flash on iOS (iphone/ipod/ipad)

[stefan]

apparently the Skyfire web brower has been approved for the iphone and will be available this thursday for $3.

it converts flash video to HTML5 which can be viewed in iOS.

technically Skyfire just extends capabiliity of safari and the conversion is happening not on the device itself but on one of Skyfire's servers and is then streamed --- to protect privacy on secure sites the enhancement is turned off

Hulu blocks the Skyfire browser, it doesn't work with interactive games, and it doesn't work with non-video flash content


LINK (http://money.cnn.com/2010/11/02/technology/skyfire/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote) to article
LINK (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/11/02/skyfire_ios_browser_approved_by_apple_converts_fla sh_video_to_html5.html) to article



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGai5Nf9BwU

[accadacca]

Wow! That's pretty cool! :popcorn:

[Iceaxe]

Basically you are saying that you can pay good money, to buy a work around, that circumvents Apples ridiculous restrictions and that's exciting....

Or did I miss something in the translation?!?

[stefan]

Basically you are saying that you can pay good money, to buy a work around, that circumvents Apples ridiculous restrictions and that's exciting....

Or did I miss something in the translation?!?

either that or it's $3 for software development (and server time?) that may have benefits in the long run if html5 proves to be a more effective way of viewing video on mobile devices

seems to me an interesting approach (skyfire) that may or may not be widely used. different approaches can be good for innovation in all walks of life as you well know. status quo is great if it's the best thing out there by a long shot. it's not clear that flash is the best thing out there for mobile devices. (note: i have no idea what the best thing out there is)

[Iceaxe]

But its just converting flash video to HTML5..... which means you are not going to get a better product then the original flash video.....

Now.... if HTML5 turns out to be the cool new thing thats a different story.... but that's also not what this app does... the only thing about this app I like is they have figured out a way to get an outside server to do all the heavy lifting.... I can see a bunch of possible uses for that technology.

[accadacca]

3 more bones compared to what I have already spent on Apple products...no biggie. :lol8:

[stefan]

But its just converting flash video to HTML5..... which means you are not going to get a better product then the original flash video.....

Now.... if HTML5 turns out to be the cool new thing thats a different story.... but that's also not what this app does... the only thing about this app I like is they have figured out a way to get an outside server to do all the heavy lifting.... I can see a bunch of possible uses for that technology.

this is more about the performance of the format itself on the device, rather than about the quality of the video in either format. so in this sense it's not clear flash is a better product. (flash also has security issues, is proprietary,...)

apple is suggesting on a mobile device (where processor is reduced and batterylife limited) that html5 is better performance-wise than flash which is a big part of why they made the decision to take this path of blocking flash
seems over time this will be tested.

so, beyond the fact that flash video doesn't play on the device without jailbreaking, skyfire also serves as a method to deliver html5 rather than flash to the phone. (not sure if it's better bandwidth-wise).

skyfire is also available for android, nokia, and windows ... so it might gain a large userbase

it's worth mentioning that youtube has both flash and html5 versions of many of the videos on the site. many other sites out there have multiple formats as well. but there are many that are truly flash only (like comedy central, i think)

but as far as the outside server doing the heavy-lifting, that's the future of cloud computing