I recevied this popup box the am on my Mac, how will this effect the overall general use of my Mac when using the internet for everyday activites going forward after it is discontinued end of the year?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Adobe Flash Player being Discontinued
- Thread starter MacBookpro2011
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You probably won’t be effected at all.
If Flash was critical to your workflow, you’d have been aware of this announcement for a few years now and would have hopefully obtained a solution before today.
Here is the question, keep it for just in case or uninstall? I have no idea if I'm depending on (and don't know it) or visit web sites that use flash.
Trivia question: If I'm not mistaken, as an earlier abandoner of Flash, did Apple kill it?
Trivia question: If I'm not mistaken, as an earlier abandoner of Flash, did Apple kill it?
No, Adobe killed Flash not Apple.
Many MR commenters like to say that Steve Jobs killed Flash but he has been dead for over nine years.
Apple never banned Flash on Macs however they were early to disable it by default.
Looking at the whole situation retrospectively, I'd say that Apple hastened Flash's demise by a year or two but it was inevitable. Its performance and security were so poor that it was never qualified to run on iOS devices. While my memory is a bit hazy, it was never fully deployed on Android OS.
Adobe Flash has been a longtime performance pig and a longtime security risk on multiple operating systems including those with many more users and devices than Apple's.
Many MR commenters like to say that Steve Jobs killed Flash but he has been dead for over nine years.
Apple never banned Flash on Macs however they were early to disable it by default.
Looking at the whole situation retrospectively, I'd say that Apple hastened Flash's demise by a year or two but it was inevitable. Its performance and security were so poor that it was never qualified to run on iOS devices. While my memory is a bit hazy, it was never fully deployed on Android OS.
Adobe Flash has been a longtime performance pig and a longtime security risk on multiple operating systems including those with many more users and devices than Apple's.
Last edited:
Flash is not even a viable platform anymore. You won't be affected by not using it, or even better, uninstalling all if its remnants. HTML5 has effectively replaced flash a while back. The biggest problem with the Flash platform was twofold:
1. security risk - became a vector for malware / trojans
2. energy consumption - loves to eat battery power - basically why iOS devices never supported it
1. security risk - became a vector for malware / trojans
2. energy consumption - loves to eat battery power - basically why iOS devices never supported it
I asked this is a certain manner "did Apple kill flash" by abandoning it early or was the writing on the wall?
Apple did effectively kill Flash when they introduced the iPad and iPhone. Both only work with HTML5. Flash was great in many ways, but technology moves on and it was a security risk too.
Flash was never supported in iOS, and when Apple introduced Mac OS X Lion in 2011, Flash wasn’t included with OS X anymore. Back then the first thing you had to do after setting up a new Mac was to go to the Adobe website and download Flash Player, you had to use that even for YouTube. By now it has become almost completely irrelevant of course.
Guess that means the end of FarmVille once and for all lol!
Facebook games still depend on Flash. Even in 2020.
Facebook games still depend on Flash. Even in 2020.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember how Android users were rubbing it on our noses “look, my phone can run Flash, can yours? lol, you’re a sheep”.
I'd say the writing was on the wall. I see Apple's position on Mobile Flash to be the canary in the coal mine, rather than the dynamite.
It comes down to the realities of the mobile web in the early days of Mobile devices - bandwidth, download speeds, on-device storage and RAM, CPU/GPU capabilities, battery life, etc. Flash is inefficient, and inefficiency is not a problem limited to Apple's mobile devices. The problem was most obvious at the start of the Mobile Revolution, before our devices and mobile networks grew to their current capabilities.
At that time, Flash was huge on the home/office web, so it was hard to conceive of an Internet without Flash. But on home/office desktops, Flash's inefficiencies did not loom large - no dollars-per-gigabyte data plans, and even DSL speeds were better than cellular. And as long as you're tethered to a power outlet and running a reasonably up to date PC with a reasonable amount of RAM.... yeah, we could live with Flash.
Stepping back for a moment... Flash had two primary uses. Originally, it was a technology for delivering active media content and streaming (following in the footsteps of PDF). However, it grew into a full-fledged, cross-platform development platform for web-delivered apps.
Apple's issues with Flash tended to focus on Flash as a software platform. Downloading apps/applets with every page access is not the most efficient way to deliver software. And sure, it's easy to see how Apple's desires to control app installation on iOS (whether for achieving security goals or for commercial reasons) added further fat to the fire.
However, even when it comes to the "simpler" function of Flash - active media delivery, I think the writing was on the wall. As the web "matured" there were good reasons for moving support for streaming/active media away from proprietary technologies and into open web standards. It's likely HTML5 would have eliminated the need for media players like Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, regardless of Apple's position on Flash.