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A
Anonymous
June 16, 2016
Question

Obstacles created by Adobe for those who need to download Flash installers

  • June 16, 2016
  • 2 replies
  • 802 views

The preferred Adobe download page https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ only gives access to a Flash downloader/installer executable which requires a processor which has the SSE2 or later instruction set.  However, Flash Player itself only requires a processor which possesses SSE instructions.  The consequence of all this is that users with older hardware can only download the latest version of Flash Player from https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html , the full installer only requiring a SSE instruction set processor.

This suggests that Adobe's left hand does not know what its right hand is doing.  The shenanigans of its discouraging access to the full Flash installer web page is NOT conducive to better web security.  What possible harm can it do to Adobe to allow downloads of the full Flash Player installer?  This is control freakery gone mad.  What nonsense it is to obstruct access to the full Flash Player installer executable.  It simply appears to show the contempt in which Adobe holds those who wish to view or wish to aid others to view their customers' creations IN SAFETY.

The scheduled Flash Player update task takes far too long (often several days) to update Flash Player.  No wonder we need to resort to manually downloading the latest version of Flash Player for secure Flash viewing.

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    2 replies

    jeromiec83223024
    jeromiec83223024
    Inspiring
    June 22, 2016

    To be completely frank, SSE2 support was added with Pentium 4 CPUs, which began shipping in 2000.  We're talking about hardware that's old enough to have a driver's license.  It's also hardware that fails to meet the published minimum system requirements Flash Player.

    While we're not explicitly looking to break trailing-edge hardware, keeping teenaged computers viable in the age of dirt cheap commodity hardware is not a key priority for the business, nor is it something that we test. 

    We're also committed to, and actively moving towards the latest toolchains and compilers for Windows, and advanced CPU instructions are important for performance gains on newer hardware.  We're going to trend towards doing the most good for the most people, and where optimizations lead to significant performance gains or power reductions (and when you're talking about billions of installs, we're talking about numbers like how many power plants' worth of electrical output are saved by an optimization) and there's a choice between keeping old computers going or leveraging smart compiler options, we're going to take the latter.

    If you're seeing compatibility problems in the installers now, that's probably an early indication that you're going to see more problems in the future.  Particularly if security a real concern for you, moving to modern hardware that supports a modern operating system with the full set of OS-level security mitigations is worth your time, *particularly* if you're running XP or Vista right now.

    A
    Anonymous
    June 23, 2016

    Thanks for your reply. I am using an AMD Athlon XP 3000+ processor.

    Chris Pugson

    jeromiec83223024
    jeromiec83223024
    Inspiring
    June 23, 2016

    No problem.  The intent with the clock speed limitation in the system specs was to set an easy to interpret window of recent chips while trying to stay as user-friendly as possible.  I think those high-end AMD chips probably get pretty close to 2.1Ghz, but they're really old (we're still talking 2000-2003 technology). 

    To put it in context, typical broadband access was around 1 Mbps, and video streaming was a bleeding-edge use case.  Things that are relatively commonplace now, like high-efficient video codecs, widespread use of parallel processing in commodity software, extensive use of JavaScript and virtual machines... none of that existed, and there's been a lot of innovation in the CPU space to keep pace with the increasing pace of complexity.

    _maria_
    _maria_
    Legend
    June 16, 2016

    Hi,

    This has been forwarded to the team that handles the online installer.


    Regarding the comment "The scheduled Flash Player update task takes far too long (often several days) to update Flash Player." Are you referring to Notification Updates or Background Updates? Notification Updates and Background Updates utilize two different update mechanisms and function completely different.

    For Notification Updates, Flash Player checks for an update, when Flash content is viewed, once every 7 days (the default setting).  If an update is found, on Windows a registry entry is created and the user notified the next time the user logs into their system (either via reboot or log off/on).  On Mac, the notification is displayed immediately .  The interval can be adjusted in the mms.cfg file by using the AutoUpdateInterval.  Setting this to 0 (e.g. AutoUpdateInterval=0) means Flash Player will check for an update the first time Flash content is viewed after a browser launch.  The mms.cfg file is saved at C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash (32-bit Windows), C:\WIndows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash (64-bit Windows), or /Library/Application Support/Macromedia (OS X).

    Background Updates are configured to check for an update once every 24 hours.  Therefore, opting into Background Updates will generally update Flash Player within 24 hrs, so long as an internet connection is present.

    --

    Maria

    A
    Anonymous
    June 20, 2016

    Thank you for your reply.  My main difficulty is that the consumer Flash installer (obtained from Adobe Flash Player Install for all versions ) cannot run on pre-SSE2 x86 processors.  However, the full Flash installer (obtained from Adobe Flash Player Distribution | Adobe ) can run on all SSE x86 and later processors as can the actual Flash player once it has been installed.  I guess that this anomoly is the result of an oversight by Adobe.

    Thanks for looking at this.

    _maria_
    _maria_
    Legend
    June 20, 2016

    Hi,

    I understand the issue, and it is being looked at by the online installer team.  I currently don't have an estimate when a fix will be released.

    --

    Maria

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