It’s no secret that Apple hates Adobe Flash. Steve thinks Flash is buggy, has poor security and drains battery. There are no apps in the app store which runs Flash directly or indirectly. But that hasn’t stopped SkyFire to submit a Flash video enabled browser to the App store.
To be fair, SkyFire mobile browser transcodes Flash into HTML5 in real time and hence theoretically at-least, must stand a chance to come through the app store filters. The developers are fairly confident that Apple will accept their submission soon enough and we definitely hope they do.
The company maintains that the app has been developed with significant oversight and feedback from Apple and that it adheres to every guideline put forth by Apple regarding HTML5 video playback for iOS. The process of transcoding Flash to HTML5 will allow Apple users to play millions of Flash videos on Apple devices without the technical problems for which Jobs banned flash.
Skyfire is pretty similar to Opera mini for iPhone in the way it operates, basing its Web-browsing capabilities off of a Webkit browser core shared with Safari and using cloud-computing to transcode Flash into HTML5 in real time.
Skyfire also avoids the concerns raised in Steve Jobs’ recent essay regarding Flash on mobile devices. By optimizing Flash for iPhones and network conditions in the Cloud, Skyfire improves performance and maximizes battery life while playing video. The browser also avoids alternate runtime environments and other security vulnerabilities.
It will be interesting to see if Apple approves SkyFire in one go, or come up with new restrictions and reasons to reject it.
[via]RWW