Comment on What DID Apple innovate?

• ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I do think it sped up the demise of Flash on the web considerably.

  That's unironically an innovation right there

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  • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Why? It was a decent technology.

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    • ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      No, it absolutely wasn't, as can testify anyone who actually had to work with it:
      https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/the-death-of-adobes-flash-is-lingering-not-sudden/

      There are lots of good reasons to get rid of Flash. Browser makers say it's a top sore spot for security, performance and shorter battery life.

      https://tedium.co/2021/01/01/adobe-flash-demise-history/

      Usability means a few things in this context—simplicity, ease of use, convention, and accessibility. Flash was none of those things. It took the blank-canvas approach to creativity—which was great for the artists and illustrators that originally made up its target audience, but morphed into numerous other forms that it wasn’t necessarily designed for. It fell into overuse and quickly became abused by others.

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      • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        here have been plenty of nails since. Microsoft, Mozilla and Google started cutting off browser plug-in technology, telegraphing that Flash’s approach to extending browser abilities was doomed even if the browsers themselves carved out an exception for Flash.

        Well, I’m in favor of that approach and I’m not in favor of Microsoft, Google and even sadly Mozilla. Even if used not for Flash but for something else.

        a win in favor of a more technical, more methodical internet, one where systems are built to work efficiently, rather than experimental playthings that kind of sit in their own space.

        That quote alone emotionally moves me personally in the direction opposite of what the author apparently intended.

        Then there is, of course, a quote attributed to “famed usability expert”, who meant something completely irrelevant to the point the author is making, judging by that quote being from year 2000.

        I’m not sure he’d consider HTML5 better, and judging by his article on Java applets linked and statements made there, the closest thing to his perfect Web would be today’s Geminispace, with which I can even agree in many contexts and which would be the opposite kind of Web from what the author of the article apparently wants to say.

        Anyway, I just wanted to say that I like the idea of the generally static (maybe just a bit scriptable) hypertext pages with embedded applets executed with plugins. It makes sense if you need an accessible standard. It doesn’t if you need a monopoly which formally isn’t one.

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    • Exec@pawb.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Not really. To have fresh dynamic content having to install a third party plugin is a bad take. Web development was stagnating due to IE’s market dominance.

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      • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        To have fresh dynamic content having to install a third party plugin is a bad take.

        It was the public opinion in the 00s, yes. And I think I even thought the same back then (being a kid, so my opinion doesn’t matter much ; but I did have that “afraid to catch a virus” feeling which was amplified by a page containing something in Flash).

        But I disagree now, looking at all that transpired. It was a good thing that HTML (as in hypertext markup language) and JS weren’t responsible for such things. And it’s fine to serve applications for various interpreters over HTTP as part of webpages.

        I also think that Java applets were a good idea, not just Flash, for the same reason.

        Also the browser developer and the Flash developer were not the same party. Which means that Flash was more or less egalitarian between browsers.

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• PeachMan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Sure, a browser minus Flash, but it was still a real browser. Most of the web functioned without Flash. And none of the competition even had anything close. It was such a revolutionary product that the iPhone didn’t even HAVE competition until Android got its shit together, which took a couple years.

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• zurohki@aussie.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This. Being able to actually open all those sites that used Flash was a big advantage of Android back then.

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  • PeachMan@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah, Android had that advantage LATER, when they got their shit together. But when the iPhone initially released, it changed the game.

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