When I first saw the news that the new Airs are shipping without Flash, it occurred to me this might account for some of their striking gains over the previous models in battery life. There are a lot of Mac users who’ve never known the joy of using an Adobe software installer, but who soon will. The initial terms of the Mac App Store state that it is solely for the distribution of standalone apps - plugins need not apply. But maybe not - especially if, in the coming future, Mac users become accustomed to installing third-party software solely through the Mac App Store. Maybe everyone (or just about everyone) will go ahead and download and install it themselves. In terms of Flash Player penetration for Mac OS X, perhaps this will have little effect. Henceforth, Flash Player security updates for Mac OS X are Adobe’s problem, not Apple’s. Recall the controversy last year when Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) shipped with a slightly older version of Flash Player, with a few known security vulnerabilities. This also absolves Apple of responsibility for the distribution of Flash Player security updates. If I had to guess, I’d say Mac OS 8.6 - around the time of the deal to bundle IE as the default Mac OS browser, or maybe even earlier. I’m not sure exactly when Apple began bundling Flash Player as a standard component in Mac OS, but it was long enough ago that it was not a mistake that I didn’t include the “X” in the name of the OS. With Mac OS X, users are free to download Flash Player from Adobe and install it themselves.Īpple spokesperson Bill Evans told me: “We’re happy to continue to support Flash on the Mac, and the best way for users to always have the most up to date and secure version is to download it directly from Adobe.” With iOS, Flash not only isn’t preinstalled, it can’t be installed, period.
To be clear, this is a significantly different situation than with iOS. Existing Macs currently in the retail channel naturally still have Flash Player preinstalled, but in the coming weeks, all new Macs will begin shipping without Flash Player. I asked Apple whether this change would be applied across the entire Mac product line, and they confirmed to me that it would.
How so? Because the new MacBook Air models ship without Flash Player installed.Īnd the new Airs are not alone. One, however, was not: a system that ships without Flash Player. Several of those ideas were mentioned during the event.
The gist of the “Back to the Mac” theme of Apple’s press event this week is that the iPhone was derived from Mac OS X, the iPad from the iPhone, and now some of the good ideas from iOS are going back to the Mac. Apple Is No Longer Bundling Flash Player With Mac OS X Friday, 22 October 2010
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