The great Flash war is over -- and Apple has won. Adobe is pulling the plug on Flash for mobile phones and tablets, to focus on HTML5 for playing videos and animations. Just like Steve Jobs wanted.
A source close to Adobe revealed to our friends at ZDNet that the company will now "focus on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe Air for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations."
Air is another proprietary format, like Flash, but Adobe will also increase investment in the open standard HTML 5.
The iPhone and iPad have never supported Flash, the de facto standard for online video. Apple boss Steve Jobs, who died recently, was unwavering in his hatred of Flash, refusing to bend and allow Apple mobile devices to play it. His intention was to force the Web to bend to his will and make sites switch to HTML5 -- and it looks as though he will get his way.
Flash has long been the standard for video and animation, but it's not without problems. Jobs claimed the proprietary format was too glitchy and caused problems on mobile devices, leeched battery life, and wasn't designed for touchscreens. By contrast, HTML 5 is an open standard that works across all platforms.
Adobe will continue to support Flash for the desktop, but will only offer bug fixes and security updates for the format on Android and BlackBerry. It's also working on Adobe Edge, which pulls together HTML5, JavaScript and CSS to power cross-platform apps and widgets.
Was Apple right to snub Flash all this time to lead the Web towards open standards, or was it staggering arrogance to try and force the change? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below or on our Facebook page.
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Comments 16
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anonymous 9 November, 2011 10:11
Apple have always been arrogant. They always want the mountain moved to them.
Peter Hudson 9 November, 2011 10:35
It's just like George Bernard Shaw said "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
You might say that apple was arrogant but that's exactly why they have been single handedly changing the electronics landscape so much in the last 10 years
anonymous 9 November, 2011 10:52
AARGGHH!! It doesn't actually make a shred of difference to Apple or Adobe; Flash Player is given away free and makes ZERO (nada, zilch) contribution to Adobe's bottom line. Adobe make their money form creating AUTHORING tools - and to make interactive content in Flash for the iPad or iPhone you just set the project up as an iOS template in the first place and press the export button at the end. Apart from a few functional differences that are device specific that's the only difference. This story is not a story, I'm constantly staggered by how many people (including my clients, I do this for a living) don't get it. Who cares if it's FLV or H.264? Apple taking down the ring fencing of authoring tools was a much bigger deal. Here endeth the rant.
anonymous 9 November, 2011 10:54
Oh yeah, and the upshot is that Adobe have a prototype HTML 5 authoring tool that looks just like Flash but they will charge an extra couple of hundred bucks for it. This is just tedious shuffling and posturing.
anonymous 9 November, 2011 11:22
Flash is Dead. The desk top will follow.
Writing was on the wall when Microsoft said the "Metro" browser in Win8 wouldn't support Flash.
If means not having to install that crappy plug-in on my PC then I'm happy!
Mister_Andee 9 November, 2011 12:16
Flash is ****, the plugin crashes all the time on my PC and on my Mac. Happy to see the back of it.
Fongy 9 November, 2011 12:40
CNET, now that SJ is dead, please will you crawl out of his rotting ****?
anonymous 9 November, 2011 12:44
Do you think it was Apple that killed Flash for Mobile or was it Microsoft? Even though Apple made it a corporate mission to get rid of Flash; was it not Microsoft's choice of HTML5 for both Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 that nailed the coffin closed?
I am not saying that it was solely Microsoft but was the combined might of IOS and WP7 too much for Adobe to ignore?
ace9988 9 November, 2011 14:10
Flash video on the internet is rubbish and always embedded with those stupid adverts
anonymous 9 November, 2011 14:22
Like people have said, it matters not a jot to either company. Flash was an awful product (I'm a long term former Adobe employee) I was never a fan and to be honest, I'll be glad to see the back of it.
anonymous 9 November, 2011 16:26
Let's face it, there is nothing better that Flash! There are dozens of reasons including consistency, performance, robustness and code protection. Jobs hated it because he was afraid of competition to the native apps. That's the main reason, not some "old technology" ********. HTML5 doesn't compare as still there is no uniform standard of it, not to mention browser inconsistencies. Lot's of people hate Flash because they love Apple, and this is only emotion based judgement, not factual.
anonymous 9 November, 2011 20:41
The real loss is that Java SE doesn't work on all these devices. Write once, run everywhere - no wonder the platform owners don't like it.
anonymous 11 November, 2011 14:41
I agree with the 'this is a non-story, story' author.
The Flash authoring tools have the ability to create native apps for iOS Android and Blackberry, so those who develop for mobiles just need to change their publish settings and the same content that might have been destined for the mobile web page, now just gets published as an app.
I am concerned that everyone seems to be making a dash for HTML5 when a) it's not due to become a standard until 2014 and b) no one has shown me any content that HTML5 does that is an improvement on Flash's abilities. All the 'jaw dropping' (sarc) demos I have seen have left me saying things like 'Flash was doing that years ago'. Why would we want HTML5 to replace Flash when it actually seems to be *less* capable than Flash?
And I think Adobe still have plenty of things planned for Flash - new 3D engine, anyone? http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/stage3d.html (Genuine question - does HTML5 have any 3D abilities? And if not, why not?)
anonymous 12 November, 2011 22:13
It's about damn time! Flash is a resource hog, and I first came to know it as the infrastructure of all those movie official websites that just wouldn't load on whatever computer I was using at the time, regardless of the speed of my connection. Years later, when trying to stream audio on my last smart phone, I found it incorporated into most providers' live streams, rendering them unusable on that phone. Why Flash? Presumably so I could watch moving abstract colored patterns, which I need on a mobile about as much as a fish needs a bicycle. With my new phone I still can't run Flash, because, I'm told, the processor is too slow--but there are all sorts of audio and AV materials that I can stream perfectly well--YouTube Mobile, HBO-Go, and anything else that doesn't conform to the Flash sandbox's rules. At least now that I have Android, I can generally find apps to get access to what I want. But just today I ran up against the Flash barrier again, when trying to use the National Jukebox archive of the Library of Congress.
Flash's continual updates has required manufacturers and OS developers to struggle constantly to keep up, and limited most mobile Web access to the newest devices.
Flash sucks.
Goodbye Flash and good riddance.
anonymous 1 May, 2012 18:14
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anonymous 1 May, 2012 18:17
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