One of the things I'm surprised by on my iPad is videos on the web that won't play. By that I don't mean that most videos won't work because the iPad doesn't have flash - quite the opposite. I'm surprised when a video won't play because it so rarely happens.
Maybe I just browse all the wrong sites, but 90% of the video I come across on the iPad works just fine without jumping through hoops. Some of that is because YouTube videos are ubiquitous, but even going to a site like Penny Arcade for the first time on my iPad got me video that worked well and looked good.
HTML5 may not be ready for YouTube, but for sites that don't need (often-draconian) content controls, HTML5 is here already.
It's not surprising that someone on HackerNews won't be affected by the lack of video options - this simply isn't a creative arts forum.
But for creatives like myself, Apple's restrictions are difficult to bear. My own blog, vj.tv is difficult to view on my iDevices because half of the embedded videos are unplayable (vimeo only offers HTML5 playback directly from their site).
It's painful to have a hardware/OS/music company dictate the terms of how we can access our stuff when clearly the "standard" is lacking. I and others appreciate someone from YouTube coming forward and supporting our views and needs.
Edit: Wow, I hadn't realized how bad it was. YouTube is also blocking all the fan-made videos from the iPad. For instance, this one is a Lady Gaga song with lyrics overlaid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAoi_-_EVio
Maybe I just browse all the wrong sites, but 90% of the video I come across on the iPad works just fine without jumping through hoops. Some of that is because YouTube videos are ubiquitous, but even going to a site like Penny Arcade for the first time on my iPad got me video that worked well and looked good.
HTML5 may not be ready for YouTube, but for sites that don't need (often-draconian) content controls, HTML5 is here already.