With his “Thoughts on Flash” letter back in early 2010, late Apple CEO Steve Jobs waged a war on Adobe that the media couldn’t get enough of. Beyond the hype, however, Adobe’s Flash platform really had become a resource hog that was a terrible burden on developers, and that wreaked havoc on PC performance. Thanks to the war Jobs waged, two things have happened in recent years: Flash has become far less popular as better technologies moved in to replace it, and the Flash platform has improved.
Improved though it may be, Flash still has some serious issues. We got a painful reminder of that last week when Adobe confirmed a very serious security flaw that was actively being used in attacks. Now, the story enters a new chapter as Apple just moved to block some versions of Adobe’s Flash software from its computers.
DON’T MISS: I wish the iPhone had copied HTC instead
In a support document published on its website earlier this week, Apple quietly noted that some versions of Adobe’s Flash Player software have been blocked on Apple computers.
“If you’re using an out-of-date version of the Adobe Flash Player plug-in, you may see the message ‘Blocked plug-in,’ ‘Flash Security Alert,’ or ‘Flash out-of-date’ when attempting to view Flash content in Safari,” the support page says.
Clicking the related indicator beneath one of those messages will pop up the following:
Apple’s support page says that more recent versions of Adobe’s Flash Player address a security vulnerability that has not been patched in older builds. As a result, those older builds have been banned from OS X and Apple is now actively blocking access to Flash content that appears in the Safari browser for users who still have affected versions of Flash installed.
Once the user updates his or her Flash Player plugin, access to Flash content will be reinstated.
