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People honestly believed that Apple could have flipped a switch and make Flash work on iPhone. It was garbage, which couldn’t run on such a puny processor witho

People honestly believed that Apple could have flipped a switch and make Flash work on iPhone. It was garbage, which couldn’t run on such a puny processor without butchering your battery. Most people were using it for video anyway, and H.264 playback on the browser was well on its way.

acdha 3y ago
It’s really weird because Flash existed on Android, and it sucked. Even the hardcore anti-Apple fanboys were unwilling to defend it much at the time because everyone knew how much battery and RAM it used, and how poorly Flash content designed for desktop screens and controls worked on phones. I don’t love how other things were locked down, but losing Flash for the open web was an unabashed win.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  It sucked but a lot of things on early android sucked. Browsers were a moving target in general for the first few years. I don't miss it (well, outside of my childhood web games. But much of that has been preserved or ported), but I sure don't hail Apple as a hero for accelerating the downfall. I think the biggest issue here is that even a decade out there haven't been true flash replacements in some sectors of tech. e.g. we still call it "Flash animation", but I feel the early death of Flash stalled American animation for a good 5 years since there was simply no good artist tool for such stuff in the early 2010's
  - acdha 3y ago
    Another way of looking at that would be that the dead-end of Flash held the market back for 5 years. I miss the ease of the simple stuff but the support I had to give friends who got stuck in one of the pitfalls Adobe didn’t care to fix left me happy to move away. It does make a great what-if scenario, though, imagining how it might have gone if Adobe had felt any obligation to support their platform.
  - philistine 3y ago
    Yeah, the blame for Flash ending up dead rests squarely at the feet of Adobe. It wasn't invented in-house, so you can tell they clearly never cared enough, and were uninterested in solving the security issues permanently.

acdha 3y ago

It’s really weird because Flash existed on Android, and it sucked. Even the hardcore anti-Apple fanboys were unwilling to defend it much at the time because everyone knew how much battery and RAM it used, and how poorly Flash content designed for desktop screens and controls worked on phones. I don’t love how other things were locked down, but losing Flash for the open web was an unabashed win.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
It sucked but a lot of things on early android sucked. Browsers were a moving target in general for the first few years. I don't miss it (well, outside of my childhood web games. But much of that has been preserved or ported), but I sure don't hail Apple as a hero for accelerating the downfall. I think the biggest issue here is that even a decade out there haven't been true flash replacements in some sectors of tech. e.g. we still call it "Flash animation", but I feel the early death of Flash stalled American animation for a good 5 years since there was simply no good artist tool for such stuff in the early 2010's
- acdha 3y ago
  Another way of looking at that would be that the dead-end of Flash held the market back for 5 years. I miss the ease of the simple stuff but the support I had to give friends who got stuck in one of the pitfalls Adobe didn’t care to fix left me happy to move away. It does make a great what-if scenario, though, imagining how it might have gone if Adobe had felt any obligation to support their platform.
- philistine 3y ago
  Yeah, the blame for Flash ending up dead rests squarely at the feet of Adobe. It wasn't invented in-house, so you can tell they clearly never cared enough, and were uninterested in solving the security issues permanently.