14 DAY TRIAL // Adobe announced that it would be giving up on Flash Player at the end of 2020, and the largest tech companies are all affected given their products incorporate support for this software, but with one major exception: Apple.
In a brief statement on its website, Apple informs that the death of Flash Player is no big deal for its own users, especially because “they have been experiencing the web without Flash for some time.”
Cupertino goes on to explain that while iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch never supported Flash, Mac users have already been pushed towards a web without Flash in 2010 when this plugin was no longer pre-installed and even if was manually installed, it remained off by default.
Just like other browsers out there, Apple’s browser Safari prompts users to manually enable Flash content for each website they visit.
And last but not least, Apple emphasizes that Safari already supports the latest standards thanks to the WebKit engine that powers Safari, including HTML Video and Media Source Extensions, HTML Canvas and WebGL, CSS Transitions and Animations, WebRTC, and WebAssembly.
Microsoft to remove Flash gradually
And while Apple almost doesn’t even care about the death of Flash Player, rival Microsoft needs to pull Adobe’s software from its browsers gradually until 2020 when support comes to an end.
Flash Player is integrated into Internet Explorer 11 and Microsoft Edge browsers in Windows 10, and Microsoft says that by the time Adobe pulls it, the browsers should also be ready for a world without Flash.
For what it’s worth, Steve Jobs pretty much predicted the end of Flash Player 7 years ago, when he recommended Adobe to focus more on alternative solutions. Jobs explained that Flash Player wasn’t needed on iPhones given the rich content available in the App Store, warning that Adobe’s software would lose the battle, not only on phones but also on PCs, in just a few years.
“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,” Jobs said in a long statement that you can read in full on Apple’s website here.