Brief Hands-On Report--Adobe Released Macromedia Flash Player 8.0.24--Not for Intel Macs Using Safari

This new version may NOT work with the MacIntel version of Safari. We downloaded and installed v8.0.24 on a number of Macs, including our new Mac mini Core Duo and iMac Core Duo. After installation, the installer automatically opened this Adobe Web page in Safari--it tells one which version of Flash is installed. Every Mac except our Mac mini Core Duo and iMac Core Duo showed Flash was installed and the version was 8.0.24. For our two Core Duos, visiting the Web page with Safari resulted in a drop down message that says Safari cannot find the Internet plugin and offers a Macromedia URL to download one. We checked in the Library->Internet Plug-ins folder and the Flash plugin v8.0.24 was there. We downloaded and ran a new installer but the Adobe test page still stated no Flash plugin was installed. We tried several Web pages that use Flash and, indeed, we got the same drop down message stating that we needed to install the Flash plugin.

The Intel version of Mac OS X 10.4.5 that came with our Mac mini Core Duo had v8.0.17 of the Flash plugin installed. So we replaced the 8.0.24 plugin with 8.0.17 from a backup drive, opened the test Adobe Web page in Safari and then it said Flash was installed but version 8.0.22! Go figure, but at least it works.

When we visited the same Flash Web pages with another Web browser, Mozilla's Sea Monkey, using our Core Duos with v8.0.24 of the Flash plugin, we did not get the drop down message. So it seems (with a sample of two--additional confirmations now have been received) that the version of Safari [2.0.3 (417.9.2)] included with Mac OS X 10.4.5 (Intel) with the Security Update 2006-001 and Security Update 2006-002 has a problem with Macromedia Flash Player 8.0.24. The fix is to not update Flash or to use another Web browser or to force Safari to run in Rosetta (see MacFixIt). [Bill Fox & Dana Baggett]