4 ms·

Flash didn't die a natural death, it was murdered by companies that resent any loss of control over their users. Complaints by Jobs weren't in good faith overal

Flash didn't die a natural death, it was murdered by companies that resent any loss of control over their users. Complaints by Jobs weren't in good faith overall - Flash worked perfectly fine on Android back in the day. Jobs was just a control freak along with wanting to keep games/interactive content in the walled-off app store (plain web capability wasn't there yet at the time), Google can't collect data from Flash content as easily and wants its developers more focused on advertising than supporting the ever-dwindling feature list of Chrome (who cares about features like extension capability or viewing flash content when we already captured a ton of users bundling the browser with random installers and we can advertise on the google home page), and Mozilla sadly adopted a strategy of blindly following everything Chrome does. We could still be in that brief utopia of new HTML5 capability coexisting with first-class Flash support if the politics played out differently.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> Mozilla sadly adopted a strategy of blindly following everything Chrome does. I think Mozilla's incentives for minimizing Flash were relatively aligned with their principles: Flash is a proprietary technology from a single company, not an open standard. I also think that's a valid criticism, and why a lot of other tech enthusiasts didn't mind seeing Flash die, either. I largely agree with you though—Flash was a good technology, and the clear line in the sand it created between "web pages as documents" and "interactive content" had a lot of advantages. I also don't think it was any more bloated than modern HTML web apps, although it felt heavier at the time due to our more limited hardware capabilities.
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  Was NSAPI not an open standard?
  - narag 6y ago
    You mean NPAPI, right?
    - jimmaswell 6y ago
      I think so, yes.
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  Would that the line were as clear as you make it out to be. There were a metric craptonne of essentially all-document sites - the only "interactivity" being links - that were encased in inaccessible SWFs for (a) "pixel-perfect" rendering or (b) someone's idea of copy protection.
syncsynchalt 6y ago
My experience with Flash was that it was a nightmare of crashes and cpu usage on anything but Windows (i.e. Linux desktop, MacOS). I feel like a lot of people have a very rosy "nothing was wrong" view of Flash that I don't share. Jobs' letter was pretty welcome to anyone using a Mac, for one.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  I can't say I ever had an issue with Flash on Mac or Linux. It was certainly heavier than normal web content, but so is modern html5 stuff.
  - sergeykish 6y ago
    Do we have same time period in mind? 2006-2009: Gnash, hardly anything works, 2010: Youtube introduced html5 video
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      My years may be off by one, but iirc I was a Linux user in 2007–2008, switched back to Windows between 2009–2010, and then have used Macs ever since 2011. I recall Flash still being common in 2011.
      - sergeykish 6y ago
        I tried to get some facts. In 2006 I remember Gnash, it supports most SWF v7 features [1]. One could install firefox and flash in wine [2] (didn't know, didn't bother). And in 2008 there was native Linux Flash Player 9 [3] (too late). In 2010 still no hardware acceleration and no 64 bit support on Linux - in comments [4]. So technical availability was issue just in 2006-2007. Yes, I remembered flash was ads so without plugin it was ads free experience before AdBlock. I liked it a lot. The only issue was "copy to clipboard" buttons, but could work around. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnash_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnash_(software) [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20061030024511/https://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_flash_player http://web.archive.org/web/20061030024511/https://www.howtof... [3] http://web.archive.org/web/20080430162104/https://www.howtoforge.com/native_linux_flash_player9_in_ubuntu http://web.archive.org/web/20080430162104/https://www.howtof... [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20110511095927/http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2010/06/flash_player_101_now_available.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110511095927/http://blogs.adob...
Longhanks 6y ago
