Don’t get too excited just yet. Yes, the next version of the iPhone OS will feature the ability to embed YouTube videos directly into a webpage. What you get is an embedded YouTube video playing on the website like you’d expect from your desktop. But, there’s a catch. You can only view embedded YouTube videos that have already been converted to H.264 encoding by YouTube. In other words, videos that are available through the iPhone’s YouTube application will be viewable as embedded videos on webpages.
The feature works similarly to the way that iTransmogrify can make embedded YouTube videos viewable in the webpage. But, while iTransmogrify uses a bit of data URL magic to get its work done, the new iPhone v2.0 firmware apparently uses a Safari plug-in to play nice withe embedded YouTube videos. The same YouTube plug-in that I mentioned some time ago.
It sure would be nice if Apple would let Adobe develop that full-featured Flash plug-in for the iPhone. It’s evident that the iPhone’s Safari browser can already work with plug-ins, and it would be a shame if third-party iPhone application developers (or at least Adobe and Sun) are kept out of iPhone plug-in heaven.
[Via: iPhone Atlas]