Retina Software announced yesterday that its F-Browser app is now available in the Apple AppStore. It allows users to play Flash videos on the iPhone.
As you may already know if you read this site, Flash videos are usually not viewable in the Safari browser. The F-Browser fixes this glaring omission. The F-Browser acts and works like a normal Web browser for the iPhone. The only difference is that when a user comes across a Flash video, they can directly tell F-Browser to convert it for viewing.
Flash videos are scanned and converted to an Apple approved format supported by the iOS. The user can view all Flash videos, animations and features from inside the application. Once the elements are converted, the files stay saved inside the application for fast viewing.
“As a loving fan of the iPhone and iPad, it was terrible hearing about all the complaints about iOS not supporting Flash videos. We decided to build something that will fill the only hole in the iPhone environment, and bring what was missing from day one,” said Zeeshan Alam, Director of Retina Software. “We hope to see F-Browser as the second browser on every iPhone. An iPad version is scheduled for release very soon.”
The F-Browser is now approved and listed in the Apple AppStore for iPhone OS. The company wants to keep the version updated and also bring F-Browser over to other smartphone platforms, including the iPad, BlackBerry and Android.
This isn’t the first time app developers have come up with a way to enjoy Flash on their iPhones. In the past people have created similar programs to get around the draconian flash ban, this is just the newest attempt. With apps like these being released every so often it will keep some people from having to jailbreak their very high priced phones.
One thing that many tech enthusiasts don’t understand is why Apple won’t just cave in and make their products and programs compatible with Flash. Apple likes to play micromanager with their AppStore, and they have allowed apps in the past that bridge the gap with Flash. Clearly they don’t have a problem with their users tweaking their phones to work with Flash, so why is Steve Jobs still dragging his feet on this issue?
The whole Apple/Adobe Flash conflict is weird. But, it must not hurt Apple’s profits too much because they still haven’t made an effort to give their consumers Flash out of the very expensive box their phones come in.
Apple’s consumers must not care about the issues surrounding their beloved products because they keep on buying them.
