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Flash absolutely would have become more entrenched. You get the feeling that Apple wasn't going to support Adobe's Flash plugin on the iPhone, no matter what.

Flash absolutely would have become more entrenched. You get the feeling that Apple wasn't going to support Adobe's Flash plugin on the iPhone, no matter what. Too battery-inefficient, too laden with security holes. They weren't going to pour billions into the iPhone just to have it be a delivery mechanism for Adobe's mess of a runtime. I see three alternate histories: 1. The iPhone launches without Flash, and it flops, because most of the Alexa top 500 is totally reliant on Flash. 2. The iPhone launches without Flash, just like in our timeline, and it's good enough that people still embrace it. Eventually this kills off Flash just like in our timeline, but it's a slower and more painful transition. 3. Apple agrees to support Flash on the iPhone, but only via an agreement with Adobe that lets Apple develop their own (safer, performant) Flash layer that stays in sync with Adobe's plugin via legally binding terms of the contract or whatever. In two out of these three alternate histories, we're still stuck with Flash today.

ransom1538 4y ago
"Too battery-inefficient, too laden with security holes." Lol. The reason Apple didn't support Flash was it was too good. If flash was supported 100% (practically natively) - there would be no point creating native apps in objective C (Flash was a full decade ahead). Flash devs would have coded circles around objective C devs. This could have screwed over the entire ios ecosystem. Once flash was dead and gone: SWIFT!
- hajile 4y ago
  I ran flash on Android phones of the time and flash absolutely did have a huge affect on battery life. Given the number of bugs in Flash (and how long Adobe took to fix them), I believe this is also reasonable. I believe that competition was a real motivator, but it wasn't the only reason.
- heleninboodler 4y ago
  > The reason Apple didn't support Flash was it was too good. The competition with native may have been part of the consideration, but this was far from the full argument. It was also much too bad. It was power hungry, as noted by others, because flash content tended to be driven by a million timers, but also, its interaction model was a disaster on touch screens. Even on desktop, one of the problems with Flash content was confusion about whether UI events were owned by some object inside the Flash widget or the enclosing browser. Plus, Flash was a whole universe of nonstandard UI elements that would have made uptake of the iphone interface more difficult. There is no part of me that believes the idea that "Flash devs could have coded circles around objective C devs." If the mobile app explosion had happened in Flash, it wouldn't have been an explosion. It would have been a flop.
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    The other perspective to add is historic: in the early days of the Macintosh Apple helped make Adobe Type 1 Fonts a printing standard and a deep OS level font standard and then Apple had a long relationship of depending on Adobe for binaries for Adobe Type Manager for core OS experiences. Adobe Type Manager had a long and interesting history, including and in particularly its huge share of OS-level, kernel breaking vulnerabilities. In OS X Apple paid Adobe to finally get the source code for ATM so they could do their own vulnerability reviews and own that code locally. Presumably at great cost. (Aside: Microsoft got caught in the same proprietary "standards" problem having to ship Adobe Type Manager with Windows for just about the entire history of Windows and then eventually paying Adobe enough to get to the source code and fork their own version of it that they could entirely own for vulnerability scanning while maintaining backwards compatibility. Also presumably at great cost.) It certainly seems easy to understand why Apple might have been hesitant to depend on yet another proprietary binary drop from Adobe as core OS service in iOS had they embedded Flash into iOS Safari given that expensive history already with Adobe Type Manager. (Adobe may have indirectly killed Flash just by that history/reputation of being a bad, expensive vendor with tons of vulnerabilities and charging Apple and Microsoft an arm and a leg to fix those vulnerabilities.)
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > The reason Apple didn't support Flash was it was too good It wasn't good on mobile. And at that point it was barely good on desktop, too. By good we mean: power and memory consumption, security vulnerabilities etc. You just don't remember how badly Adobe mismanaged the whole thing.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  You definitely don't remember how bad Flash was on mobile. It was a security nightmare, and a battery-drainer. Flash devs would have coded circles around objective C devs Wow. Bold statement. I don't doubt that there were many talented Flash developers. All the ones I encountered were... not that. Not that they were bad people, but they were mostly designers new to software dev, slapping together code as fast as possible to make it work. Also, an interpreted runtime was never going to run circles around native code. This could have screwed over the entire ios ecosystem There was no ecosystem at that point.
thriftwy 4y ago
Remember that some mobile devices had Flash and that Mac OS X 10.0 had a large emphasis on Java since it was big at the time. If Flash would not be the lame duck it was at the time, and Adobe not as defunct, iPhone would simply include it.

