If you’re constantly annoyed at update messages from Adobe’s Flash Player, there’s an end in sight. Flash Player 11.2 beta includes a new feature.. background updates. This means (if you choose) that Adobe will simply update Flash in the background, meaning your always up to date and avoid any of those pesky security flaws.
This background updating and hassle-free experience has been one of Google Chrome’s greatest features. Now if only Sun Microsystems would implement this with Java, we could all avoid the nearly daily updates from them.
This is clearly a new direction more and more software will move to. Users aren’t interested in maintaining a system, most just want it to work. Microsoft also use essentially the same model with automatic Windows Updates, avoiding user-interruptions. The downside of an automated system is the potential for a bad update to break the application or in this case plugin. While there’s always small issues in software, most large-scale companies use extensive testing to avoid this from occurring.
Overall I think it’s a great change in direction for Adobe and the benefits of simplicity and security, far outweigh any potential risks.
More @ Adobe Labs
