Adobe Air could target mobile platforms with negligible degradation and generated swfs for web, too. I and most other serious flash devs in this era had a toolchain where you built once in AS3 and published to web and mobile using frameworks like Starling.
Flash died not because it couldn't do mobile. Thinking this is part of the hit job orchestrated by Apple. Flash died because browser games can't be taxed by Apple.
The same thing is happening today with progressive web apps. Ask yourself what Apple could have against those, and now look backwards at their stance on Flash.
I never said it couldn't do mobile. I said it couldn't do mobile as well as native.
Flash died faster because of apple, but was always going to die due to the combination of the rise of app stores, mobile battery issues, and the advancement of web standards.
Apple did the work to integrate flash into the iPhone before they rejected it.
I think it is interesting that Apple gets all the blame here since the decline of flash also coincides pretty directly with it's acquisition by Adobe. Youtube's early moves to offer non-flash video also had significant effects.
While I am a big critic to Apple's approach to called gardens, the decision against flash was as much prescient as it was causative of the decline of flash.
In my experience, having worked closely with these technologies in my day job during this era, the average person talking about it has an oversimplified view of the technologies and comes to the wrong conclusions.
Adobe did not want Flash to die, and their product manager was very involved in the community to figure out what needed to happen to prevent that. I don't think Adobe invested enough into those demands, but still there was steady investment made. If they had more time, and Apple wasn't such a bully, the tech could have evolved and survived.
Adobe built Stage3D so that one API could target GPUs across desktop and mobile. Think WebGL, which was released around the same time. But production-ready due to the distribution advantage the flash player had over browsers at the time.
Adobe funded open source projects such as Starling to create scenegraph-like APIs on top of Stage3D, providing an on-ramp for all existing AS3 devs to the new paradigm with their existing API knowledge and tool chain.
At this point in the timeline, any AS3 dev could write cross platform games and apps if they picked up a handful of mobile GPU concepts like draw calls, texture maps, and bitmap fonts. (You could take all these things for granted in the traditional Flash scenegraph.) Unity existed at this point but did not yet have dedicated 2D libraries. You'd be rendering your 2D game onto a face in a 3D world, with a fixed camera. Total overkill. They wouldn't be as performant as Stage3D for a couple years.
I disagree with the assessment that Adobe was a bad steward because I saw them trying with my own eyes.
I also disagree that Flash couldn't do native apps with native performance because I built them with my own fingers.
Lastly I disagree that web standards obsoleted Flash because where are the web games? Why aren't they playable on mobile safari? Why don't the web standards come with a dev environment and where are the dominant Flash monetization models?
Apple played hardball so that the only way to be on their platform was to use their tech in their way signed off on by their reviewers and monetized by their app store. They also wrote FUD pieces like the famous Jobs letter.
Who was the villain here? Is Apple justified robbing us of a Maker's renaissance era because it wasn't mobile ready at the literal dawn of mobile computing?
All over the place. I see them regularly posted to HN. Did you miss the entire '.io' trend of web games? The market is smaller because it was
partially eaten by native mobile games, but it is alive an well.
> Why aren't they playable on mobile safari?
Aren't they?
> Why don't the web standards come with a dev environment.
That's not what standards are. There are a plethora of web development tools and frameworks that target the web. All of these target different needs and visions.
> Is Apple justified robbing us of a Maker's renaissance era because it wasn't mobile ready at the literal dawn of mobile computing?
> I disagree with the assessment that Adobe was a bad steward because I saw them trying with my own eyes.
Adobe abandoned mobile flash development in 2011, when mobile was a fast growing, but still small part of the market. This is also when android more or less caught up with iOS in terms of adoption.
If adobe had continued investing in mobile development, would flash have survived? In retrospect, this is the decision that put the final nail in flash's coffin as mobile won the eyeballs.
If Apple had included flash in iOS, would that actually have saved flash?
Was a closed source, proprietary ecosystem that was late to mobile ever really going to stay the dominant media delivery platform or even survive?
We don't know the answer to these questions but placing all the blame on Steve Jobs is simply too simplistic to be true.
The market is smaller because the devs can't make money. Since portals were an advertising and profit share model, reach mattered. As more and more users switched to mobile browsers, the games can't run there, and browser gaming can't pay developers and it dies. Now who made it so that the mobile browsers can't play these games? I thought the letter said that open web standards had made Flash obsolete? Apple's ecosystem didn't naturally cannibalize flash gaming. It conquered it with violence.
Next: They weren't playable on mobile Safari, no. Safari finally supports WebGL 2 as of Sept 2021. A full 4 years after the other browser vendors supported it. Why drag their heels on this open web standard? Does their platform have something to lose from a little competition? You condemned Adobe for being 'late' to mobile (citation needed) but don't condemn Apple for being late to a web standard meant to replace Flash like they said in their original FUD letter?
Your retelling of Adobe's history is wrong. They were still very much invested in mobile development up until the end of Flash. In fact to this day you can still use AIR to target iOS and Android with native apps. They release updates regularly.
It's very clear that you don't have any idea what you're talking about, have not interacted with these companies professionally, and have not used the technologies in question or even followed along.
The only way to make sense of the facts is to accept that Apple lied in their letter because it was good for Apple's business and that goodness came at the expense of end-user choice.
> As more and more users switched to mobile browsers, the games can't run there, and browser gaming can't pay developers and it dies.
As an android user with an embarsingly high level on Kongregate back in the day, I can tell you that almost no flash games worked well on mobile, even in browsers that did support flash. The mobile flash gaming experience was just bad, which is a big part of why it died.
> Your retelling of Adobe's history is wrong. They were still very much invested in mobile development up until the end of Flash. In fact to this day you can still use AIR to target iOS and Android with native apps. They release updates regularly.
Yes, Adobe abandoned mobile flash in favor of AIR targeting html5 and native apps in 2011. That is exactly my point, Adobe abandoned mobile flash which was another big part of why flash died. See: https://www.pcworld.com/article/478103/adobe_ends_mobile_fla...
> It's very clear that you don't have any idea what you're talking about, have not interacted with these companies professionally, and have not used the technologies in question or even followed along.
It's clear you don't have a real argument or facts to back it up if you resort to this kind of crap.
I used Flash on my android devices back in the day (Firefox and others had support).
Flash sucked on mobile. The VM wasn't as fast as JS JITs in the browser by a long shot. By the time the processors could keep up, Flash had already been dead for years.
Adobe Air existed on mobile and it wasn't a good experience either.
Flash died not because it couldn't do mobile. Thinking this is part of the hit job orchestrated by Apple. Flash died because browser games can't be taxed by Apple.
The same thing is happening today with progressive web apps. Ask yourself what Apple could have against those, and now look backwards at their stance on Flash.