ransom1538 4y ago

"Too battery-inefficient, too laden with security holes." Lol. The reason Apple didn't support Flash was it was too good. If flash was supported 100% (practically natively) - there would be no point creating native apps in objective C (Flash was a full decade ahead). Flash devs would have coded circles around objective C devs. This could have screwed over the entire ios ecosystem. Once flash was dead and gone: SWIFT!

hajile 4y ago
I ran flash on Android phones of the time and flash absolutely did have a huge affect on battery life. Given the number of bugs in Flash (and how long Adobe took to fix them), I believe this is also reasonable. I believe that competition was a real motivator, but it wasn't the only reason.
heleninboodler 4y ago
> The reason Apple didn't support Flash was it was too good. The competition with native may have been part of the consideration, but this was far from the full argument. It was also much too bad. It was power hungry, as noted by others, because flash content tended to be driven by a million timers, but also, its interaction model was a disaster on touch screens. Even on desktop, one of the problems with Flash content was confusion about whether UI events were owned by some object inside the Flash widget or the enclosing browser. Plus, Flash was a whole universe of nonstandard UI elements that would have made uptake of the iphone interface more difficult. There is no part of me that believes the idea that "Flash devs could have coded circles around objective C devs." If the mobile app explosion had happened in Flash, it wouldn't have been an explosion. It would have been a flop.
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  The other perspective to add is historic: in the early days of the Macintosh Apple helped make Adobe Type 1 Fonts a printing standard and a deep OS level font standard and then Apple had a long relationship of depending on Adobe for binaries for Adobe Type Manager for core OS experiences. Adobe Type Manager had a long and interesting history, including and in particularly its huge share of OS-level, kernel breaking vulnerabilities. In OS X Apple paid Adobe to finally get the source code for ATM so they could do their own vulnerability reviews and own that code locally. Presumably at great cost. (Aside: Microsoft got caught in the same proprietary "standards" problem having to ship Adobe Type Manager with Windows for just about the entire history of Windows and then eventually paying Adobe enough to get to the source code and fork their own version of it that they could entirely own for vulnerability scanning while maintaining backwards compatibility. Also presumably at great cost.) It certainly seems easy to understand why Apple might have been hesitant to depend on yet another proprietary binary drop from Adobe as core OS service in iOS had they embedded Flash into iOS Safari given that expensive history already with Adobe Type Manager. (Adobe may have indirectly killed Flash just by that history/reputation of being a bad, expensive vendor with tons of vulnerabilities and charging Apple and Microsoft an arm and a leg to fix those vulnerabilities.)
dmitriid 4y ago
> The reason Apple didn't support Flash was it was too good It wasn't good on mobile. And at that point it was barely good on desktop, too. By good we mean: power and memory consumption, security vulnerabilities etc. You just don't remember how badly Adobe mismanaged the whole thing.
JohnBooty 4y ago
You definitely don't remember how bad Flash was on mobile. It was a security nightmare, and a battery-drainer. Flash devs would have coded circles around objective C devs Wow. Bold statement. I don't doubt that there were many talented Flash developers. All the ones I encountered were... not that. Not that they were bad people, but they were mostly designers new to software dev, slapping together code as fast as possible to make it work. Also, an interpreted runtime was never going to run circles around native code. This could have screwed over the entire ios ecosystem There was no ecosystem at that point.

thriftwy 4y ago

Remember that some mobile devices had Flash and that Mac OS X 10.0 had a large emphasis on Java since it was big at the time. If Flash would not be the lame duck it was at the time, and Adobe not as defunct, iPhone would simply include it.