Have you heard the news? Adobe has stopped development of its mobile Flash plugin. Translation: flash in its current iteration is not going to be a part of the mobile revolution. Instead, it has succumbed to the power and influence of Apple's HTML5 agenda.
Why has Apple essentially destroyed the viability of the once ubiquitous Adobe Flash? Although this might seem like the almighty Apple has purposefully and maliciously edged out Flash in order to have complete control over the video content its users can access, if examined, Apple's intentions seem much more reasonable.
As described by TechCrunch, Flash is designed for the high capacity central processing units (CPUs) of traditional desktop and mobile computers rather than for the graphic processing units (GPUs) that most mobile phones employ. Although mobile phones also have CPUs, they are generally much less powerful than the CPUs in most traditional computers. Instead, they rely on GPUs to process graphics. This processing via hardware is much more effective than the software processing that Flash relies on. Instead of taking advantage of the high quality GPUs installed in mobile phones and newer computers, Flash has stayed tied to CPU processing.
In the past, Steve Jobs has critiqued Flash for other reasons. Namely, its proprietary closed format, its high consumption of battery life, and its lack of touch compatibility.
While Apple's bold decision to restrict its mobile devices to non-flash video might have seemed controversial a few years ago, today, the world has changed. Apple's reasoning has won. Flash's lack of ability to adapt to the requirements of the mobile world has proven to be highly detrimental.
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