New MacBook Air Doesn't Ship with Adobe Flash

[MacRumors]

Engadget revealed today that Apple's new MacBook Air doesn't ship with Adobe's Flash plug-in.

Amusingly enough, you know what's missing from the new MacBook Air models? Adobe Flash Player. While preloaded on Apple's past hardware, out of the box here it just says missing plugin, with no click to install option. To be fair, Flash doesn't come standard on a lot of machines, even for Windows, but we wonder if past models will continue to ship out with Adobe's plugin, especially once OS X 10.7 becomes de facto.

It seems Apple is continuing to distance itself from Adobe's Flash plug-in. The omission appears to be no accident with Engadget Editor Joshua Topolsky confirming with Apple that this is how the machine ships. Previous Mac OS X installations have shipped with Adobe's Flash plugin preinstalled.

Apple's dislike of the Adobe Flash plugin has been a very public debate. The controversy began when Apple first shipped the iPhone without support for Adobe's plugin. Over time, Apple has reiterated its stance against Flash in favor of HTML5 standards. Steve Jobs' open letter on Flash outlined his criticisms. While end-users are still free to install Flash on their machines, the removal of Flash as a standard component on the Mac serves to destroy the near ubiquity of Flash for the end user. This may further influence website owner's decisions to support HTML5 in addition to or instead of Flash over time.

Article Link: New MacBook Air Doesn't Ship with Adobe Flash

 

[zippyzoom]

Wow!

 

[flipto]

who uses flash anyway

 

[MorphingDragon]

who uses flash anyway

Every facebook user ever.

 

[yancey47]

This is funny.

 

[Bonch]

Mess with the Steve and you get the horn.

 

[rkmac]

To be fair, Flash doesn't come standard on a lot of machines, even for Windows

So pointless article is pointless.
Im not really surprised though. Apple are now giving you the option from the start as to whether or not to install that bane of an OSX users exsistance: Flash the crashing memory hog.

 

[aiqw9182]

Maybe it's because Adobe decided to shove an uninstaller in the Utilities folder with Flash Player 10.1?

 

[MisterMe]

...

Engadget revealed today that Apple's new MacBook Air doesn't ship with Adobe's Flash plug-in. ...

Oh, please. Whether you are a fan or foe of Flash, this is no great loss. The Flash support provided by QuickTime was for an obsolete version. If you wanted support from this century, then you had to download the Flash Internet plugin. It was ever thus.

 

[R94N]

Meh, oh well. You've got no choice but to accept it or not buy the product.

 

[seanonymous]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

One more reason to download Chrome.

 

[fs454]

if you need flash, just install it? No biggie.

But they probably did this to get higher battery life figures. No flash ads or any other content anywhere during their tests.

 

[ImperialX]

But they probably did this to get higher battery life figures. No flash ads or any other content anywhere during their tests.

^This.

They did say they did "extensive" web testing, and nothing eats up more battery than Flash.

 

[ravenvii]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

One more reason to download Chrome.

Funny, this is what I'm thinking.

In fact, the only thing stopping me from using Chrome is the scrolling issue. If they ever resolve that... well... Sorry Safari, it's not you, it's me.

 

[Eidorian]

if you need flash, just install it? No biggie.

But they probably did this to get higher battery life figures. No flash ads or any other content anywhere during their tests.

Smart, very smart.

 

[rkmac]

They did say they did "extensive" web testing, and nothing eats up more battery than Flash.

Like how they did extensive antenna testing on the iPhone 4
(oh no I didnt bring that up)

 

[Gen]

Funny, this is what I'm thinking.

In fact, the only thing stopping me from using Chrome is the scrolling issue. If they ever resolve that... well... Sorry Safari, it's not you, it's me.

Meh, I didn't notice a speed difference - and I've it used for like a week, so I switched back to Safari.

 

[AnonMac50]

How ironic! I just told 2 Windows users in the past week (one of whom I told today) about how Mac OS X comes with Flash, Java, and PDF support out of the box. The one I told today asked me which Mac they should get, and I told them a MacBook Air!

 

[pika2000]

Breaking news! Macs don't ship with Firefox! Or Chrome! Or Picasa! Or VLC! Or.. etc etc.

This is just Engadget trying to get some extra hits from the haters, amongst their dozens other Apple related articles. I mean would people rather have Apple ship it with an outdated Flash player with security flaw?

 

[inlovewithi]

It's ok to leave out flash, but to not display an option to install it is bad. I can imagine a lot of non computer savvy people going to youtube, and having no idea what to do, or other popular flash sites. The people who don't care about the whole flash debate. I'm thinking of this girl who told me that they gave her a mac and she got rid of it. She told me she didn't like it because she didn't really know how to use it, like Windows. Imagine new Mac users like her when they won't be able to figure out how to install flash for facebook.

 

[MorphingDragon]

It's ok to leave out flash, but to not display an option to install it is bad. I can imagine a lot of non computer savvy people going to youtube, and having no idea what to do, or other popular flash sites. The people who don't care about the whole flash debate. I'm thinking of this girl who told me that they gave her a mac and she got rid of it. She told me she didn't like it because she didn't really know how to use it, like Windows. Imagine new Mac users like her when they won't be able to figure out how to install flash for facebook.

Then how the hell they could've installed Flash then?

Also, what is displayed when Flash can't load is up to the web designer, not the browser.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Bad precedent Apple, bad precedent. Now users gotta install more stuff, just to get a working OS, it's looking more and more like Windows every day.

 

[scotty321]

Oh, jesus. Now Apple just made work for all of us Mac consultants out there. Now we have to run around and install Flash on all of our clients' new machines.

 

[pixelshaders]

They consider the Air to be ultra portable device. So, no flash for saving battery life.

 

[inlovewithi]

Then how the hell they could've installed Flash then?

Also, what is displayed when Flash can't load is up to the web designer, not the browser.

What? Didn't you read the part where it said there's no option to click and install flash? Obviously that has to do with the browser, since under similar circumstances Chrome, FireFox, Internet Explorer gives you the ability to click and instal flash. Are you suggesting that it's up the owner of the website? I'm confused.