBC's bias towards the iPhone has been abundantly clear in recent years. What happened was all the pundits were given free iPhones and tons of extra marketing was directed their way so now they wax lyrical about it.
And no, I don't work for the BBC either, and no I don't own an iPhone or Android or iPad.
Just downloaded the app half expecting it to be rubbish, and much to my surprise it isn't at all. I'm sure different people's mileage will vary but from where I'm sitting the quality of video playback was incredibly good, and this is on a ye olde iPhone 3G. The live stream was pin sharp too. As it's obviously not coded in Flash does this mean the BBC had to re-encode all its vids for HTML5 or something? Or is it simpler than that?
And I wouldn't get too wound up by there not being an Android version, for all the faults of the BBC, the iPlayer department seem to actually know their stuff, so I would expect them to release an Android version in due course.
I used it for the first time last night on the train in an area where 3G reception is spotty and loading web pages is typically slow. It's very quick, easy to use and makes much better use of available bandwidth because it cuts out most of the HTML cruft. Back home, I found I can now see embedded video clips that I would not normally have access to due to lack of flash on iOS. So it gets a big thumbs up from me. I will be using this regularly from now on. Thanks Auntie!
Dear god, there are a lot of whingers on this thread. Try reading the article! They're developing versions for other platforms (sorry Symbian lovers, imo the time for your platform is coming to an end): android and blackberry are getting versions soon.
The BBC are absolutely right to develop for the iPhone first - like many other developers who make games/apps for iPhone before other platforms. It's not favouritism or the BBC being fanbois - it's common sense. If they developed for all platforms at the same time and spent loads on it, there'd be more whingers complaining about how their license fee was being wasted. They can't win!
Oh and for what it's worth, I love the app :)
You're bang on. All you have to do is read about the iPhone 4 antenna issues.
Last article I read the comments on, there were only 4 posters who actually owned an iPhone (out of 100+ posters). Three of them had no problems. The other one did.
That's a ratio of "knowing what you're talking about" to "being a moany arse" at about 25/1
I don't get the whinging android users...Surely you bunch on tinkers have hacked your phone to have flash on it, because oh yeah officially it can't do it either...Conveniently forgotten now...
But even more so the tinkerers way is sure to setup the rss feed you read via your terminal emulator, not? Come on are you linux or not ;-)
Fail wasn't thin on the ground in your corner either!
"There was an iPlayer app for Android. The Beeb had it removed."
It wasn't an iPlayer app. It was an application that was doing things the Beeb did not approve of with their (copyrighted) data...
"Your last paragraph makes no sense."
It made sense to me but then I know a little about tinkering, RSS and other things related to computers!
All those saying that the BBC is not favouring a specific platform are missing an important point. Firstly, they have they thrown all their effort into developing for Apple platforms - remember that Android was around long before the iPad, and the iPad has a much smaller user base - fobbing us off with their excuse of "we'll make it later."
On top of that, there *was* an excellent 3rd-party app for accessing both live and iPlayer streams. No profit was being made from it, and even after its developer offered the code for the app to the Beeb, they still shut it off. So they removed BeebPlayer from Android whilst barrelling ahead with an app for iPad, which is, let's face it, a niche product in this country.
And did anyone see their so-called "report" on Apple on BBC Breakfast last week? That wasn't a report, it was an advert! A ten-minute Apple-is-amazing splooge, regurgitating Jobs' doublethink regarding the Judas Phone, promoting his products as much as possible, and actually trying to pretend that Apple not only invented smartphones, but apps as well.
I've long said that the BBC needs a good whack across the back of the knees for their obvious and continuing promotion of Apple products, and this is just another example of why.
"Android supports Flash in a number of different ways. "
...but not all the ways that are supported on the desktop versions.
Which bits are missing? I'll bet it's not the bits that make it a buggy, bloated battery-drainer!
Flash is on the verge of being superceded. Anyone who says otherwise is either a huge fanboi or still drives a horse and trap and thinks seeing a woman's ankle is unseemly.
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