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Flash Comes To the iPhone Via App
An anonymous reader writes "While the HTML5 and Flash standard debate rages, Apple, a major promoter of HTML5, has allowed its iOS devices to run Flash videos. Apple has given approval to an app developed by Skyfire that translates Flash code into HTML5. According to CNN, when a user clicks on a Flash video the Skyfire app downloads the Flash video on Skyfire's server where the video is decoded and then encoded in HTML5 and is delivered to an iOS device. The app is embedded in the Safari browser."
High School Principle: Hello, Mr. Timmerman? ... ... ... some of them own iPhones that are now being confiscated but should another incident occur the parents may have a negligence suit brought against you. ... all this because of ... FLASH VIDEO! Damn you, Adobe, damn you all to hell!
Mr. Timmerman: Yes, speaking.
High School Principle: This is the principle at Luther High School and I am calling about your son Frederick.
Mr. Timmerman: Why what has Fred done?
High School Principle: Are you aware your son owns and operates an iPhone on school grounds?
Mr. Timmerman: Yes but he is not to use it during class hours, it's just for security. I'll have a talk with him when I get home
High School Principle: Are you aware that sometime today an app called 'Skyfire' allowed iPhone users to access Flash video.
Mr. Timmerman: Oh. My. God. Where is Fred, is he okay? You confiscated the iPhone, right? Please just hold him in a locked room and I will leave work right now and come pick him up.
High School Principle: I'm afraid we don't know where he is, Mr. Timmerman. It was not discovered he had access to Flash materials until he sat down during first period, continually grinning at his phone. The instructor noticed and asked him to put it away and at that point your son snarled and knocked the teacher out of the way exhibiting some super human strength -- possibly hepped up on caffeine pills.
Mr. Timmerman: No you don't understand, we're good Christians, my son hasn't been taught any sex education yet, if he's exposed to porn he
High School Principle: Again, I'm so very sorry Mr. Timmerman, according to our counselor's estimates it's now noon and your son escaped at the beginning of the day so he is probably in Tijuana right now so strung out on heroin that he has to mainline it under his eye. If you don't get to him soon, he will certainly be dead before the weekend.
Mr. Timmerman: *gasps*
High School Principle: Also, there's one more thing. A few of the other kids heard your son extolling Skyfire
Mr. Timmerman: My God. All this
High School Principle: I'm sorry Mr. Timmerman, our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family but especially your son. The poor poor victim of FLASH VIDEO.
My work here is dung.
do all the porn tube sites work with this?
Why do so many articles ignore the fact that there is more to Flash than video? Granted, most games aren't going to play well on a mobile device but there are lots of Flash based sites that work just fine. Being able to access those sites or not is a pretty big deal if your out and about and need to look up information on a nearby business.
The really amazing part is that someone was given permission to hook into Safari. Converting a Flash video into an H.264 video is a small feat considering that the majority of videos are already encoded in H.264 in the first place, the Flash player just streams it.
That's an awful lot of trouble go to through to keep flash off the iPhone. Jobs must REALLY not want flash on the phone.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Apple, a major promoter of HTML5, has allowed its iOS devices to run Flash videos
No, Google has allowed YouTube to serve the MP4 format to iOS devices, and other sites serving videos have done similar things more recently. Flash isn't involved, and Flash videos could not and still cannot be played on iOS devices. Apple has always had the same stance in regards to iOS and had never made any special exceptions.
Twinstiq, game news
This must be an early announcement because as of 11AM central time I can't find it in the app store. I think they jumped the gun a bit.
Life. Is. Good.
This product refers to the ability to translate flash video to html video. Still no FLASH APPS I would think based on the article.
This one slipped under the radar and now that the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field (TM) has been notified, this app will be hit with the ban stick very soon.
OR
Steve Jobs now likes flash, or finally realized that most of the internet does indeed use flash, and has succumbed to the reality of reality.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
Flash support and turning a Flash video stream into a HTML5 video stream in-the-fly aren't the same thing.
So, contrary to what the title and the summary say, this has nothing to do with 'flash on the iPhone' and everything to do with 'some company is transcoding flash video to h264 and sending it off to the iPhone.
Apple hasn't 'allowed' iOS devices to run anything new, someone is transcoding.
There is no 'app embedded in Safari browser'
Did I miss the memo that said slashdot was going to start accepting submissions from people who have no clue what they are talking about, and clearly have no idea what the fuck they are talking about from a technical stand point?
This isn't fucking new or newsworthy, what the hell is wrong with you CmdrTaco, why the hell did you approve such a retarded summary and story? Do I need to add you to the ignore list along with timothy and kdawson now?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Someone's mind is in the gutter today!
Odd that you should say that, because the only flash site I ever use is youtube. So, what flash do I absolutly need yet that I am not aware off?
Here is a hint, promo-sites for games/movies etc I do NOT need.
What amazes me is that so many people claim that Apple has made a mistake and that people NEED flash, they MUST have flash, yet the iPhone and iPad sell like... well like an iPhone/iPad... they sold MILLIONS. Apple with 1 phone is among the biggest phone makers. Yet apparently all these people are buying the wrong phone because their flash needs are not being met... poor suckers... that is why I see so many iPhone users fuming everytime they use their iPhone! "DAMN", they say, "STILL no flash! This sucks! I am going to return it and NEVER BUY another one!"
