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by Wowfunhappy 1930 days ago
It’s worth remembering that Flash was in fact extremely successful. I think we’d still be using it today if not for some combination of (1) Steve Jobs and (2) Adobe mismanagement.

People say Flash was bloated but try running Slack on 2008-era hardware and let me know how it goes. And there’s no reason Flash couldn’t have been adapted to use responsive breakpoints and such for mobile friendliness.
2 comments
bri3d 1930 days ago
I agree, I think the two things that killed Flash were "Steve Jobs" (aka - a lack of foresight around the explosion of the mobile market and no competitive offering in the space), and the continued treatment of security as a technical debt item rather than a differentiating purchase distinguisher that buyers were actually concerned about. That is, I don't think Adobe correctly recognized that corporate buyers would start buying Intranet applications that were not built on Flash/Flex specifically due to security concerns.
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kitsunesoba 1930 days ago
Slack and other ill-optimized Electron apps are not great, but Flash was far worse, at least in my experience. With Flash a single banner ad in some tab you forgot you had open could consume half or more of your G4/G5/C2D, whipping your fans into a frenzy and roasting your lap (if using a laptop). Slack, etc are a detriment in terms of heat and battery life too, but not to such an extreme extent and at least you're getting a reasonably functional app in exchange.
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wizzwizz4 1930 days ago
Computers are easily a thousand times more powerful than they were in the year 2000, and Electron apps still cook my thighs. They use more RAM than my computer had hard disk space.
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Wowfunhappy 1930 days ago
> With Flash a single banner ad in some tab you forgot you had open could consume half or more of your G4/G5/C2D, whipping your fans into a frenzy and roasting your lap (if using a laptop).

And not coincidentally, html5 banner ads will do the same thing on a G4/G5 today in TenFourFox, if you disable the built-in adblocker.

Which is to day, I actually think modern websites are much heavier. What changed is the hardware.

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