YouTube And The Flash Problem

If I try and pull up the new Vampire Weekend song, “Ya Hey”, in Safari on a Macbook Pro without Flash installed I get the fuzzy screen letting me know I need Flash installed. If I visit the same page on an iPad though, the video plays fine.

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Why should it make a difference if I’m on an iPad or mobile device in order to get the version of the video that plays without Flash? Visiting Youtube.com/html5 lets you opt into using HTML5 instead of Flash when available, though that’s still not guarantee to get universal access on desktops or laptops.

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There are plenty of examples of big-time players like Netflix and even Google’s Android moving away from Flash, but none seem to come fast enough with a clean enough break. This isn’t about them though, this is about the roulette game that’s played every time a link to YouTube shows up in my feed.

It’s time for YouTube to completely cut the Flash cord and force people to install or upgrade a browser rather than force the outdated player on them.

 
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