adobe flash is a multimedia technology
that powered some of the most iconic
websites in the internet's early days
like new grounds and homestar runner it
allowed content to be viewable whether
you were on mac or pc
or linux and it became so popular that
almost every website had some form of
flash technology
but today the internet looks a lot
different flash has gone extinct
and apple had a lot to do with its
demise so in this video
i'm going to explain the history of
flash and how apple accelerated its
death
this is greg with apple explained and i
want to thank squarespace for sponsoring
this video
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feed so flash has a long history
starting in 1993
as a piece of software called smart
sketch designed as a graphics editor for
the mac
that was optimized for pen computing
which was a popular trend at the time
but the stylist computing hype fizzled
out after a couple years
as the internet became the next big
thing so smart sketch was rewritten as a
web animation tool called future splash
released in 1995. it allowed web
developers to add custom animations to
their websites
which was a novel concept and future
splash eventually attracted the
attention of a software company
called macromedia in 1996 who purchased
future splash
and shortened its name to flash
macromedia was
vital in modernizing the software and
encouraging widespread adoption
in fact flash became so capable that it
wasn't only being used for website
animations
but to create entire websites themselves
although there were drawbacks
search engines couldn't read content
that was hidden inside a flash website
so search engine optimization was
severely crippled
and because the entire website had to be
pre-loaded
flash sites ended up being much slower
than html
but because of its expansive
functionality flash was quickly adopted
by web designers
looking to do more than what html and
css allowed
this flash uprising gave way to
experiences never seen before on the
internet
websites like newgrounds and youtube
were possible because
of flash game animation and video
technology
the importance of flash in the
internet's history cannot be understated
in 2005 adobe acquired macromedia
and became the sole owner of flash the
technology had become ubiquitous
web browsers automatically included
flash in their downloads
and it was the number one tool of web
developers but despite its popularity
flash still had problems and that's what
discouraged apple from including the
technology on their mobile devices
you see the mac had supported flash just
like pcs
but when it came to the iphone apple
decided not to support it
and they had some pretty good reasons
why adobe actually tried to get a mobile
version of flash working on the iphone
before its launch
which would optimize power consumption
and patch its security flaws but this
mobile version of flash failed to
materialize
this put apple in a difficult position
they could support flash anyway
giving users access to many of their
favorite flash based websites
but those sites would quickly drain the
iphone's battery
and even crash its web browser
altogether so to prevent this
instability
apple decided not to support flash on
the iphone and adobe appeared okay with
the decision at least
initially users weren't too upset with a
lack of flash support
likely because they used apps to access
websites rather than the safari browser
but the drama between adobe and apple
came to a head with the release of
ipad steve jobs called the tablet the
most important thing he'd ever done
and based on its sales success he was
right
1 million units were sold in just 28
days
compared to the iphone's 74 days ipad
was actually the fastest selling
consumer electronic device
ever but there was one problem analysts
and journalists kept bringing up
its lack of flash support and adobe
wanted as much attention brought to the
issue as possible
with mobile web browsing on the rise and
desktop browsing declining
the relevance of flash was being
threatened and apple had been focusing
their efforts
on encouraging development of html5 as
not only an alternative to flash
but also an eventual replacement and
that made it much easier to do things
like create your own website
with flash the process was extremely
complicated and required hiring a web
developer
but now we have squarespace which allows
you to create your own
high quality website by using their
simple drag and drop
interface plus squarespace automatically
optimizes your website
for mobile devices so you don't have to
waste time creating a desktop
and mobile version of your site they
have built-in analytics tools that
report page views
traffic sources time on site most read
content
and more you can create an exclusive
paid membership area just like on
youtube
and you can even create an entire
e-commerce store to sell physical or
digital products
i actually did that a couple years ago
to sell merch and it was way easier than
i imagined
also if you google apple explained my
website is one of the first results
that's because squarespace has the best
search engine optimization tools
that'll make your website more visible
to more people
so go to squarespace.com for a free
trial and when you're ready to launch
go to squarespace.com apple explained to
save 10
