Presaging the end of Adobe Flash on Safari, Apple on Wednesday disabled support for the multimedia plug-in in the Safari Technology Preview 99.
Apple quietly announced the imminent demise of Flash on Safari in a set of release notes accompanying Safari Technology Preview 99. Along with a number of enhancements to WebKit code and assets is mention of a single deprecation under “Legacy Plug-Ins,” which simply states, “Removed support for Adobe Flash.”
Safari Technology Preview, which was introduced as a developer-focused experimental browser in 2016, often provides an early look at upcoming Web technologies that will either appear or be removed from the versions of Safari for iOS and macOS.
Albeit extremely popular, the demise of Flash has been forthcoming for several years now. The plug-in was criticized as being asset-hungry, proprietary, insecure, and out of date. Late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs said as much some 10 years ago in a widely circulated letter appropriately titled “Thoughts on Flash.”
Following increased competition and pushback from the likes of Apple, Google and other browser makers, Adobe in 2017 said it would pull the plug on Flash in 2020.
On the iOS platform, the end of Flash is a non-issue, as the plug-in was never integrated to the platform. Safari on Mac has shipped with Flash disabled since macOS Sierra, leaving users to manually activate the software on a case-by-case basis.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via AppleInsider and CNET