iPad Flash Player SkyFire Stumbles Out Of The Gate

SkyFire sounded like it would finally allow iPad and iPhone users to view videos created and distributed using Adobe's Flash technology, which Apple has banned from its devices. But the application failed to deliver a good user experience and the company stopped selling it temporarily.

"Skyfire for iPhone ($2.99) may be one of the shortest-lived apps in the iPhone App Store, surviving only five hours today before Skyfire pulled it from the marketplace after noticing strain on their servers that resulted in poor user experience.

'The servers haven't crashed,' a Skyfire spokesperson said, but they did stutter as customers who bought the browser streamed Flash video. The Webkit-based Skyfire app (also available for Android) delivers Flash video to users--ordinarily forbidden by Apple--by streaming it through their own servers first in a process known as proxy browsing."