off your first purchase of a website or
domain all right now apple didn't push
for flash to be replaced because of some
personal vendetta against adobe
it was simply because html5 offered a
better browsing experience
especially when it came to mobile
devices with html5
there are no plugins to install it
doesn't require as much processing power
and it consumes less battery but perhaps
the biggest benefit is that html5
is open source so apple can directly
contribute to its development
without relying on adobe to fix security
holes or
optimization issues but adobe wasn't
going to let flash go
down without a fight they immediately
began criticizing apple's devices
saying they can't access the full web
because 75
of videos online were flash but apple
pushed back
asserting that most video content was
available in other formats
or in ios apps and while that was true
when it came to the iphone
many ipad users browsed the internet
with safari
rather than downloading individual apps
this made its lack of flash support much
more visible than on iphone since users
would see holes in websites where flash
content should be
steve jobs was actually asked about this
issue directly during an
all things digital conference in 2010
is it really fair or the best thing for
consumers who buy
say an ipad or an iphone to just be
abrupt in other words if we're in a
transition where there are better things
in flash
why be abrupt and cut off consumers i
think consumers
uh outside of the valley and our
industry aren't having this issue
except when they hold up their ipad and
they go to a web page and there's like a
hole there where
a video will be you know there are they
don't know they may not know what flash
holes and some websites but those holes
are getting plugged real fast
uh you know the holes that exist now are
are ads
so i understand that's a problem for
some people not entirely
not entirely so while jobs was right in
saying lots of flash content was being
updated to html5 and therefore became
visible on ipads
he avoided answering the question of
entire flash-based websites
not even being accessible it sounded
like a really big flaw in the ipad at
the time
and competitors like samsung used it to
their advantage when promoting their own
tablets
while adobe used it as an opportunity to
create as much
bad press for apple as possible they
attacked apple by claiming their
decision to not support flash was
anti-competitive
and potentially illegal that apple was
protecting the app store
by preventing content from being
delivered through flash and that
apple preferred closed systems unlike
flash which they claimed was
open but in reality the opposite was
true
flash was wholly owned by adobe who had
control over
every change made to the product while
html5 the technology apple was
encouraging developers to adopt
was literally open source anyone could
contribute to it make changes or add
features
adobe never filed a lawsuit against
apple but their accusations were strong
enough that steve jobs was forced to
publicly respond
he wrote a letter called thoughts on
flash where he thoroughly outlined why
apple decided not to support the product
on ios
he wrote flash was designed for pcs
using mice
not for touch screens using fingers for
example
mini flash websites rely on rollovers
which pop
up menus or other elements when the
mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot
apple's revolutionary multi-touch
interface doesn't use a mouse
and there's no concept of a rollover
most flash websites will need to be
rewritten to support touch-based devices
if developers need to rewrite their
flash websites why not use
modern technologies like html5 css and
javascript he ended the letter by saying
new open standards created in the mobile
era such as html5
will win on mobile devices and pcs too
perhaps adobe should focus more on
creating great html5 tools for the
future
and less on criticizing apple for
leaving the past behind and while jobs
managed to predict the future with
stunning accuracy
that letter didn't include all the
reasons why apple ditched flash
six years later it was revealed in a
series of tweets from bob burrow who
used to be a software development
manager at apple
that the technological issues with flash
was only one part of the equation
the other had everything to do with
their ceo shantanu narayan according to
burro
apple stated reasons for not supporting
flash were poor ui
and excessive power consumption however
steve jobs explained to the team at
apple
that the main reason was that shantanu
narayan would not take his phone calls
he conceded that fixing bugs in the
software were mere engineering problems
however without an open dialogue with
adobe he couldn't count on them to do it
but despite all the drama surrounding
the lack of flash support on ipad
it didn't seem to stop customers from
buying it the ipad continued to dominate
the tablet market and the issue became
less and less relevant
as websites started transitioning away
from flash to html5
just as jobs predicted eventually adobe
faced the music and announced in 2017
that they'd stopped supporting flash in
2020 which they did on december 31st
and they blocked flash content from
running completely
on january 12 2021 so that is how apple
helped kill flash
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