Why is Flash so Mac-incompatible

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Okay, Macs have far superior graphics capabilities to Windoze boxes from three years ago. So why do Windoze Boxes from three years ago still play Flash movies at far higher frame rate and quality?



I'm guessing that the Flash player does not render with Quartz becuase if it did it would be so much better than it is now. And the frame rate in Safari is terrible and the graphics are distorded.



1) Will the frame rate and graphics in Safari be sorted out soon?



2) If I get a better, and QE compatible graphics card will Flash be any better?



3) And does anyone make a 3rd Party Flash player which is more Mac-friendly, or is there any chance of Macromedia making a new one (I have suggested it to them)



Andrew
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 48
    [quote]Originally posted by Andrew Xt:

    <strong>1) Will the frame rate and graphics in Safari be sorted out soon?</strong><hr></blockquote>The issue was found and resolved two weeks ago, but is not fixed in the public beta. Hyatt pointed this out in his weblog:

    [quote]Various members of the Flash community have been reporting low frame rates when using Flash in Safari. I'm pleased to report that we have corrected the problem. The issue was not in WebCore, so I can't post a patch, but the issue has been addressed.<hr></blockquote>
  • Reply 2 of 48
    elricelric Posts: 230member
    Macromedia might be inclined to make a player for Safari since it seems to be doing so well, but I wouldn't expect one while Safari is still in beta.
  • Reply 3 of 48
    evoevo Posts: 198member
    [quote]Originally posted by Elric:

    <strong>Macromedia might be inclined to make a player for Safari since it seems to be doing so well, but I wouldn't expect one while Safari is still in beta.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    What are you talking about? All browsers on X use the same Flash plugin to render .swf's. It's located in Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Shockwave Flash NP-PPC.



    Aside from framerates, I don't see why the Flash plugin is all that bad on X compared to Windows. Movies look and sound just they same on the Mac as the PC. Can you give me an example of a site/movie that looks a lot worse on the Mac compared to a PC? I can't remember the last time (if ever) that a browser crashed loading a Flash site in OS X.



    If you really want high framerates, download OmniWeb, since they seem to have the best implementation. Otherwise wait until Safari is optimized further.
  • Reply 4 of 48
    flash playback is considerably slower on macs than it is on pc's. this does not just relate to the internet plug-in but also to the standalone-player, as used for cd-roms, etc.

    i know this because i do flash design and therefore do a lot of testing of my stuff.

    my guess is that it is macromedias fault.
  • Reply 5 of 48
    spookyspooky Posts: 504member
    I agree. flash plays like a dog on my dual 450 X but fine on my PII 400. how can this be? I guess like adobe macromedia has been focussing more and more on windows. It will get worse when microsoft buy macromdia - will this spell the end for multimedia on the mac?
  • Reply 6 of 48
    flash plays fine here...imac 4000 or qs867 safari, I dont know what the hell you guys are talking about. I cant tell the difference from my friends PC, or Virtual PC, or my macs...except that the pC's suck in general...just like this thread <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
  • Reply 7 of 48
    The 'internet' in general has always been a better experience in Windows. Only now is a browser coming to the mac that can compete with IE on windows in terms of speed.



    At any rate, the reason you may not be noticing a speed hit could be because of the type of flash content you are viewing. The more complex it gets, the better you notice it running under Windows than on a mac.



    Now here is a wonderful example of a Shockwave Flash game having framerate issues.



    <a href="http://www.gamer.tv/web-gameservers/?p_serverid=3184245"; target="_blank">http://www.gamer.tv/web-gameservers/?p_serverid=3184245</a>;



    You can even tell a browser to browser difference on the mac. Load that URL up and play a game. Try it under IE in X, Mozilla in X, Navigator in X, and Safari... and OmniWeb. First thing I noticed was that IE was unreliable as all hell, and would crash usually after the second game. Speed was acceptable. Mozilla played it much slower, but was more reliable lasting 3 games or more before crashing. OmniWeb was pretty damn slow, as was Navigator.



