Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Adobe™ Flash Coming To iPhone, Sort Of

Hate seeing that warning (pictured, left) that you need to either upgrade or install Adobe™ Flash on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch?

Well, our pain may be somewhat soothed when the Skyfire browser will hit the App Store on Thursday, November 4th at 9 a.m. EST.  In the past year, Apple and Adobe have been in a war of words over why Flash isn't on iOS devices.  Steve Jobs wrote a letter about it earlier this year.  Adobe responded.  Whichever side you're on, you will almost want to buy Skyfire for $2.99.

UPDATE 11/5/2010:  It's back in the App Store.  It works nicely on the iPhone.  It works okay on the iPad.  It would be nice if there was an iPad optimized version or if it was a universal app.  I guess I'm lucky this works at all.

UPDATE 11/3/2010:  The Skyfire browser actually came out a day earlier than expected.  And guess what?  The demand drove Skyfire's servers into the ground and the app is currently "sold out." I'll update this when Skyfire gets more servers up and it's back in the App Store.

There are some caveats, though.

Skyfire will NOT support Flash-based games because of the interactivity needed.  Skyfire will support Flash-based videos - except for Hulu since the website has transitioned into a paid monthly service.  Skyfire processes Flash-based videos through its own servers then broadcasts it to your mobile device through HTML5.  Evidently, Skyfire is already a hit on Android devices - possibly because it puts the heavy processing on the Skyfire servers instead of the mobile device itself.

I'm very eager to try it on the iPad even if it may not be an iPad optimized app.  As soon as I can post the link to the app on Thursday, I will do so.

Here's a video on how Skyfire works:




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