Flash for Mac?

Apple products, such as iPhones, iPads and iPods haven’t had a good association with Adobe’s Flash program over the years. There have been various issues and complaints that have frustrated users by crashing, freezing and just plain not working at all on browsers. This is interesting, as Adobe’s Creative Suite software works well with Apple’s computers and the users of this software are primarily also Mac users. The Mac OS 10.6 or higher versions has support for Flash 11 videos now but due to their internal issues the software is not available on the AppleApp store and can be get from any download sites or Adobe itself.

Flash is a closed program

According to Apple, one of the reasons why Adobe’s Flash isn’t not so compatible with their products is due to the closed nature of Adobe’s software. Unlike other programming languages used on the internet, such as Javascript, HTML5 and CSS, Flash is a closed program. This means that developers are unable to get inside the program to manipulate and tweak the software as one would JavaScript or CSS.

Flash coding needs to be rewritten

Flash is an older program, and many content providers are offering videos without the need for Flash to be installed. This is because Adobe’s Flash was created for desktop PCs, and Adobe hasn’t been able to make a working model for mobile devices such as tablet computers and smart phones. The ability for Flash to be developed for mobile devices isn’t very high due to the closed program and inability for programmers to develop code for Flash. This means that Flash coding needs to be rewritten for the website on mobile devices, which can take up too much time and effort for developers when it’s easier to use a different programming code in its place.

Flash has been rated low

One complaint that relates to Flash is its security issues. In the past, Adobe’s Flash has been rated low for its security features. According to Symantec, Flash has one of the worst security records of any computer software. Other complaints include Flash being the number one reason why Apple products crash and they also take up a lot of battery charge to process video files.

Our conclusion of the Adobe Flash Player for Mac is that YES, it is indeed capable of running Flash videos on the Mac browsers when a website requires it to; but, it’s not perfect yet. That being said, I guess most of us will agree that it is better to have a slightly buggy Flash on Mac than not having it at all!