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Skyfire browser pulled from App Store due to high demand
Skyfire, the iOS browser that landed in the iPhone store yesterday, has already been removed from the store. It's not because Skyfire violated any of Apple's policies, though -- it's because it was too popular. The browser hit #1 on the App Store's top grossing apps list within five hours of becoming available. The unexpected volume of downloads hammered Skyfire's server capacity and bandwidth, causing the developers to pull it from the store until they can build more capacity. Essentially, the app has sold out. How can a browser max out its developer's servers? Well, Skyfire's main selling point is that it allows users to watch Flash video by transcoding it and delivering it in an iPhone-friendly format. The server space required to store those videos while Skyfire works this transcoding magic, and the bandwidth required to upload and download the videos, is what's causing the drain on Skyfire's resources. If there was any doubt that a large number of iOS users want Flash video, this goes a long way toward putting it to rest.
Comments
8
Subscribe to commentsMaxNov 3rd 2010 10:19PM
I agree, this shows the pent-up demand for Flash. This whole anti-Flash thing is silly already. Apple should allow it on web pages, and just make it a setting people can turn it off.
I still want "real" flash, not just video. Video can be made into H264/HTML5. Flash apps and games, not so easily. I would love to be able to see any site I want on my iOS device.
RenzaticNov 3rd 2010 11:29PM
"I agree, this shows the pent-up demand for Flash. This whole anti-Flash thing is silly already. Apple should allow it on web pages, and just make it a setting people can turn it off."
This. A hundred times this. How hard would it be for Apple to implement something like Flashblock, where any Flash instances in a webpage show up as a blank grey square until you click on them? That'd make sense to me. People would get their Flash on the iPad, and Apple won't have to worry about it draining CPU and battery resources.
Actually, what'd make the most sense would be for Steve Jobs to quit being a pedantic crybaby, and for Adobe to get off their asses and make Mac/Linux Flash at least 3/4ths as good as it is on Windows. There's a reason most Mac people hate Flash. Because it sucks on their platform. Same with Linux. My more than powerful enough Ubuntu laptop can't even display fullscreen Youtube videos in Chrome without freezing up.
Sigh...if only.
synerageNov 3rd 2010 10:50PM
There's a difference between wanting Flash video and wanting the content embedded in those Flash players.
iOS users want the content, and it'd be preferable if it wasn't delivered in a manner that sucked battery life and resulted in awful performance. If every site offered H.264 encoded alternatives to their Flash players, there would be no reason to use Skyfire.
johnnyg0Nov 4th 2010 3:58PM
"wasn't delivered in a manner that sucked battery life and resulted in awful performance"
Wow you truly believe everything Steve said without ever questioning it? I mean.. have you installed Frash on your idevice? (yes, fRash with a R, its a hacked flash for IOS).. do it and and see how it works fine, without killing the battery. Then wonder why you believed that kind of crap in the first place, and then wonder what other crap do you believe in life.
dmitr77Nov 3rd 2010 10:58PM
Not a chance you'll get that flash you want as long as Apple can make a pretty penny by selling games/apps/etc that would otherwise be freely available through flash
@davey_ladNov 4th 2010 3:47AM
Maybe people just wanted to give it a test drive and see what SkyFire's video delivery is like. If they're anything like me & the experience is anything like the Android version then demand won't last long... it was uninstalled quickly from my [powerfull] HTC Desire. A good mobile browser isn't simply about video either... there are much better alternatives out there... just maybe not with flash transcoding
downloadsquadNov 4th 2010 6:21AM
Personally I don't think it shows the demand for Flash. It shows the demand for video that happens to be in Flash. If the video was all in HTML5 or whatever YouTube uses I think we'd all be perfectly happy to forget about Flash.
paperlessNov 4th 2010 2:11PM
Doesn't take an engineer to figure that this kind of thing would put a huge strain on their servers (downloading, transcoding and then uploading it back? srsly?). I could see this working as a subscription service but after this wave of buyers I wonder how long it will last before they run out of money to maintain the servers.
Also, this just proves that there's a bigger demand than the demand their servers can cope with, not that there's a huge demand overall (a better indicator for that would be the ranking on the AppStore, which is high).
I still believe the web would be a better place without flash. You absolutely don't need flash to stream videos and it's sad that there are so many content providers that rely on it to broadcast their videos. I know Apple is a twat when it comes to some of their AppStore policies but I applaud their stance towards flash.