> Flash worked perfectly fine on Android back in the day. It absolutely did not. It was a huge battery drain and super unintuitive to navigate with touch.
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  A web page designed with only desktops in mind will work poorly on a phone too - not Flash's fault.
  - Longhanks 6y ago
    Doesn’t really matter whose fault it was: the experience was abysmal, which further led to its downfall.
kraig 6y ago
i don't remember flash ever being very good at its job. the best there was at the time, but slow/buggy/crashing. i remember being very excited for html5 being able to replace it.
tpmx 6y ago
If Adobe would have invested reasonably in security (timely fixes, code quality reviews, silent auto-update by default, general attitude towards code quality in hiring/development) Flash might have had a chance. They didn't. Flash didn't work "perfectly fine" on Android - basically every product shipped with Flash was vulnerable at almost any point in time.
cryptoz 6y ago
> Flash worked perfectly fine on Android back in the day This is absolutely false. It was not fine, much less "perfectly fine". It was slow to touch respond, super laggy. You couldn't hover. Scrolling and tapping wasn't supported right. It broke browser navigation when you weren't expecting it. Flash never worked on Android fully.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  It also never made it out of beta though, right? I think it might have gotten better in time, particularly as mobile hardware itself got more powerful, and creators designed flash apps with mobile interfaces in mind.
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  > This is absolutely false. It was not fine, much less "perfectly fine". TBF, not much did. Android was pretty rough until v4. When Flash was deprecated for Android the official advice from Google was to send an HLS stream instead, but those caused some variants of the Galaxy S3 (the biggest selling handset at the time) to hard lock and the user would have to pull the battery. Let's not pretend that early instability was all Flash's fault.
cosmotic 6y ago
You can add these to the list of selfish parties: Developers wanting full scripting support; this is what lead to all the security problems. Advertisers that turned an amazing animation system into a thing everyone hated. Macromedia and then (to a much larger degree) Adobe that took every possible wrong turn imaginable. What started as a system that allowed interactive vector animation to play from a floppy (native player AND media) turned into a bloated mess with features no one wanted or people wanted for only selfish reasons.
dillutedfixer 6y ago
You make valid points. But for years malicious Flash applets were one of the primary ways malware was delivered over the web. For IT departments, unless a user absolutely needed it, it was removed from their system. There was a time where it seemed like there were new critical vulnerabilities in Flash every week, and it was a nightmare to keep up with. Security, or lack thereof, contributed greatly to its demise.
shadowgovt 6y ago
Flash also didn't live a natural life. In an ecosystem of incresingly open web standards and interoperation, it was a closed-source single-owner multimedia time-synchronized event-driven content engine embedded in what increasingly became an ecosystem of open-source multiemdia time-synchronized event-driven content engines owned by multiple companies. Flash ended up with a closed-source economic model of "Maintain a bunch of forks of our engine for every platform, hope people keep paying us for the dev tools" and it became a losing gamble.
snowwrestler 6y ago
Flash did not "work perfectly fine" on Android. Arguably Flash never worked perfectly fine anywhere it ran. It was notorious for high CPU loads and security vulnerabilities. Putting it on a power-constrained mobile phone platform just emphasized these shortcomings.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> Mozilla sadly adopted a strategy of blindly following everything Chrome does. I think Mozilla's incentives for minimizing Flash were relatively aligned with their principles: Flash is a proprietary technology from a single company, not an open standard. I also think that's a valid criticism, and why a lot of other tech enthusiasts didn't mind seeing Flash die, either. I largely agree with you though—Flash was a good technology, and the clear line in the sand it created between "web pages as documents" and "interactive content" had a lot of advantages. I also don't think it was any more bloated than modern HTML web apps, although it felt heavier at the time due to our more limited hardware capabilities.

