Flash - page 5

Last week, the Skyfire browser made headlines for two separate “firsts” on the iOS platform.

First up, Skyfire finally did what Adobe couldn’t and brought Flash to iOS, albeit non-natively. Instead, the Skyfire browser converts Flash videos to HTML5 on their own servers, then pumps the HTML5 to your iPhone or iPad instead.

Pretty neat, but I actually like Skyfire’s second accomplishment more: they managed to be the first iOS app to ever “sell out.”

Quite a trick with an infinitely copyable, digital good, but the Skyfire team had a good excuse: their app was selling like such gangbusters that the servers used to convert Flash to HTML5 on the fly couldn’t cope with demand. They’d sold out of bandwidth, not copies of the app itself.

Skyfire has spent the weekend beefing up its servers. The good news is that if you’re lucky, you should be able to buy Skyfire again soon. The bad? Skyfire’s selling the app in batches to make sure they servers don’t get overwhelmed: they’ll put the app back up on the App Store for a little while, pull it, then put it back up a few hours later.

An interesting approach to say the least. If you’re interested in giving Skyfire a spin, check out their Twitter feed for word when the next batch will go live.

Here’s a simple how to that will lead you and your computer to an internet without Flash just like on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. I think most of you won’t miss it, but if you do you can reinstall it.

I’ll have to say that when I went cold turkey and kicked the Flash habit, that I’ve had for years, I didn’t suffer from withdrawals.  In fact, I found my browsing experience with Safari to be a whole lot better and definitely more stable than before. I don’t have any regrets about it so far.

Some people might recommend, ClickToFlash, which is a Safari plug-in that blocks flash content and doesn’t allow it to run unless you allow it or you add specific sites to a “white list. ” It’s a great plug-in, but I prefer to use fewer plug-ins and no Flash. You on the other hand might think otherwise so ClickToFlash might worth a look for you.

Ars Technica stumbled upon an interesting tidbit while reviewing their 11-inch MacBook Air.  They found a compelling reason for Apple to not install Adobe Flash on the MacBook Air and it wasn’t just because they wanted to make sure users always had the latest version of Flash.

The much-anticipated Skyfire Browser finally came to iOS today albeit briefly before vanishing from the App store. If you haven’t heard about it Skyfire is a new app that would allow users to watch Flash video on their iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch by converting it to HTML5.

It was an unexpected surprise to find out that Apple didn’t pull the app — the vendor did. The vendor advised me that Skyfire’s launch was actually very successful or should we say overly so – not like that hasn’t happened before right?

According to Kevin Jordan, a spokesperson for Skyfire Labs, Inc., “The app is actually SOLD OUT while Skyfire increases server capacity. They’ll open up a new batch for download very soon. Skyfire is working to increase server capacity as we speak and in the end, this will result in the best possible user experience once they hit the store again. ”

In any event the app, which has initially sold out in only five hours,  will make a reappearance in the App Store soon.

Read the complete Skyfire Labs, Inc. press release here.

At 9 AM ET on Thursday, November 4, the Skyfire Browser will be coming to iOS and will allow users to watch Flash video on their iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch by converting it to HTML5.

Priced at $2.99, Skyfire Browser has been available on Android devices since May 2010, and has been incredibly popular with 1.5 million downloads. Now, after a “rather rigorous review,” Apple has finally approved the app for iOS devices, and it will soon be available in the App Store.

Six months ago, Steve Jobs wrote his Thoughts on Flash, which argued that Flash was a dying technology and that HTML5 was the future of video on the web.

See those graph numbers up there? They were put together by MeFeedia and show that HTML5 has gone from serving up only 10% of the videos on the web earlier this year to over half of them in October. HTML5 video has, in fact, doubled its share of the web video pie in just five months.

Looks like Steve was right. Not that any of us should be surprised: even if Flash wasn’t a dying technology, Steve flat out calling it one would be enough to almost magically make it so. When Apple’s CEO talks, the tech world sits up and listens.

Last week, we reported that Apple’s new MacBook Airs were shipping without Adobe Flash preinstalled… a radical departure from the norm for Apple, which has been bundling Flash with OS X (and OS 9 before it) as the default for seemingly ages. Was it a fluke, or is this Apple’s new policy?

Nope, not a fluke, according to Apple, who say that Adobe Flash will not come preinstalled on any of their machines in the future.

Apple’s hissy catfight with Adobe over the future of Flash on the web has reached storied proportion at this point, with Apple claiming that Flash is buggy and slow and Adobe… well… not so much saying otherwise as whining about the unfairness of it all.

Given Apple’s strong feelings about Flash, it’s hard not to give perhaps undue importance to word that the new MacBook Airs are actually shipping without Adobe Flash pre-installed… even though it’s been preloaded on all of Apple’s past hardware.

Today, I will show you how to add Flash playback to your jailbroken iPhone 4 in three easy steps using an app called Frash by Comex.

Adobe’s just released a new version of their Flash Player for Mac into the wild. Called “Square,” the latest version enables native 64-bit support on OS X, which Adobe hopes will result in a substantial speed boost for users running modern Macs.

On our end, we haven’t seen much improvement, short of a marginal (and perhaps imaginary) performance boost under 64-bit Safari. It still seems to take up just as many system resources as before.

Are any of our readers experiencing varying mileage with Adobe Flash Square? Let us know in the comments: we keep on rooting for Adobe to prove Steve Jobs wrong, but it still remains a slow and unacceptable system hog.

Heartened by Apple’s recent decision to loosen their restriction on outside frameworks for the development of iOS apps, Adobe has announced that it will be resuming work on its Flash-to-iPhone compiler.

Apple’s announcement today that it has lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines has direct implications for Adobe’s Packager for iPhone, a feature in the Flash Professional CS5 authoring tool. This feature was created to enable Flash developers to quickly and easily deliver applications for iOS devices. The feature is available for developers to use today in Flash Professional CS5, and we will now resume development work on this feature for future releases.

Meant to be a headlining technology in their Flash CS5 software, Adobe was forced to abandon development of the compiler after a change to Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement prohibited the use of translation tools in app development.

Apple’s change of heart again makes development in Flash — if not Flash on iOS proper — a viable option again, and is a rare victory for Adobe in their conflict with Apple.

The AirStash is a $100 USB card reader with a built-in Wi-Fi hotspot. It is used to stream media to other devices, which means broadcasting movies, music, and video to your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad and other gadgets with limited amounts of memory.

If only it worked.

In the on-again-off-again Apple/Flash affair many people feel caught in the fray. McCann creative Mat Bisher, perhaps tired of being caught up in this tug- of-war, used his Flash-built site to send a strong message:  “STEVE JOBS HATES YOU.”

Bisher employed a Flash sniffer to send this message, sniffers detect whether users are on Flash-enabled  devices. Try to view Bisher’s “Save Apple” site from an iPhone or iPad you’ll be greeted by Steve Jobs flipping you the bird with a freakishly long middle digit.

Bisher hit on the idea out of frustration:
“I, like many agency creatives, have designed my site using Flash, and as we all know, Apple’s iPads and iPhones are not Flash supported thanks to Mr. Jobs.

Yesterday I installed Adobe’s new preview of Flash 10.1 on a couple of my Macs, and even though Steve Jobs has just dinged his old partners for being slow to release good Mac software, this release rocks.

Here’s why you need to install it on your Mac right now.