“About bloody time!” were the words that first sprung to mind when I found out Vimeo have finally released an app for the iPhone, quickly followed by “Oooo” when I realised they’d gone beyond a simple screening room model and included production tools as well. It’s true that for a while now you’ve been able to watch Vimeo videos on your iDevice through Safari, but compared to the computer experience it always felt a bit piecemeal, especially when you came across videos that were unplayable.

The new app promises the whole Vimeo experience and I have to say, after playing with it for the last hour or so, it’s possibly the best 1.0 iPhone release I’ve seen and most importantly, gives me the immersive Vimeo experience I’m used to on my computer, along with pretty straight forward editing tools right on my phone.

The downside – and I admit I’m being picky here – is that you’re restricted from blindly surfing Vimeo’s content. At the moment you can watch videos from your Vimeo inbox, Watch Later queue, Likes (limited to the most recent 50) and selected channels in the Browse section. What you can’t do is watch a film, click through to the user and consume their back catalogue, which is the main way I discover new talent to feature on DN. I also couldn’t see a way to Subscribe or Message or Add Contact, which is a shame but far from a deal breaker as you do still have the option to add interesting videos to the Watch Later queue, so you could follow up on anything once you’re back on a computer. As I said, I’m being overly picky of such a comprehensive initial release, let’s leave the engineers something to do in the updates.

Head over to the Vimeo Staff Blog for comprehensive app details and you can grab it right now from iTunes.

https://vimeo.com/21648733

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