Nov 5, 2010 10:28 GMT  ·  By

Reports emerged last month saying Apple was killing one technology after another with its new MacBook Air computers, among which Flash, and Java were mentioned. Now we may have found the main reason why Apple does not pre-install Adobe’s Flash Player plugin on new Macs - battery life.

In an official statement issued in October, Apple has a good explanation for ditching the ported Java runtime that ships with Mac OS X, saying it is "deprecated".

Apple would have you believe that ditching Flash was from similar reasons.

According to Apple spokesman Bill Evans, leaving out the plugin starting with the new MacBook Airs actually has nothing to do with Apple’s stance regarding Adobe’s software.

“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,” Evans said in a statement, according to Engadget.

Yet there may be a far bigger reason for not supporting Flash out-of-the-box with its new MacBook Airs, according to the people at Ars Technica who tested the 11-inch configuration to see if Apple’s battery life claims hold water.

As it turns out, they do, but only so long as Adobe’s Flash doesn't come anywhere near the ultra-thin laptop.

Apple touts 5 hours of wireless productivity for its 11-inch MacBook Air, which is not bad for such a small system.

Ars could confirm that the notebook can go even longer than that without having to be plugged into an outlet, albeit with some settings specifically tweaked to save power.

However, this completely changed when the reviewers installed Adobe’s Flash, and went ahead with a second battery life test.

As it happened, the Air could barely reach four hours “With a handful of websites loaded in Safari [where] Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary,” the testers claim.

Apparently, having Flash installed on Apple’s new MacBook Air can cut battery runtime by as much as 33 percent, Ars quantified.

To confirm that Flash was, indeed, the reason of this reduction in battery life, the reviewers went ahead and deleted it and made yet another test.

Sure enough, the 11-inch Air again maxed out well over Apple’s five-hour claim. According to the web site, the Flash-free MBA ran for six hours and two minutes before its battery was completely drained.