VLC Media Player, the platform that's designed to play back virtually any media file, has landed on the iPhone and iPod touch platform.

The new Version 1.1.0 brings about a few new improvements on top of making its way from the iPad only to the smaller screen.

You can now edit (well, delete) files from within the application rather than having to go through iTunes to clean things up, and more extensions are now being recognised.

Faster, better, slicker

More importantly VLC promises faster decoding, meaning it's likely that the dreaded MKV incompatibility (due to 'too slow' iPads) could be a thing of the past.

The faster decoding is due to assembly optimisations, so we assume that means it can put the video together quickly enough to run smoothly. We also want to see MPG and WMV supported on our iPhone 4 to make this a compelling product.

We're currently testing out the new VLC Media Player on the iPhone, so we'll let you know our findings as soon as we can.

Read more: http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and ... z13PmI8kqn

Somebody move this please if it isn't in the right thread

It doesn't run on the iPhone 3G, though.

Hmm, I don't have any video for vlc to play...

Get it while you can as it is about to be removed if it has not been already

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/10/vlc-ios-app-store/

I do that automatically. When ever I see an interesting app I do just that, just in case.

As I just commented, this is another fall for the GPL license. I wonder when people will learn and code their apps under less restrictive open source licenses such as the BSD license...

I like the way you blame the GPL, rather than Apple's T&C's...

To be fair, the GPL gets in the way of a lot of cool stuff, especially where linux is concerned - ZFS being the main one that comes to mind right now.

Also, Grand Central Dispatch was released under the Apache license and is therefore out of bounds for Linux because it is incompatible with the GPL.

Apple is largely a closed company, it uses this to gain money - You want to put it on more than five devices? Buy it again.
While I don't entirely agree that this is good - Indeed it's not great for the consumer. The GPL isn't a great license because it's so extreme and forceful in it's views - almost: "everything that I touch must be open otherwise it's breaking the license I'm working under", that also doesn't help the consumer either...

Apple aren't going to change their ways anytime soon because what they are doing works for them and makes them money. Had VLC been licensed under something like the BSD license or similar I wonder if it would have been just as popular, or perhaps more popular as it could have been embedded into commercial players...
As it turns out, such an experiment would result in a complete rewrite of VLC as the current code can't be relicensed...

The problem is that if you tone-down the GPL to make it "consumer" (read: business) friendly, you're missing the whole point of the GPL. The GPL is supposed to help free software to reach a critical mass in order to change attitudes towards software. If you start capitulating now, then you might as well forget about free software altogether.

Fair enough like, but isn't there a question that if it hasn't worked by now....

Hmm. I think there's always going to be free software. The GPL isn't a pre-requisite for it's existence.

I spent 4 weeks over the summer gutting GPL stuff out of an internal tool so it could be made commercial. NOT fun.

By "free" I mean free as in speech, not free as in beer.

You don't need the GPL to give away your software with the source and your blessing to go forth and tinker.