Tech: Android ends Flash Player

Subject: Tech: Android ends Flash Player
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 15 Aug 12 - 11:10 AM

Adobe stopping development of Flash Player for mobile use.

Subject: RE: Tech: Android ends Flash Player
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Aug 12 - 03:09 PM

When Flash was owned by Macromedia it was persistently buggy, with high vulnerability to malware, and Macromedia sort of set records for "longest surviving vulnerabilities" several times before coming up with patches for the worst of them.

Adobe did a little better at first after they bought out Macromedia, but then degenerated into the same ol' same ol' pattern of ignoring bugs and vulnerabilities. Flash was probably a reasonable acquisition for their product line, since the PDF reader was already pretty much at "saturation" - everybody had it - and the PDF maker was probably already sold to everyone who could afford it. They were getting stiff competition from third party PDF creators/editors, most of which worked as well or better than their own, and cost 1/10 to 1/5 as much.

They were also getting significant (but probably not overwhelming) competition from DOCX and some other formats as "portable formats for print."

Patches for vulnerabilities in PDF Reader possibly have been a little more prompt than for Flash, but several patches have been reported as being recalled (or replaced almost immediately) either because they failed to prevent the attacks they were designed for or they "broke the Reader."

Adobe had a very strong product line when personal computers first began to appear, and it was often said that Apple would not have survived against the IBM and Microsoft competition without Adobe. The "industrial strength" programs that Adobe produced BPC (before PCs) were widely used by the publishing industries. Adobe was "the mother source" for PDF which is a vector language.

Photoshop, of course was already in fairly wide use, but the real "big guns" were Framemaker (largely used by newspaper and magazine publishers) and PageMaker (mostly for book publishing).

Apple, from the start, incorporated some ability to render vector graphics, while Microsoft (and most of the other early PC startups, including IBM) were equipped only for raster based graphics and had no good way of dealing with vector drawings.

Since the publishers and print shops already had the Adobe products, the composition, layout, proofing, editing and other "prep houses" were pretty much locked into providing their "product" as EPS files, since that's the only thing the print shops could (or were willing to) print.

Apple was the immediate "standard" small machine for the publishing industry - at least for those who could afford both an Apple and the Adobe stuff - since the Mac required less significant adapting of the programs than PCs.

A little before the first PC versions of PageMaker and FrameMaker appeared, Microsoft Word (DOS ver 3.5) literally could do anything the Adobe programs could, as far as layout was concerned, but producing "clean EPS files" was still something of a hurdle, especially since you couldn't see the results on a PC (and still can't, without something like Ghostview(?)).

(CorelDraw used to be used some for vector graphic viewing, but only worked well with stuff made by CorelDraw. I haven't seen enough recent "presence" from them to know what they do now.)

The bottom line is that Adobe is in the process of shifting it's entire business basis, and in the opinion of some is not doing a particularly competent job of it. Their attempt to meet malware threats have been half-hearted, and it's apparent (from the outside) that they lack the internal resources to handle that task. They apparently have been "reluctant" to accept outside help, and don't seem to have accepted what new internal resources they need to acquire.

They are now heavily into "consumer" products (e.g. aps for Android) with much greater exposure both to unsophisticated users and to malware - and don't appear to know what to do about either.

Their previous excellent support has "withered," possibly indicating some "in house confusion." (But Microsoft has the same problem.)

If I had anything to invest, I'd likely put it on a different horse.

Incidentally, as a side note, it may be noted that Windows 8 will not include a media player as a default. Premium versions, according to the most recent news, will be able to download one for free if they want it, but for cheaper versions you'll have to pay - they say a "nominal fee to be decided later."

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Android ends Flash Player
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Aug 12 - 04:11 PM

Surely the more interesting question is what Android tablets will now use to play Flash.

Subject: RE: Tech: Android ends Flash Player
From: Jim McLean
Date: 16 Aug 12 - 09:01 AM

I have an iPad2 which can't use Flash so I was thinking of buying a cheap tablet which is advertised as being Flash enabled. Does this news about Adobe mean that these tablets will now not be able to use Flash?

Subject: RE: Tech: Android ends Flash Player
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Aug 12 - 09:30 AM

Remind us software illiterates why Flash is any use ?

Subject: RE: Tech: Android ends Flash Player
From: GUEST,Guest but not the GUEST above
Date: 16 Aug 12 - 05:50 PM

HTML 5 will make a lot of the use of Flash redundant.

Subject: RE: Tech: Android ends Flash Player
From: treewind
Date: 16 Aug 12 - 06:17 PM

"question is what Android tablets will now use to play Flash."
Or, what will movies on the web use instead of flash?
(though there is Gnash, I suppose...

HTML 5 will make a lot of the use of Flash redundant.
Yes, HTML5 lets you choose. It seems that any site offering both H.264 and either VP8 or Ogg Theora as HTML5 alternatives will be viewable on just about all browsers. (see Wikipedia: HTML5 browser support)

I'm viewing YouTube regularly in HTML5 and it's working fine for me.

Adobe have also stopped developing Flash player for 64 bit Linux. They must know Flash is not going to take over the world.

Subject: RE: Tech: Android ends Flash Player
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 22 Aug 12 - 10:13 PM

Although it doesn't come right out and say a lot, a new "news flash" may imply some additional information about what's going on with Flash.

Adobe Flash Player hit by hackers on both ends
Ben Weitzenkorn, SecurityNewsDaily

Extracting from the article:

Adobe issued a new patch a week ago, then issued a new patch the next week. It's suggested that the first release publicized a vulnerability that had not been too often exploited and slow patching by users, particlarly among Apple fans, allowed a flurry of attacks using the vulnerability against those who didn't get the patch promptly; making a "do over" necessary for Apple Flash users.

The discussion of Adobe's difficulties with Flash vulnerabilities may help with understanding why Adobe will support(?) existing devices that use Flash, but will "cease development" of Flash for portable devices, so all new Apple devices will have no Flash (or sparkle, glimmmer, pretty sprinkles, or flavor?) at all.

The information is only suggestive, so I'll omit the copy & paste, or attempts to comment on any of it. Read at the link if you can spare a minute or two, and are interested.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Android ends Flash Player
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 23 Aug 12 - 12:12 AM

SOL "flash cookies"...

Perhaps the most persistant reason...to end "de playa."

Sincerely
Gargoyle

Abridge too far