I’ve just dumped Flash. But in case you haven’t, here is a great incentive to do so. For the second time in a week, Adobe has put out a security advisory informing users of an active threat in the wild and the requirement to update Flash. According to Adobe, updated versions of Flash will be available this week to protect users.
Suddenly, my decision to dump Flash looks good right about now.
Frequent readers of this blog will know that I am no fan of Adobe Flash. It’s a CPU hog, a battery hog, and a security threat given how often you have to update it to avoid getting exploited by something. The last time I had a piece of software that was this much of a problem was when I had Java on my system. I dumped that and haven’t looked back since. So I’ve been musing doing the same with Flash. Given that YouTube has recently moved into the HTML5 camp, I decided to take the plunge and dump Adobe Flash. Over the next month, I will document my attempt to get rid of Flash once and for all. Let’s start with actually dumping Flash. Now Adobe does make uninstallers to make dumping Flash easy:
If you’re on a Mac, click here.
If you’re on a PC, click here.
In my case, I followed the instructions for Mac and within two minutes, Flash was gone. Now the question is, is my web surfing experience lacking because I don’t have Flash?
Not so far.
I browsed to my usual websites and found no differences in my web surfing experience. So far, that implies that you don’t need flash to surf the Internet. Now one thing that I did notice is that Safari which according to OS X Yosemite used “significant energy” when I had Flash installed no longer does. Not only that, battery life while running Safari is way over 7 hours which I have never seen on my MacBook Pro before and my CPU usage has dropped so much that it rarely crossed 4%. I guess that proves that everything that Steve Jobs said all those years ago.
This is promising so far.
Check back next week to see how I’m doing and if I am running into any difficulty by not having Adobe Flash on my system.
I have to admit that I do not like Flash. It’s insecure and power hungry. And I thought that long before the late Steve Jobs said so. So the news that YouTube is moving away from Flash is something that I really, really like:
Four years ago, we wrote about YouTube’s early support for the HTML5 <video> tag and how it performed compared to Flash. At the time, there were limitations that held it back from becoming our preferred platform for video delivery. Most critically, HTML5 lacked support for Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) that lets us show you more videos with less buffering.
Over the last four years, we’ve worked with browser vendors and the broader community to close those gaps, and now, YouTube uses HTML5 <video> by default in Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8 and in beta versions of Firefox.
The benefits of HTML5 extend beyond web browsers, and it’s now also used in smart TVs and other streaming devices.
With YouTube moving away from Flash, it means that Flash is likely doomed because others will copy YouTube’s move . And finally, I will have a reason not to have Flash on my computer which will take away one attack vector from the bad guys and make my computer perform better.
I’m quickly getting to the point where I want to run my computer without any plug-ins. I say that because of two new developments:
Now, I’m not affected by the latest Java vulnerability because I’ve dumped it from my Mac. But the fact that Apple is blocking older versions of Flash says to me that I should do the same to Flash. If only it were that simple. There’s lots of sites that use Flash rather using HTML5. But the good news is that with all the iDevices out there, Flash will become a thing of the past. When that day comes, I will be putting Flash into the trash. And my computer will be more secure because of it.
That’s an interesting question. Flash has the a similar track record of security (or more accurately, questionable security) as Java and you’d likely be safer without it. The thing is, that unlike Java, Flash is used in a lot of places. There’s a lot of web pages that are Flash only (Google Earth comes to mind as one. YouTube seems to have issues at times as well depending on the video you watch) which may make going Flash-less a problem. This however may be changing. HTML5 is appearing in more and more places due to the influence of the iPad and other iDevices. Another thing to consider, Apple no longer ships Flash with their computers. That will make Flash a thing of the past shortly and as a result allow you to make your computer more secure.
So to answer your question, I’m not dumping Flash yet. But the day is coming.
ZDNN is reporting that Adobe’s attempts to bring Flash to smartphones and tablets may be dead and buried:
Sources close to Adobe that have been briefed on the company’s future development plans have revealed this forthcoming announcement to ZDNet:
Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.
Additionally, the e-mail briefing to Adobe’s partners has been summed up as follows:
Given how much noise they made about wanting Flash on iDevices in particular, this is a stunning turnaround. Assuming this is true, they will move to HTML5 support which basically means that they are adopting the Apple view of the universe. ZDNN says that this is going to be announced today. I’ll be watching to see if that’s the case.
UPDATE: It’s now official. Flash is dead on mobile devices.
Adobe has finally figured out a way to get Flash onto Apple’s iDevices… Sort of. Adobe has announced something called Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5 and Adobe Flash Access 3.0. Now you can read the media stuff here, but I’ll give you the key point here:
“With Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5, media publishers now have a single, simple workflow for delivering content using the same stream to Flash-enabled devices or to the Apple iPhone and iPad.”
