Were you surprised when Apple decided to stop shipping Flash pre-installed with Mac OS X? I wasn’t. I posted the above screenshot last year after I experienced the most epic Flash disaster my Mac had ever encountered.

We know Steve Jobs hates Flash, and, well, Flash on Mac OS X is generally pretty awful. But if you were wondering why Apple opted against shipping Flash pre-installed with new Macs, read on.

Here are some more lovely screenshots demonstrating the wonderful ability of Flash to decimate your web browsing experience in Mac OS X:





Yea, it can be that bad. If I’m having a “good” Flash experience, it’ll only consume 40% CPU. How generous.

Now what if you’re a novice user, and you don’t know anything about the Mac OS X Activity Monitor? Suddenly your Mac is just painfully slow. I wonder how many tech support calls and Apple Genius visits were caused by the poor functionality of Flash in Mac OS X? Was cutting Flash from the Mac a business decision or just a user experience decision? Maybe both? Who knows, but I think it was the right move.

If you’re reading this and you’re confused, let me fill you in. Macs are no longer shipping with Flash pre-installed. This is a very recent change, and first noticed when owners of the new MacBook Air discovered that Flash was nonexistent on their shiny new portables. If you want Flash, you’ll have to install it yourself. DaringFireball confirmed with Apple that “in the coming weeks, all new Macs will begin shipping without Flash Player.”.

I can’t say I’m surprised, and personally, my Mac and I are doing just fine with HTML5. The question now is, can Flash be saved? Or is this one of the final nails in the Flash coffin?

Editor note: The reason Apple has provided for no longer pre-installing Flash on Macs is so users can download the most recent version themselves. This is valid, since newer versions of Flash should perform better and be more secure then older versions of the plugin.