Apple Made Its Own YouTube App

Since it didn’t need to leave room for a hardware keyboard The iPhone had the biggest display of almost any mobile phone out there, and it was also well-suited, when held sideways, to watching video. Apple wanted to showcase this, so it knew it had to find a way to let users plug into the burgeoning world of streaming video.

Since there was no App Store, and YouTube in those days wasn’t in any way optimized for a mobile browser or the iPhone’s H.264 video format, Apple decided to build its own YouTube app and include it on the iPhone. The app allowed users to browse, search for, view, and share YouTube videos natively on the iPhone, and it was arguably a better app for its simplicity and speed than what Google now offers.