← Back to context

Comment by sippingabonedry

5 hours ago

A great way to convince you you've always been wrong:

Step 1: Gain browser monopoly

Step 2: Generate fake security scare

Step 3: Gaslight everyone that only way to mitigate is to get rid of it completely like Flash.

Step 3a (corollary): There isn't anyone available that can fix the bugs because we spent all resources on UI/UX experimentation

10 comments

sippingabonedry

Reply
post-it  5 hours ago

Thank you for reminding me that we don't have Flash anymore. I'm counting blessings I forgot I had.

  • sippingabonedry  4 hours ago

    Flash went away because Steve Jobs made an impassioned plea to find a better way and follow their humble browser which only had single digit percentages of marketshare at the time.

    • dwaite  3 hours ago

      Even for enthusiastic Android vendors who saw it as a differentiating feature from iPhone, Flash still took three years from the iPhone launch to have its first release. Adobe was really in poor shape to port Flash to a new platform. Waiting for them as a vendor to bump their proprietary platform vs integrating support for the features into the browser would have cost years for mobile adoption.

      3 replies →

    • reaperducer  2 hours ago

      Flash went away because Steve Jobs made an impassioned plea to find a better way and follow their humble browser which only had single digit percentages of marketshare at the time.

      You're half right.

      Yes, Jobs killed Flash. But he did it because Flash on mobile was a battery killer. And when the original iPhone came out (one of which I still have), battery technology wasn't as advanced as it is now.

      Before I got my wife's hand-me-down iPhone, I had one of the few mobile phones that supported Flash. On the few occasions when I used the web browser, I lived in fear that I'd land on a web site that was using Flash because I knew it would tear through the phone's battery in less than 10 minutes.

      Ever notice that the people on HN who pine for the good-ol'-days of Flash only remember games? Never the Flash ads and intrusive videos.

      Jobs did the future a favor.