Roger Fingas
In Safari, the Touch Bar on Apple's new MacBook Pro can currently be used to scrub through YouTube videos — including normally unskippable 30-second pre-roll ads, owners have discovered.
The unintentional feature was highlighted by a number of posters on Reddit. It may be tapping into Safari's built-in HTML5 video player, which doesn't normally appear onscreen when watching YouTube.
Scrub bars are one of the new possibilities presented by the Touch Bar, which replaces the Pro's previous function key setup with a multitouch display that adapts to each running app.
Google and/or Apple will presumably begin working on a way of suppressing the ad-skipping feature, since the former and many video creators are dependent on YouTube ad revenues. Those parties are already coping with browser-based ad blockers.
The first MacBook Pros with Touch Bars began arriving on doorsteps earlier this week, and are only just beginning to hit Apple's own stores. Fresh online orders are being shipped in 4 to 5 weeks.
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14 Comments
Shhhhhhh, don't tell Google.
Value added!
Basically ships with a free subscription to YouTube Red. ;0)
I'm sure GOOG will try to interfere with this. Hopefully Apple will not. This could be a killer feature of the new MacBooks.
Why should Apple do something about this? Google is constantly trying to find ways to make more money on the back of users. YouTube used to work great on iPad with the native video player but now it loads Google's inferior interface.
I say screw them.
Just when I thought television ads were the worst with about 25% regular advertising content (non-embedded) then came the internet with a 15 second ad for every 30 second video and ads plastered along the left and right of everything. And pop ups. And pop unders. And huge ads burning my limited data plan. And ads gobbling tons of CPU resources. And ads requiring a response to "are you sure you want to leave this page?" And ads automatically blaring audio. And ads carrying malware.
I'm fine with ad-supported sites but it has gone too far.