shamino

Fortunately, the need for Flash is pretty low these days.  And Adobe themselves will be dropping it on December 31st.  So there's probably little reason to keep it around.

That having been said, trojans like this are nothing new.  Corrupted/hacked web pages have been linking to fake software installers for a very very long time.  The way to guard against them today is the same as it has always been:  Only download installers/updaters directly from the manufacturer's official download site.  Don't trust anything from any other source.

In the case of Flash Player, once it is (legitimately) installed, the easiest approach is to configure it for automatic updates.  It does a very good job of keeping the installation current.  If you should ever worry that your version is out of date, go to its preference panel (in System Settings) and click the "Check Now" button on the Updates tab.  Let it check itself.

And if you're worried about zero-day exploits in Flash, use the protection features that most web browsers include.  Use Firefox's "Ask To Activate" feature (or equivalent features in Chrome and Safari) so the plugin will only load on web pages where you have explicitly authorized it.  You can authorize it for the (probably very small) number of web sites that legitimately need it and leave it disabled everywhere else.

Interesting.  I wonder how Apple is going to cryptographically pair the new flash modules with the T2 chip.  I can only think of two possible ways.  Either you send Apple your motherboard serial number so they can pair them in the factory or the Configurator app can perform the pairing.

If the latter is true, then it opens the question about whether we may see third-party upgrades in the future that can also be paired with Configurator.  Or if you will be able to move Apple's flash modules to a different Mac Pro and use Configurator to re-write the pairing (wiping the contents, of course).

I'll be very interested to learn the answers to these questions.

I have a 256G iPod Touch.  I use it because I can carry my entire music library with me, download podcasts over the Wi-Fi, and listen for hours without draining my phone's battery.

I also use it for games because my phone (an iPhone 6+) has less RAM, so many of the games I like don't work there anymore.

The are only two things I wish the iPod Touch would have:

The new MacBook Air looks really nice.  For me, I'd get the 16GB of RAM and stick with the 512 GB SSD.  But that's because I don't expect it to be my main computer.  My current Air (a 2012 11" model) only has 128 GB of SSD, and it works for me because I keep nearly all of my documents on another computer (a Mac mini server) and access them over my home LAN.  So the internal SSD only needs to hold macOS, the apps and temporary storage for documents when I'm working while away from home.

I just with Apple would re-introduce the 11" screen.  I really like having a small computer that I can easily carry all over the house with me.  13" isn't a lot larger, but I don't really need it to have a lot of screen real-estate because I do all my serious work from the mini, where I have a 24" screen attached.  The only time I want a bigger screen on the laptop is when I'm traveling and want to stream a movie, and most of the time I can just connect it to the hotel's TV for that.