This is an important new change. But in the near future we will be removing support for Flash from our OS X operating system.

This is for all the same reasons that I cited in my essay, “Thoughts on Flash.” Those reasons apply to OS X as well as to iPhone. And let’s go over them again:

1. We’re all about being open. The Mac with OS X is the most open environment ever. Except when it’s running Flash. Thus, goodbye Flash.

2. Hardly any videos use Flash anymore. The ones that do aren’t watching. Take my word on this.

3. Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. Well, not anymore.

4. Battery life. I can’t tell you how many emails I get from people begging me to disable Flash so that their MacBook Pro will run longer. I mean literally I can’t tell you. But it’s a lot. Well, friends, your wish has been granted.

5. Mice. Flash was designed for them. MacBook Pro does not have one.

6. Cross platform. Simply put, our customers do not want a world in which it is easy for developers to write apps that run on many platforms. They want this work to be hard for developers. I don’t know why. You’ll have to ask the customers. We’re just listening to them, and doing what they want.

Conclusions: No more Flash on the Mac. Now let’s celebrate.

Also: As of some day really soon, Gawker Media Web sites will not be supported in Safari, both on iPhone OS and OS X. Purely for technology reasons. Same for advertisements sold by Google. They were fine in the PC era. But now they just look ugly. Our users don’t want them on their Macs.

Also: Under iPhone OS 4.0, certain phone numbers will not work on iPhone, both for incoming and outgoing calls. We won’t tell you which numbers these are, but trust us, they’re not numbers you should be calling, and definitely not numbers you want calling you. If you call us to find out whether a certain number is on our blocked list, we will tell you the following: “That information is not available.”

That is all for now. For a longer explanation of why these changes make sense, stay tuned to John Gruber.