MediaTube for Mac

If you're not a fan of viewing YouTube in your browser because of Flash problems or other issues, a standalone YouTube app might be a good idea. MediaTube for Mac is a basic program that lets you search and view YouTube videos without using your browser. It works, but we weren't particularly impressed with its features or interface.

MediaTube's appearance is somewhat iTunes-inspired, particularly the Cover Flow-style video preview pane. The program is easy enough to figure out; there's a search box and controls for playing, pausing, and stopping videos. What we didn't love about MediaTube was that it shows its search results in an oddly fragmented way; a pane on the left shows all the video titles, while the preview pane displays thumbnails of each video. Having the video titles so separate from the videos, themselves, was odd and hard to process, visually. The program's limited features include a fullscreen mode and the ability to go directly to a specific video if you know the video's URL. Don't be fooled by the Download item on the toolbar; you'll think that you can download the audio of a video as an MP3, but it turns out that you'll have to install a separate program to do this. MediaTube doesn't come with a Help file, but it's hard to fault a program with so few features for not including documentation.

MediaTube for Mac installs and uninstalls without issues; but while it is functional, it doesn't seem to offer enough to make it better than using your browser.