Well, that’ll be it for Flash as we know it then. Microsoft are dropping it from the latest Windows Mobile. Not that Windows Mobile has more than a couple of percent of the market, but when Microsoft makes a move like this, people stop treating Apple as simply evil (which they are, but not because of their attitude to Flash) and start to believe what is pretty obvious to anyone who has tried using Flash on an Android device, struggled with a computer that is nearly dead from exhaustion through running a Flash video, or accidentally left a Flash animation running in the background on a machine running on batteries. Flash doesn’t work. It used to be a good idea and a neat solution to a gaping hole in the web, but it is now bloated, insecure, unreliable, slow, keeps rendering historical versions incompatible (I’ve long suffered from running Flash on Linux). It just doesn’t fit any more. And it’s boast about running on more machines than anything else was always stretching the truth way way way beyond credible bounds. Adobe are adopting a sensible exit strategy by making it easier to produce other formats with their flagship tools, including HTML5 and apps that can transfer fairly directly onto iOS. Apparently 68% of video is now free of Flash and HTML-5-ish so, though there is still a niche for simple interactive games etc, there’s not far to go before it has gone the way of ActiveX and embedded Java, ie. largely irrelevant.
Address of the bookmark: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/09/no-flash-windows-8-metro/?utm_source=pulsenews&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29
