Play+: A YouTube viewing and discovery app for Mac OS X
Developer Saied Ghaffari of It's About Time was perplexed by something recently; while there are good dedicated YouTube apps for iOS, there's nothing similar for OS X. Instead of a clean, fast app for discovering and viewing YouTube videos, Mac users must rely on web browsers and the YouTube site. The result isn't that great -- you can't type or read comments if you put the video in full-screen mode; scrubbing doesn't work very well; and the video pages have a lot of wasted white space. Seeing an opportunity for a better way to discover and view YouTube video on a Mac, It's About Time is releasing Play+ (US$1.99 introductory price, $4.99 regular) today.
The app launches and loads in a heartbeat, opening on a screenful of trending most viewed videos. Also along the bottom are buttons for different genres of videos: music, comedy, trailers and tech news. As you'd expect with a video-discovery tool, Play+ also features a search tool, and the app launches with focus on the search field. There are also locations to view your favorite videos and a history of what you've viewed.
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Clicking on any of the video thumbnails begins play in a window that displays comments on one side and related videos below. During play, it's possible to literally scrub most videos frame by frame, making it possible to analyze video closely.
Where Play+ is so phenomenal is in full-screen mode on a 27-inch iMac, showing up to 50 thumbnails at a time. Most of the videos play in HTML5 rather than Flash, so there are far fewer ads and annotations are hidden by defaults.
For fans of YouTube, Play+ is an absolute must. It's fast; it makes great use of your screen real estate; and video quality is phenomenal. Be sure to get the app during the introductory $1.99 pricing for a real bargain.