In a nutshell, what Adobe is doing is repackaging the Flash content in real-time to suit the target device. For iDevices, you get Flash (though it’s only Flash video at this point) without Flash needing to be installed. As a bonus, iDevice users don’t get the battery life and CPU usage issues that Flash usually brings. Brilliant!
You have to wonder how Apple feels about this.
Adobe must have looked at this announcement with some amount of fear. The news has hit the wires that H.264 has become royalty free:
MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as “Internet Broadcast AVC Video”) during the entire life of this License. MPEG LA previously announced it would not charge royalties for such video through December 31, 2015 (see http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf), and today’s announcement makes clear that royalties will continue not to be charged for such video beyond that time. Products and services other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be royalty-bearing.
The main stumbling block to ditching Flash was the uncertain licensing future of the H.264 standard. That’s now been removed. Sites like YouTube will never be charged for playing videos which makes H.264 VERY attractive to web developers. So you can bet that two things will happen. First, browsers will rush to support H.264 (and I’m looking at you Firefox and IE when I say that). Second, Flash is never going to be seeing the light of day on any of those iDevices as there’s officially no incentive for Apple to hook up with Adobe on Flash.
Adobe, you have a problem.
If Adobe was hoping that people would sing the praises of their implementation of Flash on Android, they can forget about it. Laptop Magazine tested Flash on a Droid 2 and found the following:
I’m the last person on earth who wanted to believe Steve Jobs when he told Walt Mossberg at D8 that “Flash has had its day.” I took it as nothing more than showmanship when Jobs shared his thoughts on Flash and wrote that “Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices.” After spending time playing with Flash Player 10.1 on the new Droid 2, the first Android 2.2 phone to come with the player pre-installed, I’m sad to admit that Steve Jobs was right. Adobe’s offering seems like it’s too little, too late.
Ouch. That isn’t the news that Adobe wanted to hear. I guess it’s back to the drawing board to Adobe with Flash on smart phones as I don’t know anyone who will want to run Flash on their smart phones based on this report.
Meanwhile, Steve Jobs has got to be saying “I told you so.”
Bye Bye Flash! – Part 2: What About Porn And Surveys?
Posted in Commentary with tags Adobe, Flash on February 9, 2015 by itnerdI’ve gotten a lot of reaction to my post about punting Adobe Flash from my system over the month of February to see what happens. One of those was from a reader who was concerned about his porn watching habits:
Hello IT Nerd. Seeing as you’re a guy, I figured that you’d be able to tell me if the fact that you’ve you’ve removed Flash from your computer affect your ability to watch porn online.
Thank you.
First off, I don’t watch porn online. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I watched porn online or otherwise. But the question intrigued me as I bet that a lot of people use their computers to watch porn. Thus I replied to his e-mail and got a list of sites to test:
Each of these sites from what I can tell allows you to watch content for free, and watch better content for a fee. Now when I tested my computer against these sites, I was able to watch content without Flash being installed. Only one of them mentioned that I was missing Flash, but it provided a link that allowed me to play the content anyway. And all of the content played in HTML5. Thus apparently, my rather unscientific experiment suggests that you do not need Flash to view porn online. That didn’t exactly come as a shock to me as I wrote a story about four years ago about one of the biggest names in porn was moving away from Flash. Thus it seems that it would be logical that others would follow.
Now onto my second question:
Hello, I belong to two online survey panels that pay me to take surveys. If I delete Flash as you suggest, will I still be able to take surveys as some of the invitations that I get specifically mention the need for Flash?
Any advice is appreciated.
I e-mailed this person back and got the names of three companies that do this sort of thing:
They’re all reputable names in that industry. Thus in the interests of answering this question, I signed up to them and within a few days, I got invitations to surveys that I could take. Of the three sites that I looked at, only one had a requirement for Flash. That one was Asking Canadians. The other two didn’t require Flash and any “rich content” worked fine. So that would imply that if Asking Canadians has a survey that has a video that requires Flash, you can’t take it. Now I should note that the other two survey groups host surveys from third parties. Thus it is possible that you might get a survey that requires Flash that way.
Other than those major questions, it’s been smooth sailing without Flash. I have yet to find a hiccup of any sort that would have required me to re-install Flash. Thus I will continue with this experiment to see what happens. One other thing. If I do need to use Flash, I still have it installed in my virtual machines that run Windows. Thus just like Java, if I do need to use it, I can do so in a low risk environment where any potential damage can be contained inside that environment.
Tune in next week to see an update on how I’m doing without Flash.
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