Hi there, yes : AI9, since 2000 

I tried this as soon as I updated and was so disappointed to see that it expanded to a mess of clipping paths and a bitmap "Non-Native Art" swatch. If it could only expand to gradient mesh that would be perfect!

If you have a bunch of art where you've already used this and need to convert objects you might check out http://www.meshtormentor.com/ though fair warning: this plugin has been around forever and I haven't used it in years.  I know it worked fine for me about 3 versions back though.  Probably best to just pretend the new gradient type doesn't exist for stock vectors though

Personally I am tired of this software pretending to do every thing.
Years ago Illustrator was a vectorial software producing vectorial files, and Photoshop was a bitmap software producing bitmap files�
Today they want that Illustrator produces vector+bitmap+web+sound+movie+etc�
The same for Photoshop�

And of course they do al that bad