Adobe’s Flash has come under a lot of scrutiny over the past few years, notably from Apple, whose then-CEO Steve Jobs wrote an open letter outlining his reasons for not implementing it on any of his company’s iOS devices. Things have gone downhill from there, and with HTML5 becoming more and more widely-utilized, Flash is most certainly being phased out from our devices.
Although iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices have never been able to run Flash – something which can be of annoyance to those frequenting Flash-reliant sites – Android smartphones and tablets have both been supported, although Adobe pledged to pull the plug on support for Google’s mobile platform in an announcement made late last year, and some time back as well.
The company, which maintains and develops pivotal software like Photoshop, noted at the time that August 15th would be the date support would cease, and true to its word, there will no longer be any support for Adobe Flash. It is, and still will continue to be available at the Google Play Store, but those running newer devices are strongly urged not to download the abandoned software.
The news is certain to arouse mixed emotions within the tech industry. Like many contentious and divisive subjects, Flash has become a love it or hate it affair in the eyes of most, and those not in favor of Flash tend to see installing it on their own devices as some form of contamination. That said, there’ll likely be quite a few folk disheartened to see the support end – particularly since the Web hasn’t been completely HTML5-ified at this point in time, and many hunts still depend on Flash Player in order to operate properly.
The Google Play listing notes:
Flash Player is no longer being updated for new device configurations. . Flash Player will not be supported on any Android version beyond Android 4.0.x.
That discounts anybody on Android’s buttery smooth Jelly Bean (4.1), as well as anybody planning to purchase one of the seemingly many upcoming Android devices.
Flash is in the process of being phased out for all smartphones, but although there’ll be an immediate mixture of celebrations and public lamenting, I do feel it’s a step in the right direction.
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