Artefact puts Flash on your iPad 'In A Pinch' (video)
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted June 11th 2010 6:46PM
posted June 11th 2010 6:46PM
Despite Steve Jobs's ethical reservations, it's clear that people want Flash on their iPads (or at the very least, developers want to find ways put it there). Recently we saw Smokescreen, a browser plug-in that pulls apart SWF binaries and reassembles them into something Apple-friendly. Taking a slightly different tack, the kids at the Artefact Group have been working on a service called Flash In A Pinch. Right now, it's but a proof-of-concept, but it's a pretty sweet concept at that: Flash is rendered on Artefact's servers, which streams the images to the user's Safari browser. By placing a Javascript layer on top of the content, the user's touch interactions can be sent back to the server, making the whole megillah fully interactive. At present, the whole affair is a little too slow to use, and as of yet there is no sound, but all in all it's a great start. Video after the break. Hit the source link for more technical details (and yet more videos).
It's a start!
@Plazmic Flame
Wait.... why didn't Adobe think of this???
@Plazmic Flame
So... Its basically the same thing as SkyFire on Android?
@Plazmic Flame
Because is way too complicated and the bandwidth requirements would be insane.
@Plazmic Flame
why would Adobe waste precious resources trying to make a workaround just for Apple? Froyo already supports full flash and WP7 will do so in the future, thats 2 major mobile platforms.
@Plazmic Flame Because this is not flash. (.swf files or what flash type) are Bytecode compiled). Therefor you need to run them somehow more natively than rendering them on a server-side and transfer them back to users. Also, CPU cycles tends to cost more [I'll let you think about this] ;)
@ssguy You forgot Symbian (It had Flash Lite before the rest of these OS's)
@Kamil R You are right
@ssguy
Given the big stink they've made over the issue, I would think they would do anything to have access to 80 million iphone owners... it's all about the $$$...
@Plazmic Flame it seems about as smooth as flash 10.1 beta on my phone right now.
I appreciate Google letting us have flash, but the beta release just goes to show it was never meant for mobiles.
I want flash replaced with stuff that performs better and doesn't require years of work just to make it compatible with a new platform.
I feel like spending all this time trying to force flash to work with new technology is a bit of a waste.
I know there isn't a full replacement for flash yet, but I don't like the idea of working so hard to support something that is, lets face it, a dying technology.
@Sp4mer
well I was talking about full flash support and flash lite is basically just a dumbed down version. But yeah thats still better than having no flash support.
Adobe also said thats its working on bringing full flash to blackberry, symbian and webOS also. So that covers all the platforms.
@Sam7
Flash can be optimized for mobile. Froyo just proved that. Its just that flash currently dominates the market and hence Adobe has no inclination to get off their asses and actually make it work better on mobile devices.
@Sam7 Only thing that is dying is your brain. You obviously have no production experience. It's number one rich content delivery on the web today. If you buy turtle neck Stevos bull you're just an apple fanboy, clueless like all the sheeple in the cult and missing out on the best out there.
@Plazmic Flame
Why would Adobe go through the pain of creating all that layers just for making flash run on iDevices? Flash already runs on those devices and there are like more than 100 apps in app store created using flash i.e. before their announcement of banning apps created with 3rd party tools. It is just that flash are blocked. All these alternative techniques can only help those desperate few to see something crawling that was done in flash but nothing more.
@Plazmic Flame
This is completely the _wrong_ approach to getting flash content on the iphone os. The source code to make a flash player is available -- why doesn't Adobe or someone else just make a flash plugin for jail broken devices? That alone would encourage even the dumbest of users to jailbreak and would be a big "screw you" to apple as well...lock down your platform? That's fine, hackers ftw.
@Plazmic Flame
They did! In fact Apple told them to make their own browser app for flash websites, and Adobe didn't do it because they couldn't come up with anything good. It's taken them this long to get something almost satisfactory for Android.
@fast except I am an android user and have nothing to do with apple.
@ssguy Isn't that a sign the platform is flawed from the ground up if the company that designed it (or at least bought it) won't develop it to make it run better on mobiles? From what I can gather, you don't need to redevelop for HTML5 between Desktop & Mobile.
I really do think Adobe has had it too good for too long, and now they're reaping the seeds they've sewn. As was mentioned, all they're missing out on is 80 million users, and all we're missing out on is a platform that is buggy, full of exploits and dog slow even on a powerful machine.
@Sam7 It's really not a dying technology. Don't swallow the slurry that Steve-O is feeding you. Anytime I have to go out of my way to utilize a common technology like Flash, something is wrong. I have to be very selective about the sites I browse in the iP___ world, whereas I can browse anything I want on a computer (or on a smartphone with Froyo). Just let me see what I want to see and I'll decide if it's too slow. Why is everyone so f-ing against having a choice?
@sortius
that does not mean that the platform is flawed. Remember that Flash currently has no competition except from Silverlight. HTML5 currently has a long way to go b4 its useful for anything other than video and I have no idea what Microsoft is doing with Silveright (I am yet to see Silverlight used anywhere except Netflix).
