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by themartorana 3778 days ago
We're only happy to see it die because it was never well cared for. Flash was much heavier and much, much more insecure than it needed to be with Adobe-level money behind it. They were terribly poor stewards of the technology. I mean no offense to anyone that was on the Flash team, I am making a (flawed?) presumption that it probably didn't feel great inside the company either.

Others may tell you I'm wrong - it's about standards and open technologies and whatnot. But personally (and for people I work with that I can speak for) Flash failed because Abode failed Flash.
3 comments
radley 3778 days ago
I agree - was definitely poor stewardship, but also there was a perceptual problem for developers. Flash was created for designers and artists, the coding part was secondary and thus traditional developers found it extremely frustrating.

The internal team became obsessed with changing it to something more focused towards developers with AS3, Flex, Flash Builder, and Flash Catalyst. Instead of improving something successful, they tried to twist it into something it wasn't.

The final straw was Jobs, not because Flash was bad but because iOS was extremely locked down. There was no way he was going to share his new platform:

"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform."

Without iOS, there was no future for Flash (Android was still in it's infancy) so Adobe pulled the plug. Just a few years later Apple will go on to hire Kevin Lynch, former CTO of Adobe, to be VP of Technology at Apple focusing on the Apple Watch.

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guelo 3778 days ago
The real reason Flash died was not technical, it was because Steve Jobs didn't want a whole platform he didn't control running on the iPhone.
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CaptSpify 3778 days ago
well.... both really. Flash was a mess by then, but your point is also true. It would have made the app-store worthless
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Pxtl 3778 days ago
Yes. Jobs did it for control, but the fact that Flash was a bloated dumpster-fire of a platform made everybody else agree with him.
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samstave 3778 days ago
Would you say thatvthey were terribly poor stewards due to it being a product of macromedia which adobe bought and then a ton of the core group at macromedia cashed out and left after the purchase leaving tech debt vacuum at adobe wrt flash...?
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