The iPhone has been out since mid-2007. The iPhone doesn’t run Flash animation. Does anyone miss Flash? Apparently not, since the iPhone continues to grow in sales and market share. Flash doesn’t matter much for iPhone users.

That brings up a logical question. Do Mac users need Adobe’s Flash player? If you enjoy crashing Safari, the answer is a qualified yes. Besides crashes, what does Flash really give to Mac users? Can we do without Flash on a Mac?

What Flash Does

Adobe’s Flash is billed as an interactive multi-media platform that provides animation and interactivity to web pages.

Flash can run on Macs or PCs in a standalone mode. Browsers need the Flash plugin to display Flash files.

Many of the advertisements viewed on web pages are made using Flash. Some web sites feature an interactive Flash environment with visual capability beyond typical web sites of XHTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Flash video is the de factor video standard on the internet. So, why isn’t Flash available on the iPhone and iPad? Why do we need it on the Mac? Flash is considered the number one cause of crashes for Mac users.

Flash In The Pan

The controversy surrounding Flash is growing. Google is slowly moving away from using Flash to stream videos in YouTube. No Flash anything on the iPhone or iPad.

Last week, TheFlashBlog put up a graphic which was designed to show how a bunch of popular web sites would look on Apple’s iPad. It wasn’t a pretty site sight. Each web site featured the prominent Plugin Needed block instead of the Flash animation.

Someone else actually bothered to look at those same web sites using an iPhone and the result was much different; posting the question, “Do you really need Flash for the Web?”

Web sites have Flash games, Flash interactive animation, and Flash advertisements. What else? If the iPhone and iPad don’t need Flash, do Mac users need Flash?

No. Flash is technology from the 20th century, a vestige from the 1990s, an eye candy salute to Java’s write once, run everywhere mantra. Mac users do not need Flash. Flash will go the Internet Explorer route—a slow fall from grace, a lingering and painful remembrance of the past.

The 3 Faces Of Flash

Mac users run into Flash in three basic areas. Flash ads and effects. Flash games. Flash interactive sites. And probably in that order.

Flash ads can be defeated easily by Safari users with Click2Flash, a nifty utility which disguises Flash with a gray wall, and prevents them from running until you click the wall. Highly recommended if Flash ads annoy you.

Flash games are popular, though, compared to games on the iPod touch or iPhone, rather anemic and limited. Flash animated games are no match for standalone games on any platform, Mac, Windows, iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad. Good riddance.

That brings up Flash web sites. Here’s the Top 10 Flash Sites of 2010. Advertising agencies and many web designers love Flash because it offers an opportunity to bill clients lots of money to create an entertaining design.

The question is, can we do without all that eye candy and have an internet with open standards vs. proprietary requirements? There is a growing movement among web standards promoters to leave Flash behind and move on toward HTML 5, CSS, and Javascript.

My view is simple. The internet doesn’t need another proprietary standard like Flash or Microsoft’s Silverlight (which does basically the same thing as Flash).

Apple, Google, and many others think the internet would do just fine without Flash. I’ve been running Click2Flash for a couple of months to block out Flash on Safari. Mac users will never miss it. Your Mac will run cooler and have fewer crashes. What’s not to like about Flash going away?

Nope. Don’t need it. Flash is visually annoying. I use Click2Flash now. My MBP runs cooler, no fan. No eye distractions, either.

Good riddance.

Goodbye, Flash. We hardly knew ye.

Click2Flash works great.

I don’t mind Flash. I don’t mind ads.

I do NOT like those interactive Flash web site which desire to create their own user interface with different tools (buttons, bars, etc.) than standard sites.

The iPhone proved that we could get by just fine without Flash. It won’t go away because it’s in use in so many places, but I consider it like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. It will suffer a debilitating disease that will last for a decade or more.

Ok, but I want to totally delete all Flash files, the program, etc., from my Mac; how can I do this? In other words, eliminate the nasty mess called Flash!!

