While Google only recently got on the Adobe Flash hate train , Apple has been riding it for nearly a decade. iOS, and thus the iPhone and iPad, have never allowed Flash anywhere near them, due to the inherent security risks of having Flash anywhere near your computer. But you could still use Flash on Safari on your desktop, if you wanted. That,
however, is about to change.
Apple has announced that as of the update that turns OS X into MacOS, Flash will need to be specifically enabled, website by website. The team
behind Safari claims it’s because Flash is a “legacy plug-in” due to HTML5 serving all the same functions, lumping Flash in the same category as QuickTime, Silverlight, and Java. Safari
will be Flash-enabled, it will just tell websites that Flash isn’t installed to get them to default to the HTML5 version. And here you thought computers
couldn’t be passive-aggressive!
By itself, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Flash has dealt with Apple for years, and the iPhone blocking it didn’t stop web developers from using Flash. But with Chrome, Safari, and Firefox all
blocking Flash, that means roughly half the people on the Internet won’t see the program at all. That’s going to have an impact, at least on Flash on the web. But on the bright side, your local restaurant
might finally offer you text you can copy and paste.
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