As Steve Jobs predicted over five years ago, Adobe’s Flash is on the way out. How do we know for sure? Well, the company that makes it has taken a radical step and announced it won’t support Flash in Android 4.1 (aka Jelly Bean) and no longer provide new installs for any Android devices after August 15th.
“We will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that have Flash Player already installed,” the company wrote on its website. “Devices that do not have Flash Player already installed are increasingly likely to be incompatible with Flash Player and will no longer be able to install it from the Google Play Store after August 15th.”
How’s that for predictions coming true? What does this mean for those of you not running the latest Android OS or who already have Flash installed? Not much at this point. However, it is a very interesting development.
It means that even Adobe knows Flash’s time, at least on mobile devices, is coming to an end. Flash has been banned from iOS devices from the begining and now Android is next, although at Adobe’s own hand.
Now all that’s left is to try and get it off every other device. Much of the trouble I have with computers, at least while in a web browser, is caused by Flash. It’s pretty much a buggy, resource hogging piece of crap. HTML 5 can do pretty much everything Flash can do and doesn’t destroy my browsing experience in the process.
Let’s hope the trend continues and Adobe eventually gets rid of Flash completely. That would be a great day indeed.
