New MacBook Air Doesn’t Come With Adobe Flash [Steve Jobs War Against Flash Continues, Adobe Flash Plugin Missing From Air Laptops]

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Oh dear. Jobs’ attempt to rush the Flash Castle have just taken another step. New Apple MacBook Air laptops (the ones announced at the Back to the Mac event recently) are coming with one thing missing – the Adobe Flash plugin for web browsers. While previous Mac OS X computers came with the Flash plugin, it’s noticeably absent from the new Airs. Think they just forgot?

Of course, Mac users are still free to download Flash from the web (Jobs wouldn’t go that far… yet), and I’m guessing 99% of them will do that. Apple’s recent hard stands against Flash on iOS, ActionScript code being used for iOS apps and now this, it’s clear that Jobs and Apple are working hard to uproot Adobe as the web multimedia standard that it is.

As expected, the droves of Mac fans are defending the move. Usually neutral MacRumors wrote “the removal of Flash as a standard component on the Mac serves to destroy the near ubiquity of Flash for the end user,” while unofficial Apple spokesperson and high priest of the Mac Cult John Gruber writes that this isn’t part of Apple’s crusade against Flash, it’s to help Mac users fend against Flash vulnerabilities. If Apple makes you go to Adobe to download the Flash plugin, that puts the onerous on  Adobe. Remember that last year Apple accidentally shipped Snow Leopard with an older, hole-filled version of Flash. Well, not anymore. That play part of it, but this whole thing is definitely apart of Jobs’ war plan against Flash.

And, Gruber also reports that demo unit Macs inside Apple Stores aren’t installed with Flash. Sure, some kid could put the plugin on there, but Apple obviously doesn’t want that. Things sure look uneasy between Apple and Adobe.

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