Does Skyfire App Really Bring Flash to the iPhone? Hands On

PC Mag

The Skyfire Web Browser app, which claims to play Flash videos on the iPhone, made its debut in the Apple App Store Wednesday afternoon. For $2.99, the app will turn Web-based Flash video into HTML5 and play it on your iPhone. But does it really work?

The app is designed as a full-fledged Web browser and includes an address bar, Google search box, and popular trending search terms. In theory, the app transcodes Flash content into HTML5 via the embedded the Safari browser, but in a brief test Wednesday afternoon, Skyfire left a little something to be desired.

After downloading Skyfire, the app issues a warning that it contains age-restricted material, presumably because it can troll the entire Web, including adult content. As such, Skyfire Web Browser has an adult, 17+ label due to "frequent/intense sexual content or nudity," according to the App Store.

After a few instructional screens providing an overview of what the app can do, Skyfire landed on its Web browser. Since an October demo video from Skyfire showed the app in action on the Daily Show's Web site, I too navigated to DailyShow.com to test it out. The site loaded normally enough. The main video up top was blacked out with the phrase "Adobe Flash Player" in blue in the middle. At first the app didn't do anything, so I tapped on the video, which took me to the Adobe Web site. A pop-up on the "SkyBar" below then told me I'd have to use the video button to access Flash content.

Returning to DailyShow.com, the video button did indeed pop up in a small icon on the bottom bar. Tapping on the video image took me to another page, where it buffered for a moment before failing. "Unable to play video. Would you like to report it to help us improve our system?" a message read. I reported, and navigated back to the site.

I decided to give the "video" section of DailyShow.com a chance, and had better luck – sort of. The video button emerged, and the video actually started loading this time, but it eventually displayed a "poor connectivity – video playback in low bandwidth mode" message. The video did load, and I could hear audio, but the video didn't sync up, and eventually stalled, returning to the "Video loading" screen.

Given that my service level is not ideal in my cube, I moved down the hall, where my iPhone 4 kicked from two bars to four. Still, this did not improve connectivity on Skyfire.

I navigated over to CNN.com and CBS.com to see if video on those sites would fare any better, but CNN.com had trouble loading and CBS.com returned the original "unable to play video" error. Skyfire warns that videos may take between 15-25 seconds to load, but I gave it much longer than that and nothing. It could be first-day growing pains or a lot of eager users clogging the system, but at this point, I wasn't able to actually get it to work.

Those looking to circumvent the Hulu Plus pay wall are out of luck; Hulu is not supported. "They don't allow it," Skyfire said in the app description. The Skyfire Web Browser also does not support Flash games or apps.

UPDATE: Demand for the app has prompted Skyfire to temporarily stop accepting new purchases from the App Store, the company said in a blog post. "The demand far exceeds our initial projections," the company wrote. "Thus we are effectively 'sold out' and will temporarily not accept new purchases from the App Store. We are working really hard to increase capacity and will be accepting new purchases from the App Store as soon as we can support it." The app is no longer showing up in search; it was the top grossing app on the App Store after five hours, Skyfire said.

Apple iPad Does Not Support Flash

Information Week

Adobe says no Flash support means Apple's hot new tablet is incompatible with millions of Web sites.

Apple's iPad tablet computer, launched Wednesday amid a wave of hype almost unprecedented even for the overly excitable tech industry, is missing a feature so basic it renders it almost useless for Web surfing.

That, at least, is the criticism leveled at Apple by media software developer Adobe, whose Flash display technology powers interactive graphics on the bulk of Internet pages (while a handful use Microsoft's Silverlight).

As revealed during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' demonstration of the iPad at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, the iPad does not support Flash.

"There's something important missing from Apple's approach to connecting consumers to content," wrote Flash marketing manager Adrian Ludwig. "It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and customers," said Ludwig.

"If I want to connect to Disney, Hulu, Miniclip, Farmville, ESPN, Kongregate, or JibJab—not to mention millions of other sites on the Web, I'll be out of luck," he added. Apple's decision not to support Flash on its iPad is curious, given its ubiquity throughout the Web and the fact that Adobe and Apple do not compete head on.

Adobe, however, is developing a workaround. Its forthcoming Packager for iPhone kit will allow Flash developers to build apps that run on the iPhone and, by extension, the iPad.

The lack of Flash support isn't doing much to mute the buzz surrounding the iPad launch. And Apple insisted the device is plenty flexible—capable of running the more than 140,000 programs currently available on the Apple App Store.

"iPad is our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price," said Jobs. Pricing starts at $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for the 32GB model, and $699 for their 64GB cousin.