Dropping Adobe Flash boosts Apple's MacBook Air battery life by 2 hours - Page 2

You're describing Kontera in-text advertising, Vibrant Media, or something like it. Websites that use it load a heap of Javascript code upon you whether or not you're running Flash or even a browser that supports it. That draws the box you're seeing. ClickToFlash may be doing its job, but it can't prevent the Javascript from loading, running, and drawing a big obnoxious box that covers what you're trying to read.

Those ads are highly intrusive - probably the best reason yet for abandoning the mouse/cursor interface in favor of an iOS-like touch based UI. It's incredibly annoying to have to use caution when moving your damn cursor around the screen. Whose computer is it anyway?

If you click on the "?" icon (once the ad has loaded) you can specifically disable it, but only for that page, so it's not useful.

Complain all you want, but websites love Kontera. All you can do is avoid those sites, don't patronize their advertisers, and maybe even tell 'em why.

Advertisements are not going away. Revenue has to come from somewhere, all the more reason I like iAd. If we must tolerate advertisements in exchange for "free" content, let Apple control their delivery. At least they'll do it with elegance.

Ireland +1.

Wow. Looks like a bunch of Adobe employees signed up to post on AI tonight! Very funny.

Of course, more members means more eyeballs means more ads on AI means more...... wait....

Testing with Nvidia PureVideo HD 1080p Test full screen video on single core of Intel Core i7 860.

It's not so clear cut!!

Chrome 8 (HTML5)


Flash 10


ie9 Beta (HTML5)

If you have a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M GPU then Flash will decode the video on the GPU. On other Macs there is no access to the GPU so it must use the CPU - which kills battery life.

I'm actually surprised Chrome isn't using the GPU for video playback.

About 90% with flash and 80% usage on the CPU on my system with WebM instead.

I can live without flash for most sites so it doesn't bother me. Though I miss zooming in on pictures while browsing newegg.com

I see that often and without clicktoflash you would not know it was there. They seem to be to ensure everyone clicks on them.

I agree, they even had a video about HTML 5 the other day and it was Flash only no alt version. Irony at its best. Come on AI get with the program!

Most importantly, many porn sites use Flash.

clicktoflash has certainly been a saver for me, too. Websites load much faster, no ads to bother me, and longer battery life on an MBP. No flash, no problem, no downside.

Removing Flash has also enabled MacBook Air customers to dramatically reduce the chance that they catch a cold.

Two hours worth of battery time is a nice bonus for passing on Adobe Flash, especial with skyfire now available and HTML5 being used in more than 50% of all applications.

What the author of this article, and almost every commenter here fails to understand is... "if it wasn't flash, it'd be something else".

Adobe's not to blame for the poor implementation and deployments of badly written advertising banners. Just as the W3C's not to blame for any website's overly complicated HTML5 implementations.

Advertisers arn't going to give up animations and annoying pop-overs, just because Flash goes away. If flash wasn't the appropriate choice, they'd find some other way.

Those who use ClickToFlash, or some other plug-in blocking utility, are simply taking advantage of the fact that flash is a plugin that can be blocked. You should be really scared when advertisers start using overly engineered HTML5 animations in ads. There won't be an immediate and easy way to block those ads.

Stop blaming Adobe for what independent developers and companies do with their technology. The reality is that Flash is a great tool for creating content that would not otherwise exist.

I'm also highly amused at Apple Insider's constant barrage of Flash bashing articles, while their main advertising banners at the top are made in Flash. Uninstalling Flash, or installing ClickToFlash means Apple Insider's advertisements are blocked, and therefore they receive less revenue. Way to go Apple Insider!

Yup. Gruber over at Daringfireball also pointed this out. Must say it's nice not to have Flash at all now.

i think this sums up this article, the less stuff running the more battery life you get (for instance, if you take the screen of your laptop, it can be "turned on" for longer

I have to admit it: seriously excellent post.

You don't make any sense. It's like blaming the post office for junk mail. The post office didn't create the junk mail. They just deliver it. When HTML 5 starts displaying crappy video ads and awful animated banners that slow your machine, who are you going to blame then? Adobe deserves blame for some flash problems, but fanboys are blaming them for everything and cancer. The test wasn't fair period.
I'm not congratulating Steve Jobs for being a censoring dictator like fanboys do.

