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What Killed Adobe Flash? (daringfireball.net)
An employee, who claims to have worked on the development of Flash, writes: Apparently, the world settled on the "One True Cause" for why Flash "died". Take for example this blogpost by John Gruber about FedEx... it ends with this consideration on Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash": "If it had been an angry rant, it would have been easily dismissed without needing to be factually refuted -- "That's just Jobs being a prick again." The fact that it wasn't angry, and because it was all true, made it impossible to refute."
Impossible to refute. There's no doubt that this was the beginning of the end for Flash, right? Except that this is utterly wrong. I worked on Flash, and I worked on the thing that actually killed Flash. It is my strong belief, based on what I observed, that Steve Jobs' letter had little impact in the final decision -- it was really Adobe who decided to "kill" Flash. Yes, Flash was a bad rap for Adobe, and Steve's letter didn't help. But ultimately, what was probably decisive was the fact that developing Flash cost Adobe a ton of money. John Gruber, responding to the blogpost: To be clear, I don't think Jobs's letter killed Flash. But I don't think Adobe did either. Eventually Adobe accepted Flash's demise. What killed Flash was Apple's decision not to support it on iOS, combined with iOS's immense popularity and the lucrative demographics of iOS users. If Jobs had never published "Thoughts on Flash", Flash would still be dead. The letter explained the decision, but the decision that mattered was never to support it on iOS in the first place. It's possible that Flash would have died even if Apple had decided to allow it on iOS. Android tried that, and the results were abysmal. Web page scrolling stuttered, and video playback through Flash Player halved battery life compared to non-Flash playback.
Impossible to refute. There's no doubt that this was the beginning of the end for Flash, right? Except that this is utterly wrong. I worked on Flash, and I worked on the thing that actually killed Flash. It is my strong belief, based on what I observed, that Steve Jobs' letter had little impact in the final decision -- it was really Adobe who decided to "kill" Flash. Yes, Flash was a bad rap for Adobe, and Steve's letter didn't help. But ultimately, what was probably decisive was the fact that developing Flash cost Adobe a ton of money. John Gruber, responding to the blogpost: To be clear, I don't think Jobs's letter killed Flash. But I don't think Adobe did either. Eventually Adobe accepted Flash's demise. What killed Flash was Apple's decision not to support it on iOS, combined with iOS's immense popularity and the lucrative demographics of iOS users. If Jobs had never published "Thoughts on Flash", Flash would still be dead. The letter explained the decision, but the decision that mattered was never to support it on iOS in the first place. It's possible that Flash would have died even if Apple had decided to allow it on iOS. Android tried that, and the results were abysmal. Web page scrolling stuttered, and video playback through Flash Player halved battery life compared to non-Flash playback.
But mainly, the enormous security risk, bad reputation, and lack of native support in browsers.
It was a resource hog and had shitty security.
I never really minded flash in the earlier days, it enabled a lot of fun content. As time passed, it was the source of more and more security problems, and was used for more and more just plain annoyances like advertising. Had Adobe reworked it into a good, secure framework with some touch interface and power optimizations for mobile (I kept Flash around on Android for some time. It sucked the battery down hard while doing much of anything) it may have stayed relevant.
HTML5 didn't help either, since it did a lot of what it was for anyway.
Adobe flash killed itself by being pure crap.
What happened to Flash:
1. Animating junk on web pages was never very useful, so people more-or-less stopped doing it. Flash saved itself by becoming a way to deliver web video.
2. Decoding video with a general purpose CPU is very much inferior to decoding it with dedicated logic. Video standards were designed to enable dedicated logic decoders. CPU-based decoding used far, far too much energy so Flash couldn't compete or even come close.
Flash became mostly useless. Then it became only a way to get your system hacked and added to a botnet. Then it became nothing.
I don't think Jobs's letter killed Flash. But I don't think Adobe did either.
no, the internet rallied around Flash like a mafia hitsquad around a mole and slowly beat it to death. NodeJS, html5, and webm video all colluded to deliver the killing stroke to Flash. Adobe, in turn, largely did what they do best and ignored the programs compatibility issues in Linux, stability issues in mac and windows, and rampant security issues across the board. It should serve as a stern reminder of what could happen to Photoshop and AfterEffects if Adobe doesnt start paying more attention and start fixing real bugs.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Let's be real, the 'death of Flash' is only being talked about because the major web browsers are cutting support for it. An opinion posted by Jobs in 2010 related to a decision not to support Flash in iOS is supposedly the reason browser makers are cutting support for Flash in 2017? I'm not buying it. HTML5 video has everything to do with the death of Flash, as most usage of Flash was simply for audiovisual playback. Webgames and webapps used to use Flash, but how many people use those nowadays compared to mobile apps? Even on Android, which supports Flash? Youtube moving over to HTML5 video by default was the death knell of Flash. The constant drumbeat of 'more critical Flash vulnerabilities found and exploited in the wild, uninstall it already' didn't help, either. I wonder how Flash would've done if it were a) secure, and b) not a resource hog.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Flash doesn't need a post mortem, it just needs an obituary. Its death wasn't suspicious, and it didn't commit suicide. It was a cute, talented kid with promise, but as often happens, it became a shiftless, troublesome adult, partly as a result of the parenting mistakes of its narcissistic adoptive parent. Its lifestyle, shortcomings, and bad luck led it to an early death; it's time to close the casket, fill in the hole, place the gravestone, and move on.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
The reason Flash died is that there was finally a legitimate alternative in form of HTML5 video.
No one wanted to use Flash. But there was no other way to serve video as effectively as it did. Once HTML5 video arrived and was supported by the major browsers, Flash's days were numbered.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
There's on one reason it died but who cares? Honestly, we should just be happy it did die!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Flash and Homestar Runner validated each others' existence. Once H*R had run its course, Flash no longer had a reason to exist.
I suspect if you looked closer, a lot of the power sucking attributed to flash is actually due to bloated advertising stacks. The advertising bloat hasn't gone away, they just converted it to javascript.