4 ms·

The trajectory of Flash has been one of the great disappointments of the 21st century. Initially it democratized animation and gaming for a whole generation...

by Pxtl 7y ago

The trajectory of Flash has been one of the great disappointments of the 21st century. Initially it democratized animation and gaming for a whole generation... Then Adobe bought it and moved it higher and higher up the shelf out of reach of young artists through cost and anti-piracy measures. At the same time, its nimble little plug-in became worse and worse, becoming synonymous with security problems and endless patching... And ultimately they failed to port it to mobile and that was its dead end. For indie game development, unity is a worthy successor Flash... But we never really saw anything win out for animation. Who is the new Homestar Runner?

chrisseaton 7y ago
> And ultimately they failed to port it to mobile and that was its dead end. I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms.
- janci 7y ago
  > I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms. I don't think they were not invited to do so - I think they were not paid for the work or licenses
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    I'm not really sure what difference you're trying to highlight there. The point is that the people building the platforms didn't want Flash, so they didn't invite Adobe/Macromedia or whoever it was at the time to port them across, and yes since they didn't invite them to do the work they obviously also weren't going to to pay for it. Saying they weren't paid for it makes it sound like they were asked to do it but not paid or something like that. I think the reality is it was never wanted.
    - benologist 7y ago
      Didn't invite is a silly way of putting it. Jobs went to war with Flash, and at the time Adobe was making progress integrating iOS as publishing targets, and today it would have been a moot point as iOS hardware is surely powerful enough. Creative Cloud is heading to the iPad Pro and it is a real shame that Flash isn't part of that.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        > Jobs went to war with Flash He just ignored it. It was redundant on the iPhone, with native apps and the rise of web applications. Completely ignoring something seems like the opposite of 'going to war' with it.
        smacktoward 7y ago
        He took the unusual step of publishing a letter, “Thoughts On Flash” (https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/), published under his own name, which said that “Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content.” That’s going to war.
        chrisseaton 7y ago
        These seem like dispassionate technical observations to me? His argument is that it’s obsolete. It’s ‘we’re ok without that thanks’ not ‘war’.
        benologist 7y ago
        It wasn't obsolete in the slightest when Jobs published that letter. It was a piece of software worth billions, powering games like Farmville worth billions, powering video like YouTube, advertising, and it had remained a popular creative platform for two decades. There is more information about it here - in addition to Jobs going after Flash so publicly they added an app store rule specifying which languages developers could use to publish apps, and excluded Flash, after Adobe had made substantial progress publishing native iOS apps from Flash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_and_Adobe_Flash_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_and_Adobe_Flash_controve...
  - zyx321 7y ago
    Apple were (and still are) openly hostile towards any sort of third-party interpreters / runtimes on their platform.
- mcphage 7y ago
  > I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms. There was an android version for a while. I don't think it worked very well.
- miedpo 7y ago
  This is correct. Adope actually developed a flash player for the iPhone but Jobs said no. A year or so later, Apple allowed the Desktop-bound version of flash on the iPhone (it's called Adobe Air)... probably because they wanted users to get their games through the App Store.
btown 7y ago
The demise of Flash only deserves half the blame. There are a lot of brilliant animators out there, but YouTube has become the discoverability channel of record, and it penalizes content that doesn’t release rapidly and often. Flash could have been open source this whole time, and still the next Homestar Runner never would have beaten the ease with which Pewdiepie can churn out low-effort content.
- dhduwjwhh 7y ago
  Rapid and often is a little irrelavent in my opinion. YouTube provided a degree of centralization that has allowed certain kinds of creatives to flourish but it could never recreate the old flash games and cartoons for the simple reason that centralization enables easy censorship and progressive/tolerance culture is 100% censorship culture these days. Tons of flash games were violent satire, YouTube knee jerk banned gun related content. Lots of flashes were anti-pc teen humor, YouTube is aggressively pro lgbt. The old flash sites were less practical for tolerance tyrants to take down because they were too small and quickly replaced to be worth the effort, but YouTube is now the only real game in town for content creators with ambition and Google has no interest in anything besides pandering. The modern platform environment simply doesn't facilitate the kind of free creativity that existed before.

by Pxtl 7y ago

chrisseaton 7y ago

> And ultimately they failed to port it to mobile and that was its dead end. I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms.

janci 7y ago
> I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms. I don't think they were not invited to do so - I think they were not paid for the work or licenses
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  I'm not really sure what difference you're trying to highlight there. The point is that the people building the platforms didn't want Flash, so they didn't invite Adobe/Macromedia or whoever it was at the time to port them across, and yes since they didn't invite them to do the work they obviously also weren't going to to pay for it. Saying they weren't paid for it makes it sound like they were asked to do it but not paid or something like that. I think the reality is it was never wanted.
  - benologist 7y ago
    Didn't invite is a silly way of putting it. Jobs went to war with Flash, and at the time Adobe was making progress integrating iOS as publishing targets, and today it would have been a moot point as iOS hardware is surely powerful enough. Creative Cloud is heading to the iPad Pro and it is a real shame that Flash isn't part of that.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      > Jobs went to war with Flash He just ignored it. It was redundant on the iPhone, with native apps and the rise of web applications. Completely ignoring something seems like the opposite of 'going to war' with it.
      - smacktoward 7y ago
        He took the unusual step of publishing a letter, “Thoughts On Flash” (https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/), published under his own name, which said that “Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content.” That’s going to war.
        chrisseaton 7y ago
        These seem like dispassionate technical observations to me? His argument is that it’s obsolete. It’s ‘we’re ok without that thanks’ not ‘war’.
        benologist 7y ago
        It wasn't obsolete in the slightest when Jobs published that letter. It was a piece of software worth billions, powering games like Farmville worth billions, powering video like YouTube, advertising, and it had remained a popular creative platform for two decades. There is more information about it here - in addition to Jobs going after Flash so publicly they added an app store rule specifying which languages developers could use to publish apps, and excluded Flash, after Adobe had made substantial progress publishing native iOS apps from Flash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_and_Adobe_Flash_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_and_Adobe_Flash_controve...
- zyx321 7y ago
  Apple were (and still are) openly hostile towards any sort of third-party interpreters / runtimes on their platform.
mcphage 7y ago
> I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms. There was an android version for a while. I don't think it worked very well.
miedpo 7y ago
This is correct. Adope actually developed a flash player for the iPhone but Jobs said no. A year or so later, Apple allowed the Desktop-bound version of flash on the iPhone (it's called Adobe Air)... probably because they wanted users to get their games through the App Store.

btown 7y ago

The demise of Flash only deserves half the blame. There are a lot of brilliant animators out there, but YouTube has become the discoverability channel of record, and it penalizes content that doesn’t release rapidly and often. Flash could have been open source this whole time, and still the next Homestar Runner never would have beaten the ease with which Pewdiepie can churn out low-effort content.

dhduwjwhh 7y ago
Rapid and often is a little irrelavent in my opinion. YouTube provided a degree of centralization that has allowed certain kinds of creatives to flourish but it could never recreate the old flash games and cartoons for the simple reason that centralization enables easy censorship and progressive/tolerance culture is 100% censorship culture these days. Tons of flash games were violent satire, YouTube knee jerk banned gun related content. Lots of flashes were anti-pc teen humor, YouTube is aggressively pro lgbt. The old flash sites were less practical for tolerance tyrants to take down because they were too small and quickly replaced to be worth the effort, but YouTube is now the only real game in town for content creators with ambition and Google has no interest in anything besides pandering. The modern platform environment simply doesn't facilitate the kind of free creativity that existed before.