No money for the people who run the sites and write the articles you are reading.

The WebM version is only 720p, so Flash may even be a little more efficient.



I think that's the point. It's not so much Flash Video == crap, HTML5 Video == awesome. It pretty much depends on the use of hardware acceleration. I've added two 720p WebM tests.


Chrome 8. 1080p, h264, HTML5


Chrome 9d. 1080p, h264, HTML5


Flash 10. 1080p


IE 9b. 1080p, h264, HTML5


Safari 5. 1080p, h264, HTML5


Firefox 4b6. 720p, WebM, HTML5


Opera 10. 720p, WebM, HTML5

Uh, except Apple provides quality support for efficient h.264 video decoding, HTML5 and Safari. Adobe couldn't possibly and won't support Apple platforms to such a degree.

If you like the status quo, just keep using Flash and enjoy (hah!). HTML5 is enough for the rest of us. The world doesn't need a poorly supported, proprietary standard like Flash on any platform.

"Wah, wah, the test isn't fair! The fanboys are blaming Adobe for everything!" LOL. Please.

First of all, I was not "blaming Adobe." Adobe acquired Macromedia not too long ago, and it's a pity they didn't just kill Flash. If you read what I wrote carefully, you will see that I blamed Flash (plugins) for ruining my web browsing experience without giving me much more than annoying ads in return. That's all. I don't hate Adobe. I never did. I hate Flash.

Oh, you think it's "not fair" to blame Flash? Tell that to Mozilla. Or Apple. Or Google. Or anyone else who maintains a browser. They'll tell you that Flash plugins cause all kinds of problems. Do you think playing some goddamned animation is supposed to hog 100% of one processor, causing Windows XP to become non-responsive on a single core machine? That's NOT NORMAL. It's bugginess in Flash. It's one of the reasons why Apple and Google run Flash plugins in an isolated process in their newest browsers.

Spouting hypotheticals about "When HTML 5 starts displaying crappy video ads..." doesn't work to deflect Flash's role in causing problems. Flash was causing problems long before HTML5 was implemented in browsers. That's not a hypothetical, its a fact, so don't whine about it.


LOL. Calling Steve Jobs a "censoring dictator" sounds like a regurgitation of your "FREEDOM OF CHOICE" baloney. Let me explain how this works: Apple is a business. Apple is not a political movement, religion, or moral ideology. Apple wins fans simply because it serves its customers and shareholders well. Understand this, and you will understand the rationale of all of Apple's decisions. If you want "freedom of choice", look to the market.

And by the way, "fanboys" is spelled c-u-s-t-o-m-e-r-s.

It is good that Apple is no longer bundling it - I'm not anti-Flash, just doesn't make sense to ship something with Mac's that Apple cannot control and backup with their own engineering. If people really want Flash it is probably best to download the latest version directly from Adobe themselves than the problems of Apple and Adobe synchronising their schedules.

Btw, Adobe have released their Flash update to fix the malware/worm issue that was talked about recently.

My personally experience with Flash since the release of 10.1 has been pretty good - the most I see when using YouTube for example is 23% CPU utilisation when playing a video and it lowers once all the video is downloaded and reading from cache. I don't think that Flash is as bad as people make out and I hardly think it is Adobe's fault that there are those who abuse an otherwise good technology when used in the right place and right time.

It is true. Anything that uses the CPU etc will decrease battery life

Did you mean to reply to someone else, you made no relative comment to my post?

You obviously aren't a developer, the world before Flash was an awful one for professional developers and for MANY purposes, especially in marketing, it is still a very useful tool. You may hate Flash, but to openly display ignorance of its many uses invalidates any point you may be trying to make.

I LOVE HTML5 and develop in it as much as I can, but I'm not going to say I hate Flash, that's just silly as Flash didn't create all the annoying ads, people did. Bad developers made bad sites which annoyed a LOT of people and they blame Flash for it because they don't know any better.

Flash will be around for at least another decade probably longer so get used to it. The only sad part of all this is that Jobs trying to lock people in to the App store for simple Flash based games that are free online, has pushed more advertisers to start making ads that are harder to avoid!

So Jobs is a jerk who doesn't care about users, but who cares, I still love my iPhone.

Well... offloading to the GPU makes the CPU graph look better, but it still uses power.

