“Adobe is finally planning to kill off Flash once and for all. Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Safari have all been blocking Flash over the past year, but Adobe is now planning to remove support for it fully by the end of 2020,” Tom Warren reports for The Verge. “‘We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats,’ explains an Adobe spokesperson.”
Warren reports, “Apple is also supportive of the 2020 end of life for Flash, and Safari currently requires explicit approval on each website even when Mac users opt to install Flash.”
“2020 will mark an end of an era for Flash, but one that feels like it has been a long time coming,” Warren reports. “HTML5 standards have been implemented across all modern web browsers, and the need for Flash just isn’t there anymore.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good riddance.
Adobe… Your shitastic Flash must die. — MacDailyNews, February 5, 2010
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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. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.
The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.
New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind. — Steve Jobs, April 29, 2010
SEE ALSO:
Steve Jobs wins: Adobe Flash for Android dies tomorrow – August 14, 2012
Adobe ceases development on Flash Player for mobile, refocuses efforts on HTML5 – November 9, 2011
Study: iOS users view 80% of mobile video – May 23, 2011
Apple CEO Steve Jobs was right about Adobe’s Flash – May 2, 2011
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen believes his firm doesn’t need Apple or the iPad – August 16, 2010
Steve Jobs posts rare open letter: Thoughts on Flash – April 29, 2010
Adios Flash, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out – February 02, 2010
Steve Jobs: Adobe is ‘lazy’, Google can’t ‘kill iPhone,’ ‘Don’t be evil’ mantra is ‘bullshit’ – February 01, 2010
How HTML5 could finally kill Flash video – January 28, 2010
Gruber: Apple tablet likely won’t support Adobe’s Flash – January 08, 2010
Adobe issues critical security advisory for Adobe Reader, Acrobat and Flash Player – July 23, 2009
Can HTML 5 kill off Adobe’s Flash, Microsoft’s Silverlight? – June 16, 2009
Apple’s QuickTime X the missing link for Adobe Flash on iPhone? [UPDATED] – June 16, 2009
Adobe releases Flash Player security patch – February 25, 2009
Adobe’s Flash still not iPhone-worthy – February 17, 2009
Don’t hold your breath for Apple’s iPhone to support Adobe’s Flash – November 21, 2008
Adobe to give away Flash for mobile devices – May 02, 2008
Adobe issues empty response to Steve Jobs’ statement that ‘Flash is too slow for iPhone’ – March 05, 2008
Apple CEO Steve Jobs: Adobe Flash not good enough for iPhone – March 05, 2008
Cringely: Don’t hold your breath for Flash on Apple iPhone, iPod touch, coming Apple tablet – December 07, 2007
Hallelujah!
A lot of websites will have to die!!!
You are correct. Website designers at all of the porn sites will be very, very busy!
Good riddance to all the flash garbage. Much of it is ads anyway. If one deleted all the ad laden sites that merely parrot what was posted elsewhere, the internet would shrink significantly and users would rejoice at higher quality, faster web browsing. Bring it on!
Like CBS.com. Grrr…
And hell even Facebook pesters me about Flash. I ignore it.
Steve Jobs the sharp visionary!
Flash was interesting in the late 90s when Macromedia was the only real way to make multimedia content work in a browser.
It’s been long past it’s expiration date at this point.
I wonder if Tim Cook would be able to definitively predict anything technical so many years ahead like Jobs did. Job’s understood the market he was operating in. That’s why he was able to be a visionary.
I dunno. I’ll ask Steve’s ARKit hologram.
in 2021 si.com will still be asking you to install flash.
How I miss Steve Jobs… Hopefully he is watching
If he is he’s crying
Flash started out as a totally different product and was bastardised into what it became: a jack of all trades and master of none.
Flash is bug ridden garbage… almost as bad a Java. Maybe Tim can vow to banish Java to honour Steve’s totally correct pledge to banish a shite technology.
All right genius. Obviously you have something already in mind to replace Java that is both practical and superior like Jobs did with HTML5, and is based on an open, platform-independent standard that people don’t have to pay to use as is also the case with Java and isn’t tied to specific hardware, architecture or company. Or maybe you think that Java is akin to Flash, which is used for one thing – playing video, and can easily be replaced, instead of being used for a ton of vital tasks that browsers need under the hood.
If you say something like “replace Java with Python, Swift or Javascript” then you will exhibit the fact that you are not a client side programmer or full stack programmer who actually knows what you are talking about. But if you say something else, then not only are you a programmer, but you are a better one than pretty much everyone in the entire industry, who has been looking to replace Java with something better for over a decade and haven’t been able to yet.
I’m just an engineer who uses McAfee IDS, ArcSight, Juniper NetScreen and many others on a daily basis… security software protecting multiple international businesses.
All Java based, all slow as shit and most of the time require special bounce boxes with the correct version of Java (usually an old outdated version) in order to run.
“Write once, run anywhere” is bullshit. If you used systems that require java as often as I did I think you’d have the same opinion as I do.
It’s still censorship.
Any form of opposition can be seen as censorship. Successful competition can be seen as censorship. Both political correctness and its reverse can be seen as censorship. There is no fine tuning of censorship, no linguistic pirouettes sufficient to excuse some forms of contentious expression whilst condoning others. All of it depends on who controls or wishes to control, for their own benefit, dissident voices in society.
Adobe allowing Flash to die is less a capitulation to censorship than it is an acknowledgement that they’d milked the product way past its useful life, and that the corpse was beginning to stink.
And forbiddance is the most egregious form of censorship.
This also heralds the end of the “app”. Everything will run inside an almost invisible browser.
Good!!!!!