Apple Likely to Drop Adobe Flash Support in Next Version of Safari

I thought they already did, but good riddance.

I don’t remember the last time I even used Flash. Thanks to the late Steve Jobs for eliminating the worthless crap ware.

2011 circa
"Flash is Dead" Steve Jobs.

2020
Apple Likely to Drop Adobe Flash Support in Next Version of Safari.

Bury the mf.

I remember uninstalling Flash on my G5 tower and never looking back.

What do most Apple users use instead?

Flash is barely used nowadays, having been replaced by HTML5. If Apple users still need it for any reason, they can install Firefox or Chrome.

Ironic how Adobe's initial reaction to Thoughts on Flash ('https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/') was "shock, denial, and anger." Adobe should praise SJ for outlining their future roadmap and business model, which they have now fully embraced.

I think we can officially say Adobe has reached the "Acceptance" stage.

What do most Apple users use instead?

...it's not what Apple users use its what is out there on websites. Most of that has gone now as virtually no mobile devices have ever supported it (...apart from a brief period when there was a Flash plug-in for Android - between security issues and the fact that a lot of Flash code was unusable on mobile screens, it didn't last long).

Thing is, back in the 00s, Javascript was horribly browser-dependent, CSS was half-baked (and most browser implementations were quarter-baked) and video/audio was... well, anybody here remember RealVideo? Flash was the [S]best[/S] least worst solution for online video and rich internet content/interactivity, or even if you wanted a really professional-looking online document. The Flash authoring tools made it easy to create vector animation that would have been a lot of work in Java, let alone Javascript (assuming you could find a browser that actually supported SVG).

In that era I bought a "CSS Cookbook" from the normally reputable O'Reilly - even that recommended Flash as the only way of getting certain headline text effects short of resorting to bitmaps...

HTML5, CSS and Javascript have come a long way since then - and today's browser incompatibilities are nothing, nothing compared to the mess in the past (esp. now Internet Explorer is confined to a few corporate ghettos). There's no excuse for anything created from scratch in the last 5-10 years and/or is still a going concern to need Flash - but there's a lot of old stuff that will now be lost to posterity.

"Flash is Dead" Steve Jobs.

Let's translate that from "he would say that, wouldn't he" to reality:

The early iPhone and iPad didn't have the grunt to run Flash, plus a lot of "legacy" Flash apps/websites were unusable on a mobile screen: either the controls were too small and fiddly or sometimes because apps had implemented their own code for things like drag/drop in a way that simply didn't work on a touchscreen...

When Flash briefly appeared on Android, I had a bunch of sites that used Flash for educational applets etc. so I went into Best Buy* and tried them out on some Android devices - flat bust: some of them sort-of ran but would need a major UI re-think to be usable on a touchscreen. Android lost Flash support after a year or so and I suspect that was largely because it just didn't solve the problem of running Flash on mobile.

(* Best Buy appeared briefly in the UK around then - and lasted about as long as Flash for Android, but I don't think the two are connected...)

But how will all the lazy web developers keep up? \s

Thanks a lot for that clarification; that makes sense.

Chrome is greedy, I understand, but Firefox had been recommended to me in the past.

Chrome is fine, and certainly as pointed out above there are other options that aren't Safari __or__ Chrome, but here's a better way to determine if this is even a concern:

In Safari, go to Preferences >> Websites, and in the left column you'll see two sections, General and Plug-ins, under the latter, look for Adobe Flash Player, uncheck it - in the main panel you should see "Adobe Flash Player" is Off.

Now surf away! See if during your normal usage, anything is an issue, i.e., missing content, broken navigation, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria, etc. If not, stick with Safari, and enjoy your new security improved web experience :D