Does Adobe Really Need To Stop Supporting Flash Player?

[Animating Villager]

Ok. We all know it(unless you have been living under a rock). Adobe will stop supporting Flash Player in December 2020. Does Adobe really need to? What will be the good news? What will be the bad news? What is the lasting effect on the Internet?

Let's start with the good news. The good news is that EVERYBODY can uninstall it by January 2021 safely and we won't encounter an application requesting us to enable Flash Player. Our CPU will finally have more space. We will also be mostly using HTML5 and/or better softwares(yes, HTML5 is a software). Most of these softwares will be lightweight, or in other words, have less CPU usage.

Now we must go to the bad news. The bad news is that every single person or team will have to convert their apps made with Flash into HTML5 and/or better softwares. It's not that bad if you and/or your team didn't make much with Flash; however, it is TERRIBLE if you and/or your team made many apps with Flash, as it will take forever to convert those games into better softwares. If you don't then all that hard work is pretty much dead.

Now, why should Adobe make this decision? It is mainly because of 3 factors. The first factor is that the rise of better softwares is killing the use of Flash. The next is performance issues. The last is that bad publicity from pretty much EVERYWHERE and EVERYONE is killing the usage of it.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and have a nice day!

[Nancy OShea]

Put the blame where it rightfully belongs.  This decision was made years ago by the browsers -- Safari, MS Edge, IE, Firefox, Chrome and Opera.  Like it or not, Flash Player cannot work if browsers won't support it. And they don't.  End of story.

[Animating Villager]

Well, you do have a point. But can't Adobe reform Flash Player? Otherwise Adobe acquiring it from Macromedia is just a waste of money and time. 

[Nancy OShea]

No.  The Macromedia acquisition was in 2005 long before mobile devices came on the scene.  Flash had a very good run, in no small part because of Adobe's efforts.  But now it's over.  Too many things have changed.  Most of the Macromedia products are long gone and now Flash Player is among them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Macromedia_software

[Guest]

Good Evening, 

I have a question andconcern. I am a teacher who has many ebooks on dvdroms that require flashlayer. Will i not be able to show my students these ebooks anymore ? Is there something i can do to be able to salvage these books. I honestly had no idea that they required flash player unit l now and i see all the discussion of EOL. Can you help e because i have spent alot of money on these . thank you

[Nancy OShea]

Have you contacted the publisher?  Modern e-books rarely require Flash Player.  They are typically distributed in formats such as PDF for Acrobat, HTML5 for the web or a combination of web technologies that can be viewed on mobile devices and e-book readers like Kindle, Nook, etc...  What makes you think your e-books are Flash based?

[jeromiec83223024 · Accepted solution]

I'm going to lock this thread, as it's now attracting random questions.  If you have a new question, please post a new topic.

For completeness, here's the end-of-life announcement: 

https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-flash-update/

Here's the latest FAQ on end-of-life topics for consumers: 

https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-flash-update/