Original Flash

That's So 2006!

Remember the Macromedia Flash Player? Or SWF files (for Shockwave Flash)? 

Incredibly, Adobe bought out Macromedia in 2005 for $3 billion. Then Adobe did what it does best, it ran a costly acquisition straight into the ground. The company finally threw in the towel in 2020, about 10 years too late!

Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder, was no big fan. He rightfully complained that the software would frequently crash, often taking the browser down with it. Flash had several high-profile security incidents (e.g. not patching a known vulnerability for over a year). Also, most of the content delivered via Flash were ads. And worst of all, it was an incredible resource hog! 

Jobs banned Flash from the iPhone and iPad. He was indeed a visionary!

"Adobe stated in 2013 that more than 400 million out of over 1 billion connected desktops updated to new versions of Flash Player within six weeks of release."

- Because we had no choice. It would pester us for updates all the time! You couldn't go on vacation without another version being released. And that new version sometimes had more bugs than the original!

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash_Player

• https://www.wired.co.uk/article/history-of-macromedia-flash

• https://www.wired.com/2015/07/adobe-flash-player-die/

• https://occupyflash.org/