This explains why the next generation iPhones completely failed to sell... oh wait NO THEY DIDN'T.
Your needs do not seem to be the same as million of iPhone/iPod/iPad users. To bad. Don't buy an iPhone, buy a Windows 7 phone. Be happy.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Meanwhile buried in all the media hyperbole about anything iPhone, Adobe has released an updated Adobe Air packager for iOS4 that not only allows you to play Flash content on an iPhone/iPad, but is also sanctioned by Apple.
Granted, it's not a Flash video plug in player, but the myth that Flash content is not available on iOS is just that. Also granted that you have to attach the compiler to your content AND run it through the App Store goat-rope-circus...
"the video is decoded and then encoded in HTML5"
I'm glad to see the standard of technical journalism around here is as high as ever, Slashdot. Please point me at the part of the HTML5 which describes its capabilities as a video container format and/or codec. Hint: the presence of a tag doesn't cover it.
Pretty harsh dude. Apple did allow the app, and even though it is a translator (which probably runs slower than snot), the fact that flash might work at all on the iPhone is newsworthy.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
They have managed to reduce Flash to "Web Video" only by the means of relentless repetition of "Facts". Especially heroic since the replacement that they market - HTML5 is nowhere near Flash in terms of what it can do, in terms of ubiquity and in terms of development tools.
If Jobs and Co. were sent to Afghanistan - we all would be now believing... Nope, I don't want to go there.
What is the name of this app? Can't find it in store.
the idea gets implemented as a PC browser plugin perfectly enabling the latest Youtube and flash games.
Who needs smartphones to just hate Adobe Flash's slowness?
I'm glad this reaches Apple's stated goals of user experience speed, and universal availability. I'm sure the system will be completely stable, and the multi-server communications will be totally secure.
Now can we be treated like adults and just be told the real damned reason out loud?
The ______ Agenda
Or, this method of playing Flash video doesn't breach Apple's App Store rules.
Apple doesn't care about letting people watch videos on iOS (which, despite the frothings of the iTunes conspiracy theorists, happily plays non-DRMd videos in several standard formats, somewhat restricted because the CPU doesn't have the horsepower to handle software-only codecs and relies on the available hardware decoders).
What Apple does care about is limiting the potential number of security holes in Safari by not having third party scripting/VM plugins like Flash Player.
Flash is a pretty bizzarre way of doing "just" video - requiring a proprietary VM, which then runs a (possibly custom) player applet provided by the video site which, in turn, streams and displays the video. (If the Flash VM had the cojones to download and run custom codecs then it might make sense, but it relies on the VM having the correct, native codec.) People used it because it got the job done and was less annoying than RealPlayer.
Of course, Flash has other uses and is actually great for applets and casual games - although how much existing Flash content can cope with a touch interface is questionable.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Many TV shows are now distributed through Flash player programs which load the video and play ads. The CW and CBS do this. These players are designed to prevent the viewer from viewing the show without ads. Will those work through this conversion mechanism? If not, there's not going to be consumer acceptance of this.
(Those players do not play well with high security settings. Some won't run if they can't store cookies. Others will show the same ad over and over. With Flashblock, about half the CBS ads don't appear, but there's a countdown timer you have to wait out before the show resumes.)
"Apple has given approval to an app developed by Skyfire that translates Flash code into HTML5."
NO IT DOES NOT. As others are pointing out, all this does is use a server to transcode Flash VIDEO and serve it to you. This will not do ANYTHING ELSE with Flash--it certainly DOES NOT "translate Flash code into HTML5 [code]". Better description here.
Also worth noting: "Hulu has also blocked Skyfire to guarantee that users who want to watch the streaming TV service on the iPad have to continue to pay $10 per month for Hulu Plus."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The standard of any kind of journalism is explaining things in a manner in which your audience will understand it. Laypeople--and in the technical community that is Slashdot, I am referring to geeks who don't necessarily know or care about all of the technical intricacies of video codecs--see the headline and think, "Oh, a way for me to watch video I couldn't before on my iPhone!" Bingo.
Most people like myself probably thought, "technically, that's not what it's doing; it's probably transcoding something written in Adobe's proprietary Flash format into something that only uses standards in the provisional specification of HTML 5, likely by extracting the H.264 video and re-wrapping it into HTML 5 standard-compliant tags." Most of those people probably also thought, "...but I know what they mean. It's a way for people to watch video they couldn't before on their iPhones." Again, bingo.
Now, I'm really sorry if you were so confused, thinking that the line was being literal and expecting there to be some kind of, I don't know, web alchemy at work, but I assure you that you were in an extreme sliver of a minority. Most people "got it," and as such, I think it passes muster as far as technical journalism goes. If it really bothers you that much, how about considering reading the f****** article, looking for technical details and/or references that you can research yourself?
