Steve Jobs had it right. Adobe ends support for Flash

You might recall that back in February 2010, Steve Jobs was on a publicity tour for the Apple iPad and in answer to a question from a reporter, he explained why the iPhone and the iPad didn’t have Adobe Flash installed. The latter is a multimedia platform used for animation. Ads and video games running on Flash would not appear on either device and Apple’s CEO referred to it as a “CPU hog.” He also called it “buggy” and full of “security holes.” It also was a battery drain when Apple tested it on the iPad. The previous month, Jobs attacked Adobe during a Town Hall Q&A session for Apple employees. Jobs said during the event that the rare times that a Mac crashes, it is usually due to Flash. 

Not that a hacker couldn’t reach into his magic hat and pull out an iPhone running Adobe Flash. Such a video surfaced in June 2010 showing what was called “the very preliminary stages” of Flash being hacked onto an iOS handset. But all of the negatives mentioned by Jobs, the bugs, the battery drain, and the lack of security issues would not magically disappear with the hack.

Google, on the other hand, welcomed Adobe Flash into the Android ecosystem as a differentiator versus iOS. The Motorola DROID and the Nexus One were two of several Android phones that received Flash. While mobile Flash allowed animated ads and certain video games to run on the browser, it was slow and did indeed drain the battery on models that had it installed. But even Android fans had to agree with Steve Jobs’ comments about Flash and Adobe eventually pulled the plug on support for the mobile version of the software.

Yesterday was not only the last day of 2020, it was the last day that Adobe will support Flash Player. And after January 12th of 2021, Flash content will be blocked from running on the plug-in. And as it turns out, Steve Jobs was right with his call that HTML5 would replace Flash. That started in 2015 when apps like YouTube replaced Flash with HTML5. The once lauded desktop and mobile version of the platform is now gone with a flash.