Anecdotally I think it's fair to say that offloading work to the GPU is far more power efficient than letting the CPU handle the full load. I couldn't tell you how much more power efficient though!

I do have a power monitor, but I don't know if it would be sensitive enough to pick up the difference. I'll have to give it a go.

Just in case, I want you to know I am not a fanboy (I have a MBA [new] and Dell Inspiron - I prefer the Dell, but school prefers the mac).

As you must know, many websites check whether you have the Flash plugin, and if you have it, they display the video in Flash, if you don't, they display HTML5.

I used the code to make a page on my school intranet that checks whether you have the Flash plugin, and if you have it, it displays the video in Flash, if you don't, it displays HTML5. This webpage showed a repeating two hour movie of a ball bouncing. I recharged fully. Accessed this page from my MBA (with Flash). I started the video, then timed how long my MBA lasted till it shut down. Then, I recharged fully again, uninstalled Flash, and accessed the same page. Again timed till it shut down. With the Flash, my MBA lasted 3 hrs 22 min 12 sec. With the HTML5, it lasted 5 hrs 13 min 48 sec.

#41|_

Face the Facts

You are a hero. Saint Jobs would be proud my child

Massive fail.

I can just see all the mac fan boys loading the crippled mobile version of websites just so they can be cool and say 'Hey look, I use no flash! I am going to bend over now so you can butt fuck me Steve!'

LOL. You must not be reading AppleInsider articles carefully. Whenever I read this site, it's like reading Pravda.
All I have to say is good luck to Steve with OS X app store. EU regulators will shut that down, since Java and Flash are "deprecated" and forbidden from app store.

all the components need power to operate, so any extra load on any of them will drain the battery faster.

So, battery life going from 6 hrs to 4 hrs just because of Flash isn't surprising to you? That is enough to make me un-install flash on my mac at home...it is absolutely, staggeringly unbelievable that one plug-in has that much of an effect.

Yeah.

What's up with that? Is Chrome somehow less capable? I've been using it lately, and it seems about the same as other browsers in most respects.

But if it fails to utilize the GPU, then maybe it's back to Firefox?

True.

Interestingly, the "Android is for porn" meme never really took off any more than the Flash is for porn meme.

Maybe that is because so many millions and millions of people enjoy porn, making it an unspoken-about norm in society? Dunno.

Yeah. 2 hours is a lot.

But doesn't that assume that you run flash continuously? I'd trade 15 minutes of battery to watch an important breaking news story. There is no need (and indeed, no opportunity) to suddenly lop off two hours of battery, or to make a yes/no zero/two hour decision.

The two hour spec is impressive, but it is only a spec produced by an artificial usage pattern. In normal life, trading 10 minutes to an hour of battery for increased capability is a trade-off that makes a lot of sense. And if you are in a pickle where you won't be able to recharge, THEN turn it off.

But not always. That is just foolish.

You are right about that. Flash uses a lot of battery life.

If you use Click to Flash to avoid the adverts, then you are basically pirating the content. If not for those Flash ads, there would be no AI and no forum.

The right thing for all of us to do is to click those ads every once in a while, and to buy stuff from AI's advertising customers. We should also let those advertisers know that we are buying from them because they advertise on AI.

If you use Click to Flash to avoid AI's advertisements, you are basically stealing the content from AI, just like pirating software.

+1 Insightful

That makes sense. But that is not what Apple is doing.

Many somethings are shipped with Macs that Apple cannot control and backup with their own engineering.

If that were the reason for no longer bundling it, Apple would stop bundling the other stuff too. So I doubt that reason is valid.

If you browse flash sites for 4 hours straight, then yes. Otherwise, not quite so much.

These comments imply that you believe that Apple ran this little test. They didn't. A blogger at Ars Technica did. So blame him for his bias test.

As for Apple telling you how many folks installed Flash. They likely can't. Because the installation is direct from Adobe so Apple won't have the numbers. Now Adobe could publish them, but probably won't unless the numbers show a vast majority of users installing the software would means folks still want it




And yet:

http://gigaom.com/video/youporn-goes...s-on-the-ipad/
http://touchreviews.net/porn-industr...e-flash-html5/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_629313.html
http://www.conceivablytech.com/1553/...to-drop-flash/
http://blogs.forbes.com/velocity/201...sh-for-html-5/

google porn html5 and you'll find many many more articles.