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Adobe Stops Flash Player Support For Android
New submitter Craefter writes "Adobe has finally seen the same light Steve Jobs did in 2010 and is now committed to putting mobile Flash player in the history books as soon as possible. Adobe will not develop and test Flash player for Android 4.1 and will now focus on a PC browsing and apps. In a blog post, they wrote, 'Devices that don’t have the Flash Player provided by the manufacturer typically are uncertified, meaning the manufacturer has not completed the certification testing requirements. In many cases users of uncertified devices have been able to download the Flash Player from the Google Play Store, and in most cases it worked. However, with Android 4.1 this is no longer going to be the case, as we have not continued developing and testing Flash Player for this new version of Android and its available browser options. There will be no certified implementations of Flash Player for Android 4.1. Beginning August 15th we will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that have Flash Player already installed. Devices that do not have Flash Player already installed are increasingly likely to be incompatible with Flash Player and will no longer be able to install it from the Google Play Store after August 15th.'"
I don't think anyone is gonna sit down here with this plate of crow and some ketchup. But, can anyone deny Jobs's statement was inaccurate now? http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ Just sayin.
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It's filled a gap, but with better apps, chrome being integrated now, time to let it retire gracefully.
Sure there'll be a way to sideload it just in case it is needed for something in particular.
That's the thing, when Jobs said it should die, many agreed, but to not (at the time) offer an alternative, wasn't the best way to handle it. The web moves on, html5 (and the browsers) are more common, standards are just about standardised.
Bye flash. Take a chair next to the blink tag over there.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Nothing of value was lost.
In summary, "We have too many customers, too much market share, and wholly believe that's a bad thing, especially in light of the looming competition from open standards such as HTML5."
Being able to browse the web in full and view flash contents is on of the best features of android phones. Flash has been a useful technology and I don't understand why it's being viewed as a good thing that it's going away. I understand open standards being used opposed to proprietary technology, but this seems more important for developers than end users. I honestly don't care how I get the content as long as I can, but why not continue to develop the technology that sets the phone apart?
Except for that fact that NO ONE decided to kill flash from their system. Jobs did. That decision made Jobs a leader.
Get a proper job?
Awwww man, without flash player, how are people going to rig mobile websites to load viruses onto my phone? It was an even bigger plugin security hole than its PC counterpart.
I imagine Adobe would suggest they use Edge, but you could use Animator, Sencha, Radi, or you could make your cartoon into a normal video and post that.
Lots of ways to skin that cat.
But, can anyone deny Jobs's statement was inaccurate now?
I do not think that means what you think it means.
It seems people are too harsh on Flash, for no reason really.
Personally I see it as a failure of the tech world to understand why some people were stubbornly holding on to Flash.
Flash was a very easy way for product designers to develop some pretty advanced client side technologies, with a plugin that had more than 90% adoption rates. iOS changed that, much to adobe's chagrin.
But like some commenters said, this technology is now being killed without proper replacements. You still can't do socket communications directly from within a browser without using plugins. Definitely not with UDP. This was one of the reasons Flash was awesome. It filled the gap of all those features missing in a browser (or available only in some and not in others).
And let's not even start with the authoring tool - I have yet to see a tool that was as friendly and intuitive as Adobe's for producing Flash apps.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
I've had an iOS device for many years now and I can literally count on one hand the number of times I _NEEDED_ Flash. And, as time goes by, that number is not growing - any website with even a vague hint of what's going on offers an alternative to Flash because they know cutting out the rather large mobile market is a bad idea.
The only real impact the lack of Flash has had is that I don't see Flash advertising and, believe me when I say, I don't miss one second of it.
The feature was being allowed to have it if I wanted, not flash itself. I don't have it installed on my phone, but I do on my tablet. Amazon video for instance uses it. My fear is this will mean online video sites will start making their own apps that do not work on my linux desktops.
You must not go out to eat very often.
Lots of restaurants still have their menus or even entire sites done in flash. I notice because I use Chrome on android which does not have flash and have to switch to firefox when I hit a site that depends on it.
A bony skeletal hand reaches out from a grave and chokes the life out of Flash.
The headline isn't entirely accurate. Adobe is only supporting flash on Android devices in which it is currently installed. In August, if you don't have flash installed, you ain't gettin' it. They've also come up with a list of "certified" Android hardware whatever in the hell that's actually supposed to accomplish.
Now then, notice that Adobe continues to support and develop Flash for the Windows platform. This is the largest marketshare of desktops out there. If Adobe "saw the light" , and conceeded to some Apple fanboi fantasy land, they would most certainly be dropping all Flash support across the board and declare it "not a profitable direction for the company" or some other such reason.
The fact that Adobe has Nixed the Linux version of Flash for FireFox, and now raising issue with Android, leads me to wonder why they are focused on crippling the two most open and alternative systems out there.
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you could make your cartoon into a normal video and post that.
This bloats the file size by a factor of ten, which costs the publisher ten times as much to send and the viewers ten times as much to receive.
Lots of restaurants still have their menus or even entire sites done in flash. I notice because I use Chrome on android which does not have flash and have to switch to firefox when I hit a site that depends on it.
Then complain to those restaurants. Tell the manager/owner: "Did you know that the menus on your website don't work on the iPad or iPhone?" (Don't bother mentioning Android; just stick to the iPad/iPhone since everyone knows what it is.) Most likely this crap was done by a cut-rate web development shop without their knowledge. I don't think most restaurants want to lose business from mobile users if they can help it.
Are you refuting that Flash drains battery, runs slow and eats up precious RAM on the phones that support it? How many Android owners actually like to use it when other options exist?
There was no store when the first iPhone was launched. Apple also did invest quite heavily in a (at the time) emerging and badly supported competitor: HTML5 (even going as far as pretenting that it will be the only way to develop for iPhone). Considering the standard of 2007 in mobile browsing (i.e. tiny screen displaying abridged version), they could have gotten away for a lot more control freakiness.
And let's not forget that Adobe has had a love hate relationship with Apple for quite a bit of time and with Flash, they showed a continuous stream of bad quality release and general lack of interest in the platform. (and continue even today - Flash sucks on Mac)
So indeed, that is control of the platform. However, rather than profit motivated, that is the classical control of the platform: avoid your competitor to control your platform or have your user blame you for somebody else mistakes.
Interestingly we can compare that decision with the biggest competitor of the iPhone: Android. Android did support Flash and java. Yet it took 4 years for a highly motivated Adobe to produce a version of flash that run smoothly, but only on an incredibly powerful 1 GHz double core mobile phone (in 2007, people would have laughed at you for thinking that was even possible) And for java, you have Oracle suing Google for not lining enough money in its pocket. Really, as a CEO trying carve a new niche in a highly competitive market, would you like to depend on those 2 (Oracle, Adobe) "partners" ?
So why does Adobe hate Windows so much? Is it some kind of evil plan for sabotage that they're going to keep supporting Flash on Windows?
My guess is they're in cahoots with the malware suppliers who rely on Flash. These must have grown tired of trying to find easy ways into Linux, Android, or iOS, and want to limit their future efforts to the low-hanging fruits in Windows (and maybe OSX).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire