Adobe apologises for ignoring Mac glitch in Flash

by Stevie Smith - Feb 10 2010, 07:43

Better late than never, and perhaps in a move to save face with Apple, Adobe Systems has apologised for taking more than a year to swat an annoying bug in its Flash platform responsible for causing browser and Flash crashes on Mac computers.

Coincidence or otherwise, this apology comes after Apple boss Steve Jobs recently criticised Adobe for being “lazy” while labelling Flash as the main cause of crashes on Apple-branded hardware. 

According to Adobe, the bug in question was fixed in November of 2009 via the beta release of Flash Player 10.1. It’s worth noting that Adobe had been made aware of the bug some 14 months prior to its removal and had even issued a sequence of four updates to the popular online player during that period.

“The mistake we made was marking this bug for ‘next’ release, which is the soon-to-be-released Flash Player 10.1, instead of marking it for the next Flash Player 10 security dot release,” explained Emmy Huang, product manager for Flash.

“We should have kept in contact with the submitter [Matthew Dempsky] and to let him know the progress, sorry we didn’t do that,” she added in an official Adobe blog post.

“I intend to follow up with the product manager (or Adobe rep) who worked on this issue to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It slipped through the cracks, and it is not something we take lightly,” said Huang.

If you’re an Apple Mac owner suffering with browser or Flash crashes then it may be worth your while downloading Flash Player 10.1 (beta version 2), which is presently available and comes complete with the required bug fix.

Click here to skip to the Adobe Labs website and return to crash-free browsing.

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