Get Flash on the iPad with iSwifter
Getting Flash on the iPad isn’t difficult if you really want it. You can either use remote PC or virtual PC software to control an external machine and just see the image on-screen, or you can use apps that let you browse Flash by running everything through their own servers and sending you the result as a video stream. Skyfire was the first to do this, but now a new app has popped up- iSwifter.
It’s free to try and after a few minutes on a Flash site it will pop up an option for you to buy the full version for $0.99. I tried it out a bit and it works surprisingly well for what it does. The video is watchable, though it will depend on both your network speed, server load and ping (distance to server) since everything goes through their servers. It’s basically like using a slow web browser, and that’s it.
Personally I see no point in Flash on the iPad as most major sites have HTML5 alternatives by now, which work a lot better than Flash ever did. I was actually more intrigued by being able to browse Hulu, as it’s normally blocked in Norway but this works since it runs through a US server. I’m going to play around a bit with it just to test out Hulu as it’s a lot easier than getting a reliable proxy for that price. If you’re 100% dependent on Flash and actually have confirmed that there aren’t HTML5 versions of the sites you use (many people think Flash is more important than it is because they never used an iPad and saw how much of everything is instead loaded in HTML5) then this won’t be the salvation for you, but if you have that one site that you sometimes need to access and it only works with Flash then this is a way of getting it done (I won’t comment on security by running it through a server though, that’s a whole other issue). Long live HTML5 in any case, Flash needs to die once and for all.
Video of iSwifter used to stream Hulu to Norway
[Engadget]
