3 ms·

Why Flash died

6 points by ptrptr 10y ago

tinus_hn 10y ago
That is just bull, Flash would have died even if Adobe would have continued investing, just like Java and Silverlight. Proprietary plugin based extensions are dead.
gozur88 10y ago
Flash died of a lot of things. It was already mortally wounded when Apple hastened its demise. I don't think that had much to do with the bottom line at Adobe, either - almost everything Flash did got moved into the browser, so it became difficult to justify the security risks and the headaches that came with it on non-Windows platforms.
- marcus_holmes 10y ago
  I'm not so sure. Remember that browsers were all over the place at the time. Web Devs were actually building what we would now consider standard HTML in Flash because they didn't have to worry about browser incompatibility. I was working for a commercial software house around this time, and we were seriously considering delivering major products in Flash because it solved a huge number of problems. Silverlight was MS's response to this push. Jobs killed it not because it was bad, but because Flash was fast becoming the platform for the web. I'm curious about the secret "thing that killed Flash". Anyone know?
  - Clubber 10y ago
    >Jobs killed it not because it was bad, but because Flash was fast becoming the platform for the web. It had already become the platform for the web. I read somewhere that Adobe outsourced all their development sometime around 2005. By the time they needed to pivot and make it lean, they didn't have the knowledge anymore. I don't know how true this is though. It was also a memory hog and wouldn't run well on a first generation iPad. Jobs used H.264 for video and it ran much better than Flash.
thomastjeffery 10y ago
Flash died because we all wanted it to. Thankfully, it was a mostly quick transition. It was a rough transition in Apple-land due to Apple's well-meaning intentions, but that is just the way Apple does everything.

3 ms·

Why Flash died

6 points by ptrptr 10y ago

tinus_hn 10y ago
That is just bull, Flash would have died even if Adobe would have continued investing, just like Java and Silverlight. Proprietary plugin based extensions are dead.
gozur88 10y ago
Flash died of a lot of things. It was already mortally wounded when Apple hastened its demise. I don't think that had much to do with the bottom line at Adobe, either - almost everything Flash did got moved into the browser, so it became difficult to justify the security risks and the headaches that came with it on non-Windows platforms.
- marcus_holmes 10y ago
  I'm not so sure. Remember that browsers were all over the place at the time. Web Devs were actually building what we would now consider standard HTML in Flash because they didn't have to worry about browser incompatibility. I was working for a commercial software house around this time, and we were seriously considering delivering major products in Flash because it solved a huge number of problems. Silverlight was MS's response to this push. Jobs killed it not because it was bad, but because Flash was fast becoming the platform for the web. I'm curious about the secret "thing that killed Flash". Anyone know?
  - Clubber 10y ago
    >Jobs killed it not because it was bad, but because Flash was fast becoming the platform for the web. It had already become the platform for the web. I read somewhere that Adobe outsourced all their development sometime around 2005. By the time they needed to pivot and make it lean, they didn't have the knowledge anymore. I don't know how true this is though. It was also a memory hog and wouldn't run well on a first generation iPad. Jobs used H.264 for video and it ran much better than Flash.
thomastjeffery 10y ago
Flash died because we all wanted it to. Thankfully, it was a mostly quick transition. It was a rough transition in Apple-land due to Apple's well-meaning intentions, but that is just the way Apple does everything.