Incidentally, the submitter pulled that description directly from the article, which appears in International Business Times, not exactly a bastion of "technical journalism." If you want to whine about technicalia, how about writing to the editor there instead of here? Let me guess, is it because you're too busy explaining somewhere else that since there's no modulation/demodulation over digital channels, everyone should stop calling those boxes you plug the coax into "cable modems?" Or are you too bothered by people calling 2010 the start of a new decade instead of the end of an old one? Or how about those idiots who talk about the "dark side of the moon," the side that receives just as much light as the other side? Do you make such a fuss when someone comments on how hot the "middle of summer" is, when in reality, average temperatures are highest around the solstice, which is the beginning of summer?
Oh, right, I know why. Because here, you get modded +5 Informative, whereas in normal society, you'd just get called out as the tool you are. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go to the bank to get some money out of the ATM machine using my PIN number.
1) a true swf to html5/JavaScript engine on the fly - believe that when I see it running
2) slurps out any rtmp url's it finds doing dynamic conversion to h.264 - won't work with sites using dynamic logic inside swf to assemble resource URL
3) virtual machine on server running flash which then streams result to iPhone - huge expense for app owner
Plus not sure sites using rtmpe like hulu would work
No no, I always welcome constructive criticism, especially when reciprocation is encouraged. So it is in this capacity that I must point out to you that Flash video involves a container format that iOS does not recognize.
The HTML5/Flash debate is no longer raging, it's very much winding down. Java and Silverlight in the browser have also been supplanted by HTML5 already.
The Skyfire app is not embedded in Safari, it has its own WebKit view, same as Safari and many other OS X apps.
At the time that the encrypted package is decrypted and recrypted or code translated, does it stay available in memory somewhere that it might be accessible, and if so, would that not mean the EULA would prohibit this from being allowed, and adobe would sue
for allowing their code to sit unprotected in a temporary space waiting for it to be reencoded a la html5???
Who really cares... Flash runs just fine on my Android phone. I watch video, play games, etc. without some moron telling me what I can and can't do.
Here is the question:
Will it work with MyFreeCams.com?
I was going to download the app to test it, but it is nearly 3$!
I'm not paying for my porn!
I am posting anonymously because my wire reads slashdot and is an MFC model. I don;t want her to know I am watching someone else on my iphone.
And, generally, people complain about that too.
Or have you never heard of "home brew?"
Geeks have. The majority have not. The majority don't even know that one can hook a slim PC up to an HDTV with a VGA, DVI, or HDMI cable, and then use it as an Internet video player, as a DVR, or as the fourth game console, all in one box.
Every single software or hardware maker does what Apple does.
Oh, that explain why you can't run Linux on a PC or compile your own apps for Mac OS X.
No, wait, something seems off here...
Please allow me to rephrase: Most hardware makers making products for sale in the United States in form factors not traditionally associated with personal computers (e.g. handheld, set-top) sell goods that have been damaged with lockdown.
the only flash site I ever use is youtube. So, what flash do I absolutly need yet that I am not aware off?
Homestar Runner. Weebl's Stuff. Albino Blacksheep. Newgrounds. Very little of this is video in the sense of compressed sequences of bitmap images; most of it is Flash vector animation with synchronized audio.
it's quite rare for me to actually find something that I want to click on.
Then you probably don't have Homestar Runner, Weebl's Stuff, Albino Blacksheep, or Newgrounds bookmarked. These sites have Flash animations that don't translate well into video without bloating their download size by a factor of ten.
You know what? I *get* that 'HTML5 video' is shorthand for 'video in a generally supported format wrapped in HTML5 tags'. But if I hadn't got that, I wouldn't have found it out from either the article or the summary.
I'm not really sure what the point of Slashdot is if it's just going to be another link aggregation site with the summary merely an excerpt or paraphrase of the linked article. It being 'news for nerds', I'd expect *at least* a technical angle on the story, because frankly there are far easier places for me to get my 'technical news for laypeople'.
Hence my point. Sorry it rubbed you up the wrong way.
yep. their infrastructure was overwhelmed. they're not selling any more copies for the time being.
http://www.skyfire.com/press/blog/68-skyfire-reaches-top-grossing-app-on-iphone-app-store-within-5-hours-sold-out
unless they plan on launching a new process for every connection to the same video and trans coding it every single time (aka zero caching)
This is true of subsection (a). But subsection (b) expressly permits caching, or making a resource available to other users of a system who request the same resource.
the material is transmitted through the system or network without modification of its content.
Section 512 makes three references to "modification to [] content", which neither it nor section 101 defines. In the strictest sense, ordinary Internet Protocol routing modifies the content of the packets: it decreases the TTL. Likewise, proxies and tunnels between IPv4 and IPv6 modify the packets. I am not aware of clear case law either way as to whether a more-or-less faithful conversion of format that does not meet the originality requirement of a "derivative work" under section 101 is a prohibited "modification to [] content" under section 512. But I if transcoding proxies infringe, then so do the image recompressing proxies used by the Opera Mini app and dial-up web accelerators. I imagine that established service providers running such proxies, such as Netscape, NetZero, and Opera, are juicier targets for a claim of statutory damages than a startup.