    The browser has a lot to do with it, and I'm sure the game runs just peachy on a Windows machine. So I wouldn't say Flash is mac-incompatible... just not well deployed under OS X.
  • Reply 8 of 48
    Well... Flash is downright useless on my G4 400 AGP Radeon with 512 Mb ram.

    And I havent seen a peecee that cant run flash perfect yet!



    Flash on mac really sucks...
  • Reply 9 of 48
    I guess I just don't get it. I went to the page mp3jack linked to and it loaded in a heartbeat and played just fine. This is with safari on my qs867 and cable. My kids play flash games all the time on our imac 400 and its no problem.

    but nothing is as fast on the imac as my QS...nothing.
  • Reply 10 of 48
    dalidali Posts: 32member
    What I have seen....



    - I visit Flash sites everyday, as a designer. MANY complex coded sites crash IE consistently. Then I go to my PC and play them there.



    - My old PII PC handles frame rates faster than my Dualie, My Dualie plays ANYTHING with an Alpha setting faster than my PC. Dualie should play everything way faster, theoretically, but does not. I assume this has something to do with ActiveX being somewhat superior to Quartz... if Quartz is even being utilized.



    - Safari is a FLASH DOG! However, where it really can NOT COMPLETE is bitmaps. When Safari comes across a site with bitmaps (gif, jpg, png) it absolutely slows to a crawl!!! Definiately has to be fixed.



    - With all that being said, as a flash creator.... I do NOT want ANY platform to play flash 25times faster than any other, the more consistent the BETTER!.



    - Oh one more point, if you find yourself ready to reply to any of these posts... Please ask yourself if you "SEEK OUT" these issues regarding flash on a Mac vs a PC. If you don't find yourself frustrated by flash on a mac, then you are not looking hard enough, and therefore.... please don't make uneducated comments You are giving others the impression that all is FINE, which it clearly is not. (flame away)



    tom
  • Reply 11 of 48
    well put Dali!



    for those who still refuse to believe:



    <a href="http://www.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?s=7aab9e9af2a9b229a65ea5909c222e3a&; threadid=323463&perpage=15&pagenumber=1" target="_blank">check this</a>
  • Reply 12 of 48
    [quote]Originally posted by Dali:

    <strong>What I have seen....



    My old PII PC handles frame rates faster than my Dualie, My Dualie plays ANYTHING with an Alpha setting faster than my PC. Dualie should play everything way faster, theoretically, but does not. I assume this has something to do with ActiveX being somewhat superior to Quartz... if Quartz is even being utilized.

    tom</strong><hr></blockquote>



    ActiveX and Quartz are two radically different technologies. ActiveX (or OLE or shared libraries or 1 of the hundred other names MS went through before settling on ActiveX) are the technology that essentially drives windows. ActiveX is the moniker microsoft calls its 'controls' such as widgets or buttons or do-dads or they can be simply code libraries (dll's). These are all shared in memory between running programs. This is prevelent down to the core of windows. Hence, dll-hell... One corrupt dll that is a dependency for many other dlls can really screw your system up from top to bottom.



    On the other hand Quartz is a graphics rendering and compositing engine. It just draws stuff to the screen, now Quartz can easily draw a DVD encoded movie to the screen at 24/29.97/xx.xx frames per second with alpha channels for overlays on g3 600 with lots of other programs running on my 'book so I dont think Quartz is to blame here.