GuyGene - 06 February 2010 10:37 PM

Ok, but I want to totally delete all Flash files, the program, etc., from my Mac; how can I do this? In other words, eliminate the nasty mess called Flash!!

It depends.

If you use Safari, all that’s required is to delete your cache files (Safari Menu > Empty Cache… Then, don’t ever visit another web site with Flash embedded in their pages. Or, use Click2Flash.

If you’re using another browser, it’s more problematic. If you have Adobe Flash installed, use the installer to uninstall it. If you have the Flash plugin installed, use Adobe’s uninstaller to remove it.

Ron McElfresh - 06 February 2010 10:56 PM

GuyGene - 06 February 2010 10:37 PM

Ok, but I want to totally delete all Flash files, the program, etc., from my Mac; how can I do this? In other words, eliminate the nasty mess called Flash!!

It depends.

If you use Safari, all that’s required is to delete your cache files (Safari Menu > Empty Cache… Then, don’t ever visit another web site with Flash embedded in their pages.

Right. Ok, then I won’t ever come back to Mac360, eh? No, I was referring to just deleting Flash from my Mac, and not reinstalling it even if a site requests it. I wonder if that would be a little like the lady who tried for one year to not buy anything made in China? Well, it didn’t work, as hard as she tried… They got us I tell ye, they got us…

I’m using Click3flash as I type… still don’t like that method, but oh well, can’t be helped (wow, I hate having to say that!!).

GuyGene - 06 February 2010 11:10 PM

I was referring to just deleting Flash from my Mac, and not reinstalling it even if a site requests it. I wonder if that would be a little like the lady who tried for one year to not buy anything made in China? Well, it didn’t work, as hard as she tried… They got us I tell ye, they got us…

That’s not far from the truth, you know.

If you’re not running Adobe Flash Professional (that’s an oxymoron) and just worried about web pages and Flash, Click2Flash works well, but if you delete the Flash plugin then no Flash videos will get downloaded (but you get that ugly Leggo block icon).

I’m using Click3flash as I type… still don’t like that method, but oh well, can’t be helped (wow, I hate having to say that!!).

Adobe has a Flash uninstaller, too.

I guess I still need it… my Netgear Stora NAS device uses a web based flash interface, which is currently the only way I can access it from my ancient MDD 867 Power Mac.  The Flash should be called molasses on this machine, it just brings it to it’s knees.  For everything else there’s click to flash.  I’ll really begin complaining if I can’t get the access to the Stora in any other way… still working on troubleshooting why the smb: and sftp: protocols refuse to recognize the login that works through the http: pages.

gskiii - 07 February 2010 07:34 PM

I guess I still need it… my Netgear Stora NAS device uses a web based flash interface, which is currently the only way I can access it from my ancient MDD 867 Power Mac.  The Flash should be called molasses on this machine, it just brings it to it’s knees.  For everything else there’s click to flash.  I’ll really begin complaining if I can’t get the access to the Stora in any other way… still working on troubleshooting why the smb: and sftp: protocols refuse to recognize the login that works through the http: pages.

My company has a similar situation with some entry pages which are Flash. Why they chose Flash, I don’t know. The guy who developed the entry forms has long since disappeared, and there’s a project under way to get rid of Flash interfaces company wide.

But, in the meantime, Click2Flash still needs to get clicked.

I’m late to the party, just discovering the need for Click2Flash. That little utility has made my life so much better! Shame on Adobe for unleashing such shoddy code. I’m just surprised I wasn’t annoyed enough before C2F to seek out a solution.

I do wonder if the absence of Flash will affect the iPad, however. I never surfed the web with the iPod touch, preferring special apps like NYT or Bloomberg to customize the experience. But people will surf on the larger iPad and I hope HTML 5, whatever that is, quickly spreads and takes over as a new standard.

I don’t need it. My I-Phone (version 3.1.3) works just perfect for my Ultimate 3g Mobile experience. I think it’s just more junk for the browser to load and maybe slow down download times.