Last week, Adobe created a firestorm of user unrest when it issued a series of security bulletins impacting three applications of its Creative Suite and said that users must pay to upgrade to the latest versions of the apps if they wanted patches that would close the vulnerabilities.

The company was quickly besieged by users, technology professionals, and security experts demanding that it reverse course and offer security patches to users who couldn’t afford the upgrades (or didn’t want to spend the money). Even though company quietly backpedaled and announced it would offer security updates without acknowledging the reason for its about face or offering an apology, the gaffe raises concerns that Apple’s yearly OS X release cycle might lead it down a similar path.

Apple could be preparing to kill off OS X Lion early in favor of its predecessor, Mountain Lion, according to the company’s AppleCare training schedule. One source claims that the Cupertino company is already recruiting and training staff for the new release, which could get its debut in June, weeks earlier than expected.

Many people I’ve talked to are anxious to try out the new features Apple has brought to OS X Mountain Lion. Unfortunately, Apple has only made the beta of Mountain Lion available to registered developers. In this video, I’ll show you how you can get the biggest features of Mountain Lion today, using only existing apps.

Today Apple released Safari 5.1.7 alongside OS X 10.7.4. The latest Safari update includes several general improvements and bug fixes, including a new way of handling Adobe Flash on the web. If an older version of Flash attempts to run in Safari 5.1.7, Apple’s browser will automatically disable it and give you the option to install the newest version of Flash from Adobe’s website.

Boom, a terrific utility for Mac OS X that boosts system volume well above Apple’s default limit, is set to receive a new update that promises to deliver all of the features and improvements that Boom users have been asking for. That includes scroll gestures for those running Snow Leopard and Lion, the ability to access functions from the status bar icon, and more.

Recent data shows that nearly half of all companies offer or provide Macs to employees and that the Macs represent about 7% computers in the workplace. That’s according to a Forrester report that was issued last month and that prompted me to write a feature about how deploying and managing large Mac populations in enterprise environments differs significantly from supporting a handful of Macs.

In that that article, I covered a lot of the tools IT departments rely on to handle large scale Mac deployments. Knowing what those tools are is a great starting point, but there are also several key skills that IT professionals managing and/or supporting Macs in business need regardless of whether they’re dealing with a half dozen Macs or upwards of a thousand.

Apple finally gave the notice that it would be killing off MobileMe once and for all on June 30th, 2012. The soon-to-be-defunct service has already been replaced with iCloud, but Mac users who are still not running an OS X version older than Snow Leopard can’t hop on the bandwagon. You must have Snow Leopard installed to then install OS X Lion from the Mac App Store and gain access to iCloud. And chances are that if you’re still using MobileMe, you aren’t running the latest version of OS X.

Thursby last week released ADmitMac PKI 4. The release is a specialized version of the company’s ADMit Mac software that focuses two factor authentication. The solution is largely aimed at government customers and regulated industries like healthcare where data security is paramount.

Thursby’s ADMitMac is an Active Directory integration solution that offers several features beyond the built-in Active Directory support that Apple provides in OS X. It offers Mac management capabilities, improved browsing of Windows network resources including Microsoft’s distribute file system, and a number of other administrative tools.

Following two independent Java security updates and one last patch to detect and remove the Flashback trojan, Apple has released another software tool for getting rid of Flashback on a Mac running OS X Lion without Java installed.

Flashback is the name of a virus that was able to infect a Mac and link it up to a botnet of around 600,000 other Macs. If you’ve updated your Mac with the latest Java patch, you should be fine, but Apple has provided this new tool for safe measure to Mac users running Lion without Java already installed.

Last week I took a brief look at how managing a handful of Macs differs from managing dozens or hundreds or even thousands of Macs. Some readers asked how big companies like Apple, Google, Viacom, or IBM actually go about managing large numbers of Macs – both in terms of the tools they use and in terms of how their IT processes differ from supporting Macs in small businesses.

I can’t speak for how Apple manages the Macs of its thousands of employees, but I have worked with several large companies as a Mac IT professional – along with a number of schools and colleges, government agencies, and small businesses. Here’s a look at the tools and processes that they use to configure, deploy, and manage Macs on a grand scale.