I can’t help but notice a theme in a couple of Apple’s recent communiqués.
A few weeks ago, John Gruber talked to an Apple spokesman about their decision to stop bundling Flash with Macs. He was told:
“We’re happy to continue to support Flash on the Mac, and the best way for users to always have the most up to date and secure version is to download it directly from Adobe.”
Today, Apple and Oracle announced a plan to deal with Apple’s decision to deprecate its port of Java. It reads, in part:
“We’re delighted to be working with Oracle to insure that there continues to be a great version of Java on the Mac,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “The best way for our users to always have the most up to date and secure version of Java will be to get it directly from Oracle.”
Bundling third-party software with a new computer arguably makes a computer more valuable right out of the box. But it can also be a pain for Apple (and, presumably, its PC counterparts), because when something goes wrong (bugs, security problems, whatever), people look go to whoever gave them that software for a fix.
So previously, if there was a problem with Flash (and there have been plenty), people expected Apple to fix it, even though it wasn’t their software. Now, those problems are officially Adobe’s (and Oracle’s) problem.
I can’t help but be reminded of the (former?) motto of Microsoft’s Excel team: “Find the dependencies — and eliminate them.”