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Adobe to Stop Distributing and Updating Flash in 2020

People who say that Jobs won, well in 10 years, thats ions in technology world. For that long, it would have eventually faded anyway. Even Apple's own software like iWeb, iDVD, and FCE died.

That being said, Flash was a great plugin it made browsers do amazing stuff including in browser games. That being said, many people showed concerns that they use PRO software that only uses Flash and no other alternatives exist.
 
Zirel said:
Remember when Apple was evil because they rejected flash on the iPad?
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Remember when Flash was considered so necessary, that when the iPhone debuted without it, Walt Mossberg himself wrote articles claiming inside info that Apple was going to soon include it with an iPhone update?

Remember early iPhone demos where Jobs showed stored versions of popular websites, which had been intentionally modified by Apple developers to hide the fact that the iPhone could not show the Flash content? This was because he wanted to claim that it showed the "real internet", which was a baldfaced lie at the time.

My favorite was when they stuck in a fake photo not only to hide a missing Flash menu in the middle of the National Geographic website... but also to "prove" how much faster the iPhone loaded "real" webpages.

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Upper left is the faked site he demoed. Right and bottom were the actual site. I think he did the same with the NYTimes site.

Remember when Android was the best OS ever because it had a slow and buggy version of flash that was essentially useless?
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By the time tablets became popular, Flash on Android was stable and fast.

My youngest daughter only used Android tablets for years because the best pre-teen kid's interactive games of the time were written in Flash and were not available on the iPad.

Now she uses a Mac and iPhone, but back then she refused to touch them.
 
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ForkHandles said:
Security holes

again iOS has had plenty of these. Remember the good old days when any app could steel your contacts list.
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iOS isn't even in the same league as Flash when it comes to the severity of vulnerabilities, largely due to Apple's quick patching of said vulnerabilities. I can't comment on the raw quantity of vulnerabilities that iOS and Flash have had over the years, but I would sure hope that a single application would have less vulnerabilities than an entire operating system. Thing is, I can't even be sure that's the case.
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kdarling said:
Remember when Flash was considered so necessary, that when the iPhone debuted without it, Walt Mossberg himself wrote articles claiming inside info that Apple was going to soon include it with an iPhone update?

Remember early iPhone demos where Jobs showed stored versions of popular websites, which had been intentionally modified by Apple developers to hide the fact that the iPhone could not show the Flash content? This was because he wanted to claim that it showed the "real internet", which was a baldfaced lie at the time.

My favorite was when they stuck in a fake photo not only to hide a missing Flash menu in the middle of the National Geographic website... but also to "prove" how much faster the iPhone loaded "real" webpages.

View attachment 710163

Upper left is the faked site he demoed. Right and bottom were the actual site. I think he did the same with the NYTimes site.



By the time tablets became popular, Flash on Android was stable and fast.

My youngest daughter only used Android tablets for years because the best pre-teen kid's interactive games of the time were written in Flash and were not available on the iPad.

Now she uses a Mac and iPhone, but back then she refused to touch them.
Click to expand...
None of this changes the fact that Flash was a terrible battery hog on mobile devices, and I can't remember a single mobile device where Flash could be considered "fast". Searching the internet seems to return quite a few remarks of the last versions of Flash for Android being slow. Seeing as how Flash remains a CPU and battery hog on significantly more powerful machines, I find your observations to be very interesting.

Adobe couldn't adequately implement Flash on mobile devices, and thus it died. Yes, it was seen as necessary back then. If Apple didn't steadfastly refuse to support it back then, it would still be necessary now- we're in much better shape that it isn't.
 
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Tubamajuba said:
None of this changes the fact that Flash was a terrible battery hog on mobile devices, and I can't remember a single mobile device where Flash could be considered "fast".
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I certainly remember fast ones. But they weren't el cheapo $50 tablets. Most of those were pretty bad.

People also forget that Adobe didn't write Flash. They bought it from Macromedia. Eventually Adobe came out with a really decent mobile Flash.

As someone else pointed out, the real reason Jobs eventually dissed Flash was because, as a cross platform solution, it would've been a huge threat to his later App Store lock-in of iPhone users.

All that said, I do appreciate the boost Apple gave to HTML 5.
 
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Flash was exciting back in the day but now is a thorn for many designers, developers and casual users. Very happy to hear of it's pending termination.
 
falainber said:
You and many Apple fans are just misguided (actually fooled by Apple). You suffered not because Flash was bad but because Apple was too lazy to support it. Apple fans hate a lot of technologies which are missing in Apple ecosystem. Very often they also eagerly embrace those technologies once they become available on Apple products.
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You are right that there are times I miss having flash on my devices. Which is why I am thankful to Apple for making these hard choices for me so I don't need to.

Because flash was blocked on iOS, this incentivised developers to create native apps optimised for touch and direct input.

