Apple Is Removing YouTube from iOS 6

Apple has removed the YouTube app from the latest beta of iOS 6 and has confirmed to the Verge that the native app will not exist at all when iOS 6 officially releases to the public. The YouTube app, if you'll remember, has been on the iPhone since the original iPhone first released.

Right now, the YouTube app has been removed in iOS 6 beta 4 for the iPhone and iPad but still exists for Apple TV. Apple's official statement:

Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended, customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the App Store.

Once a marquee feature of the iPhone and still widely used by many, the YouTube app had actually been long surpassed by its web app counterpart. That webapp was made by Google, the native app was made by Apple.

Of course, with the iPhone no longer offering an app for YouTube and YouTube being owned by Google, it's more evidence that the two companies want to kill one another but in all honesty, this is a good thing for users. If you've spent any time with the iOS YouTube app, you'd know how terrible it was. The 3G video quality was poor, the features were limited, the buffering times were slow. It was inconvenient and unpleasant, basically the opposite of what YouTube is. After highlighting the app as a key feature for the original iPhone, Apple was letting it rot.

Ultimately, this actually may be a case where everyone wins. By having Apple kill its native app, iOS users don't have to be saddled with a piss poor YouTube app. By not having to maintain a native YouTube app, Apple steps out of the awkward handshake licensing agreement it had with a company it wants to do nothing with. By making its own YouTube app, Google gets to control its own properties. And though Google doesn't exactly have the track record of building awesome iOS apps (ahem, Gmail), the excellent web app is proof that Google gets YouTube. More here.