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Flash sentenced to death by Adobe?
Cruising the tech blogs and saw an announcement that Adobe has essentially said they’re going to be discontinuing development of Flash after this cycle since HTML-5 looks to have won the mobile device wars.
As someone who’s been producing content throughout the “digital video” era, it’s kinda odd to look back and see the tight curve from introduction, to major relevance, to EOL of a product like this.
Constant change. Nothing really lasts too much anymore.
From the article:
Apple had famously rejected the Flash plug-in for iPhone since the device launched in 2007. In 2010, the company’s then-CEO Steve Jobs penned a scathing critique of Flash. He praised HTML 5 and wrote that “Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice.”
“Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs,” Jobs also wrote. “But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.”Don’t know if that has ANYTHING to do with the future of mobile verses desktop migration other than that market forces continue to keep moving the major blocks of cheese – and more rapidly than ever.
For what it’s worth.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor
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10 Replies
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Having done development on Flash and now teaching it, I won’t be sorry to see it go. It’s continually been buggy as heck and their is no question as to player being a resource pig. It did work on some Android’s but not all. Time to move on.
With that announcement was the statement too that 750 people were let go. That is a shame. Having been on that side of the fence myself in history past it’s no fun. I have to wonder, however, with that many people working on just the mobile product and it still sucked, they must have been really flogging a dead horse there.
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They will no longer develop Flash player for mobile platforms. Not Flash per se. Flash player 12 is already in the works.
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Nobody said that they were not going to keep development on the desktop, but given that volumes by platform in the PC market place have already shifted significantly towards mobile platforms (laptops vs desktops) and with the coming of tablets and smartphones being the exponential growth markets it is probably more than safe to say the slope of the curve for Flash is down not up. Windows 8 IE10 will not support it and that is a significant nail for the coffin just as Apple’s refusal to put it into any iOS.
I for one won’t miss it.
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The starting post said: “Adobe has essentially said they’re going to be discontinuing development of Flash”.
Mobile vs. desktop growth aside, it not eol on the desktop. -
Ah, yes, you are correct on that point. Actually I was posting more on articles I’ve read on the net from prognosticators on both sides. With the installed base Flash has, it’s crazy to say it is dead. Of course it’s not. But it is safe to say it’s glory days are over. That Adobe is killing it for mobile and, one my safely assume, begrudgingly, looking to see how they can support HTML5, in the long run will help them. Its tough to see something you’ve put so much into fall aside but that is especially the way of new technology. Plus, things that are so proprietary and end up taking so much of the market, in the end, make themselves huge targets for competing alternative strategies, which is exactly what has happened.
In the end users and developers win. Competition is always good. I use an iPhone and love it but I’m really glad there are Androids out there. And even though the CPU market is still very lopsided, I’m glad AMD is around to keep Intel on their respective toes.
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[Phil Hoppes] Windows 8 IE10 will not support it and that is a significant nail for the coffin just as Apple’s refusal to put it into any iOS.
That’s only for the tablet side of IE10, not the desktop side.
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[Gary Huff] “That’s only for the tablet side of IE10, not the desktop side.”
It’s true, but you have to admit its a pretty big deal when you consider all the numbers we have heard lately about the sheer mass of mobile users.
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Yea but no one is going to develop a web site knowing it won’t play on a mobile device and they won’t want to do it twice. HTML5 is what they will use. Flash as a stand alone app with AIR has a good future but this will kill Flash as a web plug-in.
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We’ve been really really happy building our site with an HTML app called Hype. Back in the day we used to do flash, but not working on phones is a killer. Flash lost me a few iterations ago. Hype is really refreshing (but not quite perfect yet).
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Comments from Mike Chambers principal product manager for developer relations at Adobe
Summary
https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2396314,00.asp#fbid=ivIDRNbz9nk
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My take is that the key is on “Differences in how users consume rich content on mobile devices compared to the desktop” and the fact that html5 fills that space without the unnecessary bells and whistles.—
Ray
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