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Comment by smoldesu | Hacker News Reader

> We'd 100% still be using Flash if Apple hadn't refused to support it

I mean, that's hyperbole. Even in a flash-dominated web, there was still tons of non-flash technology being developed and distributed. In 2023 it would definitely be obsoleted, if for no reason other than Adobe having no incentive to keep it around. Apple's decision feels tangential relative to the progress of internet bandwidth, delivery technologies and even just the plain advent of YouTube obceleting 90% of the places Flash was used.

Flash would be dead today even if Apple did adopt it, because nobody in the industry wants to pay arbitrary taxes or kiss the proprietary ring. Their freedom on the web let them evolve and pick competitive replacements; Flash's death is hardly a defense of iron-fist ecosystem enforcement.

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I take your point that it's been a long time - in the intervening 17 years that particular technology would probably have died out on its own, but the primary complaints about the modern web stack on desktop aren't dissimilar from those that pertained to Flash in the day: memory hungry, power inefficient etc.

We're _still_ pumping out solutions that are easier for us and worse for customers on desktop and that's without the problem of software-driven user tracking, which was still just larval when the App Store opened up. In fact the only reason things aren't even _worse_ on desktop is that non-mobile devices are a much smaller % of where people spend their time, and therefore a smaller target with a more technically proficient user base.

There's an open ecosystem available to people where you can load any old crap onto your device. It's even cheaper than iOS. Please just let most of (not all, some crap still gets past App Review) the junk alight there and give people a choice to buy entry into the walled garden.

> and give people a choice to buy entry into the walled garden.

No, that's Apple's decision. The garden plays by Europe's rules, or people don't get a choice at all.

De-facto monopolies are not inherently justified. Feel any way you will about it as a consumer; Apple uses their power to exercise anti-competitive control over their ecosystems. Governments will now step in to regulate the market Apple has failed to make competitive.

It would most definitely still be alive. Source: I worked for a company whose web UI was 100% Flash/Shockwave.

If Steve Jobs hadn't publicly come against Flash and by extension forced the hand of everyone else, I'm pretty sure they'd still be using Flash just because change is hard.

The company went so far as to ship a specific browser to customers that could still run Flash instead of spending resources to rewrite the crappy UI =)

> If Steve Jobs hadn't [...] forced the hand of everyone else

Steve Jobs called where puck was going. Everyone knew the problem; clients were falling behind in capability, and web content was getting more advanced and bigger. 99% of the things we use the modern web for have solved this problem with HTML5 and Javascript. The other 1% got locked behind a novel invention called "The App Store", a new way to pay 30% of your digital revenue to support APIs you ought to have access to in the first place. That sad fact is the reason why every Mac is loaded with Electron apps and WebViews for basic messaging and music players. Apple might even try to fix it if they didn't make so much money selling memory upgrades.

If Apple's goal was to build on the web instead of gimping it for their own exploitation, they would have a leg to stand on.

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