Apple snubs Adobe again with Flash-less MacBook Air

Call me crazy, but I'm starting to get the feeling that Apple has something against Flash.
Early reviewers of the revamped MacBook Air, which Apple unveiled Wednesday at a press event in San Francisco, started noticing something funny when they tried to test the ultra-slim laptop's performance on streaming-video sites like Hulu and YouTube: a little error message, reading "missing plug-in," where the video player should have been.
That's the telltale error you get when your browser, for whatever reason, doesn't have Adobe's Flash Player plug-in installed when you visit a site with Flash-embedded videos.
Fixing the problem is a simple matter of installing the free Flash Player, a process that takes less than a minute. What makes the error notable, however, is that it marks the first time in recent memory that an Apple desktop or laptop shipped without the Flash Player plug-in installed.
So ... did someone at Apple HQ simply forget to make sure that Safari on the Air was Flash-ready? Nope, says an Engadget editor, who tweets that he's "confirmed" that "this is how they ship."
Of course, it's hard not to view the omission in light of Steve Jobs' public spat with Adobe over Flash technology, which he slammed in an open letter back in April as the "number-one reason that Macs crash," a "closed system" that "uses too much power," and a "100% proprietary" technology that generally "falls short."
Adobe didn't take Jobs' criticisms lying down. The co-founders of Adobe penned their own open letter accusing Apple of trying to "put content and applications behind walls" rather than allowing users to "freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs."
Apple's no-Flash policy on the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPad is a matter of record, and Apple even tried to prevent Flash developers from porting their apps to iOS before backing down in the face of possible action by the Federal Trade Commission.
Up until now, though, Apple hasn't made any overt move to block Flash on the Mac—and strictly speaking, it still hasn't, even in light of the Flash-less MacBook Air. Indeed, Engadget points out that Internet Explorer for Windows doesn't ship with the Flash Player plug-in installed, either.
That said, it's safe to assume that the days of Steve Jobs inviting anyone at Adobe over for his birthday party—or vice versa—are long gone.