Security & Privacy + Software & Apps

It has been widely reported that the new Mac Book Air comes with an operating system devoid of Flash, and it has now been confirmed that, in the future, Macs will no longer ship with the Flash plug-in. There are a number of reasons for this – Apple’s tiffs with Adobe, and perhaps the frequent security updates required for Flash – but new Mac users will have to download and install Flash themselves.

It’s not that hard. Usually, if you go to a site that has a Flash item on a page, and you don’t have Flash installed, you’ll see a link to download it. However, what’s important is keeping Flash up to date. Apple did update Flash player, but not with the frequency that Adobe updated it. This means that Mac users who depended on Apple for the updates would find themselves with at-risk versions of the software often.

Note that at the same time, Apple has announced that they have “deprecated” Java, meaning that some time in the future, they will not be providing a Java environment with Mac OS X. Presumably, this will be available from another vendor such as Sun, but Apple has not, as yet, announced as of when they will stop shipping Java.

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that we publish a post every time there is a Flash security update (as well as for security updates to other major Mac software). So check in regularly to be warned when you need to download a new version.