Flash Video App Tops iTunes Chart, but does it work?
Since Apple iOS does not include support for Adobe’s Flash Player, you will not be able to watch any of the Flash-based web videos and other animations on your iPhone or iPad.
There are some apps, the Skyfire browser for example, that indirectly bring Flash videos to your iPhone by first transcoding the Flash content on to their own servers and then serving them as HTML5 to you. You may also play Flash videos on an iP{hone|od|ad} with the help of screen sharing apps though it’s not a very practical solution either.
I stumbled upon another iPad app - Flash Video Discover - that, despite it’s $9.99 price tag, has already topped the iTunes charts (see that glowing Adobe Flash icon above). The average user rating for this app is 3/5 and 162 users have rated it so far on the iTunes store.
So what problems is this app trying to solve. I scanned the lengthy description of the app on the iTunes page, 251 words to be exact, and nowhere does it mention anything about the app. All you get to read is what is Flash and why is the Flash format so popular. It is more or less obvious that the description is written to get the app appear in search results of popular queries like Flash, Hulu, etc.
I tried scanning the user reviews on iTunes, starting with ‘Most Recent’ comments first, and they were mixed. A lot of people have labeled this app as a piece of ‘junk’ that doesn’t work at all but what’s surprising is that there’s an equal, or even greater, number of positive reviewers who have rated it 5/5.
The developer, Nguyen Mai Phuong, has listed his Twitter account – @tieuphuong90 - as the support page and this account was possibly created on the same day when the Flash app for submitted to Apple for approval.
I haven’t used the app myself but it looks increasingly likely that someone has successfully managed to game the iTunes rating system and because the app is now listed among the ‘top paid apps,’ more and more people are noticing and buying it though I doubt if it adds any value.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.