What I lose from not being able to access flash on my iPhone and iPad, I gained from having great native apps. It's a net gain however I look at it.

It's all about perspective.
 
Zirel said:
Remember when Apple was evil because they rejected flash on the iPad?

Remember when Android was the best OS ever because it had a slow and buggy version of flash that was essentially useless?
Click to expand...

No I don't remember Apple being branded as "evil" because of that - but I do remember a lot of websites not working on iOS Safari due to Apple's policy. They worked reasonably well on the more capable Android devices like the Nexus and HTC phones.

I'm glad that, thanks to the iPhone success, Apple, via Steve Jobs, was able to start the transition away from Flash - but there are unfortunately still a lot of sites and even work tools (cough Texas Instruments Webench for power supply design of electronics) that are based on Flash.
 
MY PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED
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darkarn said:
I wonder how bad will this affect digital heritage; how many digital artifacts that cannot be played for the future generations to see...
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And this is why I prefer creating (and consuming) content on platforms that are open source. No fear of forever losing access to historical digital artifacts because the platform owner decided to discontinue it. If Adobe doesn't suck, they will do the right thing and open source Flash after they discontinue it (or at least make the source available).

That said, I am not delusional — I have no expectation that Adobe will do the right thing here. But I welcome them to prove me wrong.
 
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bowmasters said:
If Adobe doesn't suck, they will do the right thing and open source Flash after they discontinue it (or at least make the source available).
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I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, there's leaving an option for the archivally curious. On the other hand, Flash needs to die thoroughly and I wouldn't want to facilitate zombie versions of Flash lurking about. That would be like Adobe giving us a parting f.u. as they jettison their trash.
 
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bowmasters said:
MY PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED
[doublepost=1501085802][/doublepost]

And this is why I prefer creating (and consuming) content on platforms that are open source. No fear of forever losing access to historical digital artifacts because the platform owner decided to discontinue it. If Adobe doesn't suck, they will do the right thing and open source Flash after they discontinue it (or at least make the source available).

That said, I am not delusional — I have no expectation that Adobe will do the right thing here. But I welcome them to prove me wrong.
Click to expand...

If all else fails, there's always virtualisation and archiving Flash installers.

Either way, this could be the toughest fight the digital archivists have at their hands
 
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ForkHandles said:
With respect isn't that the Apple App Store method of delivery.

Plenty of files that only run on one operating system.

My point is that we haven't come an inch further forward in the goal of high quality interactive render once websites.
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Isn't that the point? The open-web thrives when the core technology isn't constrained by an individual company's priorities. There is a place for proprietary code, but that place is not with your ability to render a web site.
The dominance of Flash 10 years ago was unsettling and a platform not having Flash was getting increasingly inconvenient for users. Hence this whole thread a decade later. Breaking that trend was important and has allowed for more diversity in hardware and OS's being viable options for end users.
You can have your proprietary cross platform interpretive language, just don't make it required for using your website.
 
MysticCow said:
And you're right.

Adobe, knowing that Flash is still hotter than burning jet fuel, said it isn't stopping it NOW, but in 2020. In three years time, and especially with Adobe saying "NO MORE," I think we'll get our replacement and soon.
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As much as anything bad, should be stopped now,,, well i guess... people are gonna complain anyway,,, It just this way it will be more of a slow death than a "ok, lets pull the plug"

A replacement for flash IS HTML5,, what else is there that can't harm computers? using WebGL ? that's already got security issue.
 
Tech198 said:
As much as anything bad, should be stopped now,,, well i guess... people are gonna complain anyway,,, It just this way it will be more of a slow death than a "ok, lets pull the plug"

A replacement for flash IS HTML5,, what else is there that can't harm computers?
Click to expand...

Well, it's either someone creates the Flash-killer in the next year or so, or expect Adobe to backtrack on this announcement REALLY FAST.
 
Thank you Steve Jobs. Now I have to re write all my work! (JK I'm not a flash dev)

This is great news!
 
Kabeyun said:
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, there's leaving an option for the archivally curious. On the other hand, Flash needs to die thoroughly and I wouldn't want to facilitate zombie versions of Flash lurking about. That would be like Adobe giving us a parting f.u. as they jettison their trash.
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I had the same thought. I think the biggest risk would be if some very well organized party came along and started maintaining the source, providing timely security updates and reliable distribution enough that big players felt confident to continue using it and developing content on it.

But I'm sure Adobe's lawyers can craft up a sufficiently restrictive open source or "source available" license that discourages or outright prevents a third party from properly taking up stewardship of it. Without a trusted party and reliable operation behind it, Flash would almost certainly go extinct in the wild – it'd probably just lurk about indefinitely on life support on websites that aren't worth visiting, much like Java Applets.
 
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