Releasing the Flash Player 9 update was a mistake
Adobe just released Flash 9.0.28. It wasn’t too long ago Adobe released Flash 9, June 27th in fact. A quick perusal of the flash player version penetration numbers finds the established markets at 35%, not exactly the best time to toss out another download to the masses.
I think we as technologists often forget that our true mission is to deliver value to those less technical than ourselves. I often find myself falling into that very trap. The latest widget, feature or capability excites me so much that I fool myself into believing that those on the other side of my work will find the feature as cool as I do. The cool factor does not drive long term value, it only generates short term excitement.
One of the greatest advantages of building and releasing applications online is that you can release early and often. This strategy works well if your users receive your updates transparently. As easy as it is to download the Flash player for us Technologists, is it really that easy for our users? We have systems that aim to make it easier, SWFObject is one among many. But do they really work for everyone? What if Javascript is disabled? If someone has to make an effort to update an application I’ve written more often than once a year, than thats a failure on my part.
Adobe clearly sees this differently, though I’m not sure why. As the makers of the platform that many of us use to create applications for end users, Adobe has an even greater responsibility to ensure that our end users experience is as simple as possible. The market is just now adjusting to and consuming Flash 9 content, and already they’ve released a newer version. It seems that that Adobe is falling into that same trap, pushing out the latest cool feature without considering how it affects developers and end users. Why not push these features out with Flash 10? Or better yet, find a way to make flash updates more transparent to end users so that we can continue to use the Flash platform to better deliver value to our users without worrying about how much effort it is to update their version.
