DevJuice: A real-world lesson in why you must test on-device
Dave Caolo's daughter has been working hard on a school report regarding the Everglades National Park. So he downloaded a nice-looking iPad app on the subject for her. Swiping around it looked great. And then he tapped on a video.
This is what happened.
In the TUAW back channel, we scratched our heads, trying to brainstorm any reason for an app to directly link to a YouTube video that didn't support mobile. The best we could come up with was this: we figure that the developer never tested the video on an actual iOS device.
But then we tested this theory by trying out the video URL on the iPhone simulator. It didn't work there either. So probably the developer never tested the video at all.
That said, although the simulator looks like an iPhone, it never provides a perfect representation of the physical and computation abilities of device deployment. Sometimes, it may reflect a Mac reality over an iOS one. So if you specifically provide a video as part of your app, you should really make sure that it plays back within that app, and not just on the simulator.
We'd also recommend that you control the rights and distribution of any material that's fundamental and essential to the app in question. That addresses the problem of another video used within the app.
It said: "YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated due to copyright violations."
Oh, excellent.
