Gone In A Flash

Back in July of 2010, I wrote a post about Flash and the AppStore. In that post, I brought up the notion that if Flash was such a security issue with iOS devices, Apple should consider removing it from their desktop OS.

Today Daring Fireball confirmed what I thought Apple might do with Flash for their MacOS based machines.

Starting with the new MacBook Air, Flash will not be pre-installed on the machine. Instead, users will have to visit adobe.com or a Flash-enabled website and ultimately download the plugin themselves.

UX Implications

I have worked with designers who tended to take Flash for granted. This new development will put more pressure on them to create fully functioning versions of their experiences for non-Flash users. It will also force them to truly consider whether or not a Flash version of their experience is worth the investment. This isn’t such a bad thing.

Not only will this affect designers, this will put more pressure on front-end developers. If UX teams start to demand levels of interactivity formerly provided by Flash, guess who will have to step up to HTML5 and possibly other means to get the job done? I hope developers make their code open-sourced to further the HTML5 effort.