Hey, Guys, Remember When You Used To Care About Flash? | Hacker News Reader

Hey, Guys, Remember When You Used To Care About Flash?

techcrunch.com

21 pointsirunbackwards18 comments

"And now it’s gone forever... and Adobe has set its sights on Air as a capable replacement for whatever Flash was good for."

Someone should probably explain to this guy that Air is Flash.

A guy at work has a Nexus 7 which has no SD card slot and no removable battery. I remember when the Android people used those features as a differentiator.

"the Android people". We're still thinking like this?

Except there are plenty of other Android devices with those features (except tablet battery part).

I remember a similar thing happening when Apple introduced the iMac with no 3.5" floppy drive. People thought that was crazy. Also, to a lesser extent, when they introduced the Air with no CD-ROM. When was the last time you used your CD-ROM? Moral of the story: technology changes.

The point is, Apple is usually 1-2 years ahead on thinking the market. Their edge is in being the first movers on everything they release, so they get virtually no competition and exclusive agreements with suppliers/partners.

The only time I remember caring about flash was when i was uninstalling it so I could avoid all the crappy uses of flash in the web.

For me Flash has always been an often over/misused solution like Java applets often were - a simpler wayto develop something flashy rather than a good way.

However, I wouldn't want to imagine a history without DTD so flash has a place in my heart for games :)

As someone who has worked with flash extensively in the past, my take is similar. There's no need for Flash for animations, ads, etc. However, I still think when it comes to building in depth games, Flash is king by far. It's also still the best for some other things, such as webcam apps, microphone apps, etc.

I still run into a LOT of sites that lose a lot of value on mobile devices due to lack of Flash.

I actually think the situation is marginally better than two years ago, but I think we've just accepted that there won't be a great mobile flash implementation.

I still care about Flash on mobile. Why? A lot of Asian sites (Chinese & Japanese) still use Flash for video and nav menus.

I have a rooted phone, so I'll probably find some way to sideload Flash back on.

HTML5 and H.264.

next question.

Haven't iPhones always supported HTML5 video with H.264? People still complained about the lack of flash.

I'd venture to say that there were many more flash sites then now. Web site developers had 2 years to move away from Flash.

I maybe wrong but I don't think there is an easy way to integrate ads into HTML5 videos. Isn't it why Hulu or Youtube still prefer flash?

More about the DRM than the ads.

Yes, but, in the meantime, both have proliferated. It's now much easier to avoid Flash than it was when the iPhone was introduced.

I've come to expect this sort of shit (garbage isn't strong enough) from TC, but not HN.

HN is probably the most reactionary and negative tech community i've seen. Pretty much every announcement of anything new that doesn't have [YC S12] after it is met with fear or anger.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com