Overthought.org:
This morning, Adobe kindly alerted me of an update available for Flash to take it to version 13.0.0.182.
The update breaks Flash.
DO NOT run this update, at least until Adobe solves whatever is causing the plugin to fail.
Several readers of Overthought.org have reported that this update completely breaks Flash for Safari on OS X 10.9 Mavericks. I have also personally experienced this issue.
If you run into a problem with your newly updated Flash install, read the rest of the post. Hopefully, it will help. [Via @stumark and @jordanmerrick]
If you run into a problem with Flash just uninstall it, problem solved. There is no need for Flash given the security risks it introduces.
The most common problem with 13.0.0.182 was with older Macs (ca. 2006-2008). Adobe is aware and a fix should be out tomorrow:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/6285851
Without more specifics, the linked post does not bear this level of attention.
The update breaks Flash.
I view that, as Mr. Davis does, as the best fix for Flash.
When I want a Flash runtime (i.e. almost never), I run Chrome.
I agree. If you hit a website that seems to require it, switching the user agent in desktop safari to iPad is usually enough to get it to serve you non-Flash pages. I don’t know why websites don’t fail-over to their non-Flash versions instead of pointing you to download the Adobe player. It’s going to take a long time to die..
I find it weird that website developers take the time to make fallbacks (which is more like fall ups) for mobile devices without Flash yet still serve Flash as default.
It seems to make more sense to make non-Flash/HTML5 the default and fall back to Flash for unsupported browsers.
Honestly, reading about Adobe Flash problems in 2014 almost makes me want to give up computing entirely. Because there is just no hope.
Not only is that weird, but the latest versions of Flash Media Server have the fallbacks to HTML5 video built-in. When the server sees an iPad or iPhone, it serves HTML5. But it still serves Flash to Mac and Windows.
The only problem with this is that Chrome’s FlashPlayer is always the least secure because it’s behind.
Yes, the best thing to do is remove FlashPlayer from your Mac and replace it with an iPad. All the stuff that you need FlashPlayer for on your Mac is also available without Flash on an iPad. Things like YouTube, HBO Go, Xfinity/Comcast, are all much better on iPad.
A key thing is that FlashPlayer heats up your Mac so bad that the $300 you spend on an iPad may pay for itself when you get an extra year out of your Mac, or when your Mac doesn’t fail you the day before a project is due because you haven’t been abusing it with FlashPlayer.
Also, it may be that over the life of your Mac, FlashPlayer by itself is wearing out $300 worth of your battery and AC power compared to running the MPEG-4 video properly without Flash wrappers.
But really, this problem needs to be fixed by Apple and Adobe. If the next version of Mac OS X cannot run Internet Plug-ins (including FlashPlayer) under any circumstances, that would be my #1 favorite feature. It would be very little work for website administrators to adjust to that, and it would save Mac users in the aggregate hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of time and reduce their exposure to malware and security issues exponentially.
I updated to 13.0.0.182 last week when it came out. Working fine for me.
Very valid statement: “Flash is taking a long time to die.” Can we all just kill the damn thing already?….