Adobe’s Flash Player now has an end date: the end of 2020.
Adobe says it’s working with companies including Apple and Google to prepare for the upcoming death of Flash, as quoted here:
Given this progress, and in collaboration with several of our technology partners – including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla – Adobe is planning to end-of-life Flash. Specifically, we will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020 and encourage content creators to migrate any existing Flash content to these new open formats.
Leading up to the end of 2020 and the death of Flash Player, Adobe has stated that it will continue to support the plug-in with both security and browser compatibility updates. In some regions where older, insecure versions of Flash are heavily distributed, however, Adobe plans to ramp up EOL efforts “more aggressively” as part of the effort.
Apple had the following to offer regarding the overall transition:
Apple users have been experiencing the web without Flash for some time. iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch never supported Flash. For the Mac, the transition from Flash began in 2010 when Flash was no longer pre-installed. Today, if users install Flash, it remains off by default. Safari requires explicit approval on each website before running the Flash plugin.
Apple also points to platforms such as HTML Video and Media Source Extension, HTML Canvas and WebGL, CSS Transitions and Animations, WebRTC, and WebAssembly as supported standards through WebKit, which deliver the same content as found via Flash Player.
Back in 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs offered the following comments on Flash:
The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 250,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.
New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
Come the end of 2020, Flash Player will be but a memory with Apple and its iOS-based devices having helped put it to sleep.
Via 9to5Mac