“Adobe Flash — that insecure, ubiquitous resource hog everyone hates to need — is under siege, again, and hopefully for the last time,” Brian Barrett reports for Wired. ” The latest calls for its retirement come from some of the Internet’s most powerful players, but if the combined clattering of Facebook, Firefox, and a legion of unsatisfied users isn’t enough finally to put it in the ground, scroll down to see how to axe it from your devices yourself.”
“Why would you want to?” Barrett reports. “Because Flash is a closed, proprietary system on a web that deserves open standards. It’s a popular punching bag for hackers, which puts users at risk over and over again. And it’s a resource-heavy battery suck that at this point mostly finds its purchase in pop-up ads you didn’t want to see anyway.”
“This week, in the wake of newly discovered vulnerabilities in Flash, Facebook security boss Alex Stamos called for a termination date for Flash, and late Monday night Mozilla disabled all current versions of the plug-in by default in its Firefox browser,” Barrett reports. “That doesn’t mean this is the end … yet. Facebook still uses Flash to play video on some browsers, and Firefox reintroduced Flash support on Tuesday when a secure update arrived. The point is clear, though: Flash is officially more trouble than it’s worth. And it has been for some time.”
More info, including how to ditch Flash, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs was right yet again, of course.
Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc… We strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.
Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads… 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… New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). — Steve Jobs, April 2010
SEE ALSO:
How to uninstall Adobe’s Flash from your Mac – July 13, 2015
Free: How to kill Flash on your Mac – August 11, 2014
Apple CEO Steve Jobs was right about Adobe’s Flash – May 2, 2011
Steve Jobs posts rare open letter: Thoughts on Flash – April 29, 2010
Already has died on my Mac … years ago.
Me, too. Macs have been much healthier ever since.
RIP, Flash.
What are you using instead Bo ?
I have used a Flash blocker for years but kept Flash on my Mac for years just in case. I finally remove Flash for good yesterday. I even wrote the BBC to request that they remove Flash from their site (I surf there all the time).
If that isn’t the tech understatement of the last decade.
OFF by DEFAULT! Die FLASH Die!
Well, until Rummy-World.com moves to HTML5, I’m stuck with Flash. 🙁
As much as I want Flash to go away, I need to keep it on my Mac, and to update it frequently.
Unfortunately, I use a couple of web sites that insist on requiring the latest Flash in order to work.
Flash has had 90 security vulnerabilities in just the last 3 months! National Vulnerability Database
How can this piece of crap still be allowed?
uninstalled yesterday along with java
I keep a copy of chrome at the ready if I ever need it.
Tell HBO to drop it from HBO Go for the web.
Flash? Is that the buggy insecure tech from the 90s? Haven’t had that for years and haven’t really missed it.
My Mum needed to update her TomTom however the site requires fucking Flash to run.
I’m looking into getting her an alternative; any company site that still requires Flash needs to be boycotted.
FLASH can’t die. iHating Android Fanatics watch tons of porn that need FLASH. With no sex life all they have is FLASH to view porn. 😝
Unfortunately, anyone using Internet Explorer less than 9.x can’t fully use HTML5 video. Thus as a publisher with a significant amount of our traffic coming from these people, we still have to support Flash. We do offer all of our content in HTML5 along with mobile versions of our site, but if someone has Flash installed, it defaults to that in order to catch the non-HTML5 people
I’d really like to see Microsoft kill off Explorer all together, but realistically, if they were to kill off support for versions less than 9.x, they’d really be advancing the Internet quite a bit.
By the way, this is happening come January 12, 2016. After that date Microsoft will no longer support Explorer less than 9.x except for embedded systems (which really don’t count from most publishers perspectives).
So expect to see a huge drop in supporting Flash after January 12, 2016, as content networks like mine can claim that we’re not supporting browsers that are no longer supported by their developer.
Apple is driving heaps of ex-Aperture users straight into the arms of Adobe and its Lightroom product. Very short term thinking Apple.
Practice what you preach MDN !! It’s disgusting how many flash ads you have on your site.
The only way to kill it is to convince the owners of the websites to stop using it. If the industry wants it to die, QUIT USING IT to deliver content. If there is no market for it, Adobe will stop spending money to keep it running.
We still use it with Adobe Connect virtual classroom though we are trying to move customers to Zoom. We tell customers that Chrome has problems with Connect. Our CMS gives us an option between flash or h.264. We always use the later. Adobe Connect does some cool things. But it will disappear without flash. Flash is about the only thing that can be updated without an admin password. That is good and bad I guess. They must patch flash every other week.
I listed a few more articles and images related to the Flash-Must-Die movement:
Adobe Flash Security Concerns Peak:
Drama Online
There are even ‘Flash Sucks’ items for sale linked in the article, just for fun.