Apple: all new Macs will ship sans Adobe Flash

[Emil]

Apple revamped its MacBook Air this week and it was quickly discovered that the new laptop ships without Adobe Flash pre-installed. All previous generations of Macs have shipped with Adobe Flash, but those days are officially over. This wasn't just a one-time thing: every Mac sold from here on out will no longer include Flash. "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," an Apple spokesperson told Engadget.

That seems like quite a reasonable argument, especially considering Windows does not ship with Flash either. Those who have been following Apple's war on Flash, however, know better. After all, why not just put Flash in the Software Update utility?

Apple has staunchly refused to let Flash on the iPhone, then the iPod touch, and finally the iPad. Flash is strictly not allowed on any of its iOS devices, despite the fact that the company bundles the plug-in on its Macs. This past April, things escalated to a whole new level when Cupertino banned developers from using cross-platform compilers, like the one Adobe just so happened to have announced as a key feature in Creative Suite 5, and instead required apps to be written natively for the iPhone OS. Despite complaints from developers, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did not let up and instead wrote a lengthy open letter explaining why Flash was detrimental for innovation on mobile devices, saying that it lacked openness, the "full web," reliability, security, performance, battery life, touch interfaces, and software quality.

Now, Jobs has completed his goal of ridding Flash from all of his company's devices. Mac OS X Lion will not come with anything from Adobe, though the products will still work on the platform if you go and get them yourself.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/40809-apple-all-new-macs-will-ship-sans-adobe-flash.html

 

[princeton]

I have a question. If you jailbreak your iphone/ipad/touch has someone made a flash plugin for it?

 

[mario]

Why does Apple have to support and upgrade other companies software? That's why they are not bundling Flash and Java anymore.

In the past Apple has gotten in trouble because they bundled an older version of the flash player with the SL installation. It is smart of them to stop being responsible for other people's software. No one wants to be blamed for other people's errors, and Apple doesn't want to either so they are not bundling software that is prone to security vulnerabilities they have no control of.

 

[SNGX1275]

I don't see this as a bad thing either. I think that there will be questions to whether this is in response to their little spat a few months ago, but I'm not sure it is.

I agree with marioestrada. Even if you buy a Windows machine from Dell or whomever there is a pretty good chance your Flash will be out of date and subject to vulnerabilities. It seems once or twice a week I have to update Flash. Apple doing this just ensures if you want Flash, you'll have to download the newest one, removing the chance of some vulnerability in whatever version they would have shipped with. And I've seen news articles online fairly regularly when Apple releases a new computer with 10.6.x on there and the story is "Apple ships 10.6.x with outdated/vulnerable Flash". They are probably just tired of getting bad press for that.

 

[Emil]

I agree it's not a bad move. The reasons Apple is giving are bullshit though. It's not removing PDF support and that's outdated and vulnerable too when a new version of Mac OS X ships.

 

[LinkedKube]

I don't own a mac, but I can see where it can be an issue for the "less informed," crowd. Basically 60% of apples customers are not enterprise/production capable people. I know a ton of people people mac and pc both who still dont know who Adobe is.

 

[mario]

@Emil actually PDF support is built into Quartz the rendering engine that drive OS X UI, that's why it is so easy to convert any document to PDF on a Mac. Their PDF implementation was written by Apple they don't rely on any third party libraries or apps making it possible for them to address possible vulnerabilities first hand.

Actually, Adobe Reader is an app that's always being targeted by malware authors and the built in OS X Viewer doesn't suffer from the same vulnerabilities that Adobe's viewer has.

So removing PDF support is impossible since it is built into the OS and it is what makes resolution indepence and vector UIs possible on OS X and even on iOS.

 

[customcarvin]

Why does Apple have to support and upgrade other companies software? That's why they are not bundling Flash and Java anymore.

In the past Apple has gotten in trouble because they bundled an older version of the flash player with the SL installation. It is smart of them to stop being responsible for other people's software. No one wants to be blamed for other people's errors, and Apple doesn't want to either so they are not bundling software that is prone to security vulnerabilities they have no control of.

But Mac's are magical devices, void of compromise and are not susceptible to any virus... what difference would an older version of flash make?

/sarcasm

Why wouldn't Apple make flash updates available for consumers, or let adobe install their updater? Do you actually think that most mac users are going to manually update their version of flash on a regular basis? I don't think so. Like supersmashbrada said above, most of the people i know using Apple products are NOT tech savvy, they just think that apple products are "cool", so having them manually update... "like, that would be like, totally uncool, or something".

Furthermore, I hope Adobe gets fed up with Jobs, and the whole Apple organization, and starts pulling support for all of their software, until arrogant Stevie calls "uncle". I'm talking, flash, reader, photoshop, illustrator... the whole sha-bang! Considering a lot of "pro" artists and studio's still use photoshop on macs (god knows why), I'd say that would cut right into Apples bottom line... REVENGE... so sweet!

 

[SNGX1275]

Why wouldn't Apple make flash updates available for consumers, or let adobe install their updater? Do you actually think that most mac users are going to manually update their version of flash on a regular basis? I don't think so. Like supersmashbrada said above, most of the people i know using Apple products are NOT tech savvy, they just think that apple products are "cool", so having them manually update... "like, that would be like, totally uncool, or something".

I'm not sure that there isn't some way to find out you have an old version. I know in Firefox on OS X if your Flash is out of date you get notified. Safari may have something similar.

Also I think you underestimate Mac users. Windows doesn't ship with Flash, but I don't think that is a big problem for any Windows users. If you go to a site that needs Flash, the site tells you and gives you a link, then you go get it. Installing anything on OS X is just as easy (and often easier) than on Windows.

If the user installs it once, then completely ignores the need to update, the burden is on them if they get 'infected' in any way. Apple takes the responsibility off of them, this has always how it has been for Windows.

 

[DelJo63]

apples customers are not enterprise/production capable people.

Your experience is quite limited and your statistical quote is suspect to say the least; what is the sample size and confidence interval of your study?

I sure get bored with silly comments from the uninformed. There's no value in disparaging those with different choices.

 

[Technochicken]

I have a question. If you jailbreak your iphone/ipad/touch has someone made a flash plugin for it?

I don't think so. My iPod touch 1G is jailbroken, and I have never seen anything to let me use flash.

 

[medguydan]

Agree that Flash is a battery hog in mobile devices, but if apple is concerned with battery life, then why not support a pixel qi screen instead of an LCD? Regarding the "full web" comment from Jobs, I beg to differ; some sites use Flash for much of their animation. To remove the Flash player is to remove that functionality. As far as for removing Adobe from all mac products, as long as it doesn't degrade the functionality of my macbook pro (which it doesn't), it doesn't seem that big of a deal to me.