Flash is coming to the iPhone & iPad

Chris P. Bacon

On Thursday

Apple has approved the Skyfire mobile browser which is capable of playing Flash video. It will be available in the App Store soon.

According to CNNMoney, Skyfire will be available for download at 9 a.m. ET on Thursday for $2.99.

To get around Apple's restriction, Skyfire came up with an innovative solution: When users click on a page that contains Flash video, Skyfire's servers download, render and translate the video into HTML5, which is a Web standard that iOS devices support. Skyfire then displays a thumbnail that users can click on to stream the video from its servers. "We will attack those pesky blue Flash error messages," said Jeffrey Glueck, Skyfire's CEO.

iclarified

CNN

Hobbes

It isn't really coming to the iPhone/iPad then. Just a third party re-render.

I thought Apple changed the appstore guidelines so you can write your app in flash and have it converted to Objective-C would be approved?

Agent Smith

I would have no problem paying for that app

_Whimsical_

Good news. I hope it's a big improvement on Cloud Browser.

jakdublin

But will it bring any major benefits? Like you won't be able to watch Flash live video with it which is the one thing I'd really like. Be great to be able to watch 4OD and the RTE and TV3 catch up services but this won't do it.

VisionaryP

It's Flash video only. Websites with, for example, flash based photo galleries still won't work.

Hope I'm wrong, but that seems to be what the article is saying.

kjl

You can already get flash on your iPad and iPhone 4, everything but the video, of course its a jb app

add this http://repo.benm.at/

Also there have been javascripts that do the same as this app for years now.

barryd09

i'll wait and see some reviews on here first before buying.

kayevajo

Will this enable us to use RTÉ Player on iphone4?

kaiser sauze

Is the RTE player not Real Player based?

kayevajo

Just checked it there now, says it need flash, be great if it could run it

kaiser sauze

kayevajo wrote: »

Just checked it there now, says it need flash, be great if it could run it

Yeah, you're right, I just looked at the FAQ there and it is Flash now, no mention of Real at all.

Can someone tell me I am not crazy for thinking that RTE player was at one stage a Real Player based service?

Dades

kaiser sauze wrote: »

Yeah, you're right, I just looked at the FAQ there and it is Flash now, no mention of Real at all.

Can someone tell me I am not crazy for thinking that RTE player was at one stage a Real Player based service?

Some of their live stuff is still in Real (I work in streaming media - we don't even support that anymore!). Their RTE Player catchup service is in Flash.

Blazer

kjl wrote: »

You can already get flash on your iPad and iPhone 4, everything but the video, of course its a jb app

add this http://repo.benm.at/

Also there have been javascripts that do the same as this app for years now.

what's the app called?

Wonda-Boy

Hmmmm Watch this space.....;)

Chris P. Bacon

Sc@recrow wrote: »

what's the app called?

Its called FRASH ,but its crap it is very unstable and keeps crashing safari.

ZV Yoda

Looks promising... be great if we could then use Apple TV to beam this Flash content directly on to our TVs... doesn't look like this will be possible in iOS4.2?... I wonder if Apple will eventually enable this functionality on the ATV?

Maybe one day we'll even be able to beam our iOS games onto the big screen?

kjl

Sc@recrow wrote: »

what's the app called?

frash

_Whimsical_

Well it's after 9 ET and there's no sign of it in the US app store.

Chris P. Bacon

_Whimsical_ wrote: »

Well it's after 9 ET and there's no sign of it in the US app store.

It's Thursday it is coming out.

kayevajo

How long before it's on the Irish app store?

Dades

kjl wrote: »

Sc@recrow wrote: »

what's the app called?

frash

I think that app is only available on the Japanese App Store.

kjl

Dades wrote: »

I think that app is only available on the Japanese App Store.

Ive already said before it is a cydia app.

Chris P. Bacon

It is avaiable now,i just bought it so see how it go's.

iTunes link

rivalius13

4od, RTE player, not working

Just found the reasoning:

As I understand it, these are sites which are available only in the UK. The site operators block users from the rest of the world. The videos won't play for anyone, even Brits, because Skyfire's servers are in California.

The developers are working to improve this situation; stay tuned.

http://getsatisfaction.com/skyfire/topics/4od_iplayer_tvcatchup_not_working_htc_desire-1jfec

Chris P. Bacon

Yeah rte player don't work,but it does what it says on the tin,the videos are a bit slow to load but on a whole its a nice little app.

Bigcheeze

So if it's routing everything through servers in the US can you watch stuff that is only available inside the US?

Gregor Samsa

RTE Player is not going to work with this. Skyfire only handles Flash Video. RTE player uses Flash for the whole interface.

princemuzzy

will rte player work with frash? im jb obviously

rivalius13

Bigcheeze wrote: »

So if it's routing everything through servers in the US can you watch stuff that is only available inside the US?

I tried comedy central and was told I couldn't watch the episodes because I had an Irish IP address. Only the video is sent through their servers. Hulu doesn't even work in the states. If you have a your iPhone jailbroken you could try altering your useragent to get the US stuff.

RTE player doesn't work, even for stuff available internationally, because they have to add support for the sites and I can't imagine RTE being a high priority for them.

munzab

bye bye flash for iphone/ipad.

they should have known better that the demand was going to be high!

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/03/skyfire-disappears-from-itunes-app-store-due-to-technical-diffic/

Chris P. Bacon

munzab wrote: »

bye bye flash for iphone/ipad.

they should have known better that the demand was going to be high!

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/03/skyfire-disappears-from-itunes-app-store-due-to-technical-diffic/

Within 5 hours,it became the top grossing app, the third highest paid app overall and the top application in the Utilities category.

It has now "sold out" ,still works great though.

Fat_Fingers

rivalius13 wrote: »

I tried comedy central and was told I couldn't watch the episodes because I had an Irish IP address. Only the video is sent through their servers. Hulu doesn't even work in the states. If you have a your iPhone jailbroken you could try altering your useragent to get the US stuff.

RTE player doesn't work, even for stuff available internationally, because they have to add support for the sites and I can't imagine RTE being a high priority for them.

So it plays Flash video files but it doesn’t work with anything interesting...
Magic!!

Sounds as usefull as any Ifart app out there.....

Chris P. Bacon

Fat_Fingers wrote: »

So it plays Flash video files but it doesn’t work with anything interesting...
Magic!!

Sounds as usefull as any Ifart app out there.....

I wouldn't really call the rte player interesting,this app works with millions of websites,i don't understand why people are complaining,if you don't like it don't buy it ,simple.

Fat_Fingers

Richie Cranium wrote: »

I wouldn't really call the rte player interesting,this app works with millions of websites,i don't understand why people are complaining,if you don't like it don't buy it ,simple.

Yes, you got that right, i'm not going to buy it. Its not really complaining, maybe venting some of the frustration...
very nice of rivalius13 to tell about limitations of it.
Not interested in " millions of websites". Only care about flash for rte and 4od. For this alone my next phone might actually be Android.

AntiRip

There's a certain south park site that it works great for. So if you were a SP fan it should pay for itself

jamesd

Comedycentral is working fine for me and I'm on eircom broadband using skyfire.

rivalius13

jamesd wrote: »

Comedycentral is working fine for me and I'm on eircom broadband using skyfire.

Clips will work fine, full shows won't.

plu

Could someone post a link to video that works with skyfire and not in safari

Loomis

This is back in the store if anyone is interested