jimmaswell 6y ago
Was NSAPI not an open standard?
- narag 6y ago
  You mean NPAPI, right?
  - jimmaswell 6y ago
    I think so, yes.
stan_rogers 6y ago
Would that the line were as clear as you make it out to be. There were a metric craptonne of essentially all-document sites - the only "interactivity" being links - that were encased in inaccessible SWFs for (a) "pixel-perfect" rendering or (b) someone's idea of copy protection.

syncsynchalt 6y ago

My experience with Flash was that it was a nightmare of crashes and cpu usage on anything but Windows (i.e. Linux desktop, MacOS). I feel like a lot of people have a very rosy "nothing was wrong" view of Flash that I don't share. Jobs' letter was pretty welcome to anyone using a Mac, for one.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I can't say I ever had an issue with Flash on Mac or Linux. It was certainly heavier than normal web content, but so is modern html5 stuff.
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Do we have same time period in mind? 2006-2009: Gnash, hardly anything works, 2010: Youtube introduced html5 video
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    My years may be off by one, but iirc I was a Linux user in 2007–2008, switched back to Windows between 2009–2010, and then have used Macs ever since 2011. I recall Flash still being common in 2011.
    - sergeykish 6y ago
      I tried to get some facts. In 2006 I remember Gnash, it supports most SWF v7 features [1]. One could install firefox and flash in wine [2] (didn't know, didn't bother). And in 2008 there was native Linux Flash Player 9 [3] (too late). In 2010 still no hardware acceleration and no 64 bit support on Linux - in comments [4]. So technical availability was issue just in 2006-2007. Yes, I remembered flash was ads so without plugin it was ads free experience before AdBlock. I liked it a lot. The only issue was "copy to clipboard" buttons, but could work around. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnash_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnash_(software) [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20061030024511/https://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_flash_player http://web.archive.org/web/20061030024511/https://www.howtof... [3] http://web.archive.org/web/20080430162104/https://www.howtoforge.com/native_linux_flash_player9_in_ubuntu http://web.archive.org/web/20080430162104/https://www.howtof... [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20110511095927/http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2010/06/flash_player_101_now_available.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110511095927/http://blogs.adob...

Longhanks 6y ago

> Flash worked perfectly fine on Android back in the day. It absolutely did not. It was a huge battery drain and super unintuitive to navigate with touch.

jimmaswell 6y ago
A web page designed with only desktops in mind will work poorly on a phone too - not Flash's fault.
- Longhanks 6y ago
  Doesn’t really matter whose fault it was: the experience was abysmal, which further led to its downfall.

kraig 6y ago

i don't remember flash ever being very good at its job. the best there was at the time, but slow/buggy/crashing. i remember being very excited for html5 being able to replace it.

tpmx 6y ago

If Adobe would have invested reasonably in security (timely fixes, code quality reviews, silent auto-update by default, general attitude towards code quality in hiring/development) Flash might have had a chance. They didn't. Flash didn't work "perfectly fine" on Android - basically every product shipped with Flash was vulnerable at almost any point in time.

cryptoz 6y ago

> Flash worked perfectly fine on Android back in the day This is absolutely false. It was not fine, much less "perfectly fine". It was slow to touch respond, super laggy. You couldn't hover. Scrolling and tapping wasn't supported right. It broke browser navigation when you weren't expecting it. Flash never worked on Android fully.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
It also never made it out of beta though, right? I think it might have gotten better in time, particularly as mobile hardware itself got more powerful, and creators designed flash apps with mobile interfaces in mind.
Mindwipe 6y ago
> This is absolutely false. It was not fine, much less "perfectly fine". TBF, not much did. Android was pretty rough until v4. When Flash was deprecated for Android the official advice from Google was to send an HLS stream instead, but those caused some variants of the Galaxy S3 (the biggest selling handset at the time) to hard lock and the user would have to pull the battery. Let's not pretend that early instability was all Flash's fault.

cosmotic 6y ago

You can add these to the list of selfish parties: Developers wanting full scripting support; this is what lead to all the security problems. Advertisers that turned an amazing animation system into a thing everyone hated. Macromedia and then (to a much larger degree) Adobe that took every possible wrong turn imaginable. What started as a system that allowed interactive vector animation to play from a floppy (native player AND media) turned into a bloated mess with features no one wanted or people wanted for only selfish reasons.

dillutedfixer 6y ago

You make valid points. But for years malicious Flash applets were one of the primary ways malware was delivered over the web. For IT departments, unless a user absolutely needed it, it was removed from their system. There was a time where it seemed like there were new critical vulnerabilities in Flash every week, and it was a nightmare to keep up with. Security, or lack thereof, contributed greatly to its demise.

shadowgovt 6y ago

Flash also didn't live a natural life. In an ecosystem of incresingly open web standards and interoperation, it was a closed-source single-owner multimedia time-synchronized event-driven content engine embedded in what increasingly became an ecosystem of open-source multiemdia time-synchronized event-driven content engines owned by multiple companies. Flash ended up with a closed-source economic model of "Maintain a bunch of forks of our engine for every platform, hope people keep paying us for the dev tools" and it became a losing gamble.

snowwrestler 6y ago

Flash did not "work perfectly fine" on Android. Arguably Flash never worked perfectly fine anywhere it ran. It was notorious for high CPU loads and security vulnerabilities. Putting it on a power-constrained mobile phone platform just emphasized these shortcomings.