So Jobs refusal to allow flash on his mobile platform has actually done more good than harm for us, its made Adobe actually make flash better and bring it to more mobile devices.
And plz stop with the rhetoric that Flash is buggy,crap etc. With properly written apps you wont even notice that its running.
@sortius
you ain't lying. Try going to the Nike site. ARG!
@Plazmic Flame
Cloud Browse already does this, and just as badly. But it's free on the app store, and it does allow you browse flash menus.
@fast
You're biased are you?
Learn to respect other ppl's opinion then others will do respect yours.
Criticizing the guy's brain because he didn't like flash for mobile calling him an Apple fanboy? Well he turned out to be an Android user and you are the fanboy
@ssguy .. But Flash is buggy. They went through SEVEN release candidates for 10.1 before selecting golden master.
That is the most disgraceful software project management effort I have ever seen.
And once again the Mac platform gets shat on with a release that is bugger than 10.0 and still doesn't have hardware acceleration.
@Arkv2
Yeah, the bandwidth requirements are huge but the ISP who is pushing the content down should be the one to handle it like they do with image content over 3G. However, my guess is AT&T are pretty happy with the blocking of Flash transfers over 3G entirely so that people checking 100kbytes of news aren't also downloading 500-1000kbytes of ads on top.
I don't miss Flash one bit and the irony is that people complaining about it being missing probably use Click2Flash or some Firefox Flash blocker on the desktop. It's funny how Flash has been reviled for years as being a CPU and bandwidth hog by Windows, Mac and Linux users consistently, how it's a closed platform, buggy, unstable and insecure. These things haven't changed, just improved a little.
Oh but now Flash is a feature Apple don't have so all of a sudden it's the one thing that means people will get an Android phone and not an iPhone. Please, it's just another desperate cry for help from people who are so insecure about the success of a company they hate without any rational justification.
I won't ever get a Mac because it can't run AutoCAD even though I don't know how to use AutoCAD
I won't get a Mac because there aren't many games despite the fact I have an XBox or PS3 anyway
I won't ever get an iPhone because it can't play Farmville even though I never play mobile games, least of all Flash games
I won't ever get an iPod because it doesn't support the proprietary audio format WMA that I use but an open format AAC, which I think is Apple's proprietary equivalent
It's just one excuse after another in a long list.
Flash sucks, always has, always will and it needs to go. HTML 5 devs need to step up quick smart.
@Sam7
Flash 10.1 works GREAT on my phone. It's pretty much flawless. I'm using a Droid. The fact that yours isn't running well says two possible things. EIther you have an old crap spec'd phone, or you don't know how to hack worth of crap.
@sortius
I guess you don't realize that if you created the same app in Flash and HTML5/Javascript, the HTML5 version would run almost 3 times slower. It's a fact, and people who are actually educated about the 2 technologies admit this on both sides.
:D
There are a few that do this for different platforms. There is a browser for Blackberry called "uZard". It does exactly what this here does. Slow, and with no sound. BUT - Flash is coming to Blackberry OS soon.
@decypher44 So that's 3 major OSes in addition to WP7 and Android
Overly complicated solution to a problem which shouldnt have existed in the first place...
Stuff like this would make me actually consider an iPad.
@Dafrety
Lol, I see what you did there.
@Dafrety
I think the existence of stuff like this is exactly why I wouldn't want to own one.
Devs should be working on bringing additional features to a product, not features that should have been present.
@Dafrety I love these sorts of comments. They usually come from people who already decided they will never buy the product in question. :)
@Dale P
Until it either gets more features or drops below $500, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting an iPad unless it's a gift. :) Usually people don't buy something unless they feel it is of value to them for the price that is being charged.
@Dafrety The IPad does seem expensive, but if the courier had made it out to the public I would have gladly spent a little over $1,000 maybe $1,500 and I wouldn't think it was overpriced, but I personally don't see myself spending more then $200 on an IPad. But that's just my perspective.
If flash has to render on someone else's server and then stream it to your browser you blew it
@KosherTelephone Nice one :) Yeah this work-around is insane, and only in place because they blew it..
You know, outsourcing the flash to a server somewhere then streaming the images would also theoretically eliminate the performance and battery life issues. But I'd imagine this would be very high bandwidth.
@hsc
Plus you'd need a lot of servers if you plan on having a thousands of people use it at the same time.
@hsc It works very well with Skyfire. But yes, bandwidth might be an issue.. especially with ATTs new limits.
A plugin? Really?
ways to put
Adblock for mobile Safari please!
Wow.. they found out how to duplicate an existing app. Its called CloudBrowse. Have fun.
@H3lls One of the main differences is that this doesn't require the visitor to install an app to consume your content. It requires no new behavior by the visitor.
A big company that has spent lots of money generating Flash content could seamlessly divert traffic for iDevices to this system and continue to get value out of that existing content. That buys them time during the transition (however long that might be) to HTML5 and beyond.
@H3lls I've been a beta tester for Cloud Browse for awhile, so far it's not too bad. Just wish there was an iPad version.
Lol. I'll take an Android tablet over this, thank you.
@Benjulious
Which one?
@GmanC
I'm not sure yet. Maybe an Asus Eee Pad.