    One of the previous posts mentioned the blog comment from the safari developer. Obviously the problem is with Safaris interaction with the swf player. Safari is a beta still



    hope that helped
  • Reply 13 of 48
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Seems to me it goes hand in hand with the performance of Mac browsers. I suspect (and expect) Safari to fix this, though like all other X apps, it might not come in 1.0 but rather a revision.
  • Reply 14 of 48
    from Dali - Oh one more point, if you find yourself ready to reply to any of these posts... Please ask yourself if you "SEEK OUT" these issues regarding flash on a Mac vs a PC. If you don't find yourself frustrated by flash on a mac, then you are not looking hard enough, and therefore.... please don't make uneducated comments You are giving others the impression that all is FINE, which it clearly is not. (flame away)



    I guess im not quite the "Power" flash user you internet gurus are

    and my comments aren't uneducated , my type of internet usage is probably more in line with the majority of users out there anyway, therefore I just don't see this as a bad issue for me, or the overwhelmingly large proportion of us casual users. Furthermore, since you can speak out on one side,(giving others the impression that all is LOST) I can feel free to speak out for the other...so there .......Randy
  • Reply 15 of 48
    It isn't the browser. I'll make a movie, at 24fps on Flash MX, then watch it back, either from Flash MX, or the SA Flash Player, or a web browser (all seem to give pretty similar frame rates) and be happy with the timings, then I'll visit my website at school, and find out it runs at about double speed (okay, so I'm exaggerating) on our three year old £400 Windoze Boxes.



    Obviously, you don't want a computer to run Flash as fast as it can, or on the more powerful ones your intro would be over in half a second. But if I set the movie to 24fps, I want twenty-four-frames-per-second, or at least a 24 frame tween to take a second, from start to end, even if this means sacraficing framerate (as Flash player claims to do.)



    I refuse to beleive that the £400 Windoze 98 crap we have at school, have more powerful graphics capabilities than my G4 450, running OS X 10.2 and quartz, with an Ati Rage Pro Card, and even the newest dual processor Macs with Quartz extreme and Nvidia cards. What the hell is going on at Macromedia?



    This needs sorting out.



    Andrew
  • Reply 16 of 48
    the framerate you set for your flash movies is the top speed it will play back (hardware & software permitting).

    i.e., a movie set to 24 fps will never playback at twice the speed (48 fps). unfortunately it may have problems keeping up the 24 fps on a mac - though as i stated earlier, i doubt that this is hardware related.
  • Reply 17 of 48
    [quote]Originally posted by MagicFingers:

    <strong>I guess I just don't get it. I went to the page mp3jack linked to and it loaded in a heartbeat and played just fine. This is with safari on my qs867 and cable. My kids play flash games all the time on our imac 400 and its no problem.

    but nothing is as fast on the imac as my QS...nothing.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Yeah, but now play the game in Mozilla or Netscape 7. Then try it in Omniweb and Navigator. Then tell me if you notice a difference My post was encouraging you to run a little experiment with multiple variables
  • Reply 18 of 48
    right lets set the record straight:

    +safari is a flash dog because of a bug as it said in whatshisface's weblog, they have now fixed it and it will be in the final.



    +flash is crapper on mac because macromedia's mac dev team is like 10 people when its windows one is about 100.



    and my Ti800 beats the shit out of my old p2 300 so its not that bad, should just try using flash in IE, if it still runs slow its down to bad programming on the creators side, they should have optimised code more but probably thought "WELL MAE SITE WERKS IN IE6 ON THIS ONE COMPUTER SO IT MUST WORK EVERYWHER EAND ON WEVERYTHINGNGNGNG!!!!!!, HOWS IT LOOKING ON YOUR ATARI GEOFF? NO DONT ANSWER I KNOW IT WILL BE PERFECT!!!!!!!"

    yeah that sort of moron
  • Reply 19 of 48
    I am sure Hyatt will get the Flash problems fixed under Safari but we probably will not see it for a while. Remember Jobs even showed off how improved it would be.



    Daniel
  • Reply 20 of 48
    Unfortunately, with the Internet in particular, having something like this "fixed in a future version" isn't good enough. This is kind of one of those things where you really need to get it right the first time. A new version may fix it, but how long until everyone manages to adopt that new version?



    You're only as strong as the weakest member <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
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