While I don't care for flash, my Mac Mini's CPU (2.0Ghz dual core) usage for a flash video only increases (according to Activity Monitor) only about 10-12%. That really isn't skyrocketing.
If you want to someone to take you serious...don't use hyperbole.
The MacBook Air currently runs Flash just fine. I'm not sure if it is performance that needs help, or if they want to tweak something to help with battery life.
There are many options for hardware acceleration on Mac. Flash uses only the very basic (it does more on Windows). One of Snow Leopard's point releases brought an interface to NVIDIA video hardware accelerator and that's what Flash utilizes. Yes, it doesn't work everywhere. Yes, it doesn't solve performance problems. But it does allow Adobe to proudly proclaim that Flash on Mac is hardware accelerated.
Now, if Adobe truly were trying to make Flash better they would follow OpenCL route. OpenCL code works on much wider array of graphics adapters, and while not as efficient as dedicated video decoding processor it would allow to speed up every other heavy aspect of Flash. And Flash needs it: Those 2 hours of battery life lost - they didn't play videos. It was just browsing. With ads. Personally, I don't think Adobe is up to it, because it's a major architecture change. Basically it would be simplier to write new Flash from scratch than try and fix the current one.
Adobe had it coming for a very long time. I remember when increasing the size of a flash video on my PowerBook G4 dropped framerate to 10-15 FPS. It wasn't higher resolution, mind you, just pixel doubling. THIS KIND OF OPERATION HAS BEEN HARDWARE ACCELERATED BY THE LOUSY S3 cards since 1994!!! Apple's core image API is incapable of drawing it THAT slow, unless programmer doing some incredible stupid stuff. And apparently Flash is written by the exactly that type of programmers.
I'm starting World of Warcraft and it takes about 5 mins for fan in MacBook to become audible. A particular site my GF likes with animated flash ads (no video!)? Always under a minute. And then this guy from Adobe comes out and tells me that animating those three objects in the ad and running a virtual machine for ActionScript takes higher toll than drawing, shading, rendering thousands of polygons in 3D space while keeping network up, parsing LUA scripts and doing Blizzard-knows-what-else. And that it is somehow Apple's fault. If all engineers in Adobe are like this guy then I won't event pity that company.
Hey, Adobe! Wanna see some browser plugin running efficiently and with hardware acceleration (not only for video) even on a mobile device? Look at Silverlight. And you know what? It has no future on the web too. Because it is a plugin. A patch to fix browser shortcomings that aren't there anymore. Flash, be it decently written could have survived without the web. But it won't. It will cling to farm games, while dying slow (hopefully, painful) death.
Once I read Gruber's article, I did as he suggested and got rid of Flash on my Mac Pro completely. If I must use it, I open the page in Chrome as it does have Flash Player embedded. Doing it this way prevents Flash Player running in the background, and only using it when necessary keeps CPU usage low. This will work for Safari and Firefox.
Click to Flash is indeed alive and well and is now an extension for Safari instead of just a plugin. I use it on my Mac Book Pro as I use that mostly for media, if I am watching Hulu I only have the Mail app open, everything else is closed save Safari. I also watch Netflix on the MBP, I rarely have issues with Silverlight, strange that M$ can deliver a better media player than Adobe. The Mac Pro is my production machine and I usually have the whole Creative suite open and several other apps open. Creative Suite is another resource hog, but there is no alternative to that right now. Blocking the Flash Player completely has helped with performance. (this on a quad core 2009 model with 16 gb of ram) Why Gruber decided to not use Click to Flash is so the Flash player is not installed at all. Click to Flash still allows the player to load, but blocks the swfs from running until you click on them. Since my laptop is mostly for playing media I allow Flash Player to load, but only run a few apps on that machine. Crashing is almost non-existant, however what ever Flash player that Hulu uses is really junk, I have so many issues with it, the audio won't play, the ads don't load right, or they hang the page, on and on, stuff not working right. And if anything crashes it is the Hulu Player, no way would I pay them anything for their service, I have Netflix and they are adding more and more content daily and Silverlight of all things actually works well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevetim
What gruber does in uninstall flash completely. Chrome has an imbedded version of flash. So use safari for most of your browsing, but when you need flash use Chrome. Pretty good advice if you ask me.
I believe gruber even got rid of click to flash because it is no longer available in safari, not sure about that detail.
I'll admit I haven't used an OSX machine in several years, but I always thought mac users were blowing the whole flash issue out of proportion. On my windows box, playing flash video rarely pegs more than 30% of my CPU (granted I don't have the bandwidth for 1080p streams, so everything I watch is 720p or lower), and I figured it would be similar on the mac side.
looking into the issue a little deeper, it appears that there is a huge discrepancy between flash in windows and flash in OSX:
I'm trying to find other sources to confirm those results, but if they are true, then something is definitely fishy about those numbers. Maybe flash really isn't optimized for OSX or maybe they really don't have access to the GPU; if adobe's "optimized version of flash for macbook air" could get CPU utilization to whats found on the windows side, then there really isn't much to complain about.
Click to Flash is indeed alive and well and is now an extension for Safari instead of just a plugin.
Sorry about that, my writing was quick and unclear. I meant to say he did not have click to flash installed for safari because safari, at least on his computer cannot run flash anyway so why have click-to-flash.
I have so many issues with it, the audio won't play, the ads don't load right, or they hang the page, on and on, stuff not working right. And if anything crashes it is the Hulu Player, no way would I pay them anything for their service, I have Netflix and they are adding more and more content daily and Silverlight of all things actually works well.
Which browser is having the trouble? Safari? Chrome?
They have access. Didn't Steve Jobs call them lazy?
Actually, Adobe didn't have access to hardware acceleration from Apple until this year and they quickly put out a prerelease version of Flash player that took advantage of. On platforms ? like Windows ? where those APIs have existed for years, Adobe took advantage of it.
Actually, Adobe didn't have access to hardware acceleration from Apple until this year and they quickly put out a prerelease version of Flash player that took advantage of. On platforms ? like Windows ? where those APIs have existed for years, Adobe took advantage of it.
Inconvenient facts like that are not welcome here.
Developers *currently* do not have the ability to create any system-wide services or applications. All 3rd party code runs in a sandbox.
& so they should. Apps are GUESTS of the system, they are not the system. That way us consumers get apps that play nicely together, that don't stumble over each other and that don't drain system resources as if they are the only kid in the playground i.e. we don't get apps that are as precious and short-sighted as their developers!
This is the real problem with Adobe they want to create a surrogate OS - a cuckoo! No thanks! Maybe they should release their own device.
Actually, Adobe didn't have access to hardware acceleration from Apple until this year and they quickly put out a prerelease version of Flash player that took advantage of. On platforms ? like Windows ? where those APIs have existed for years, Adobe took advantage of it.
That's for video playback only. Apple have provided, and game writers have used, vector acceleration via OpenGL since 2002 & Adobe have only just picked up on the idea. On my non-GPU-accelerated iMac (the GPU's not covered) other video players use 15-25% of that required by Flash for similar & higher bit-rate video so no excuses.
I love competition especially when a serious player like Apple raises the stakes and makes folks like Adobe sweat!
Are you serious? Adobe has Google/Android for mobile and 90% of all desktops, Apple will eventually succumb to Flash much in the same way they loosened the license. Be patient my Friend, Apple is sweating now, Steve Jobs never speaks on these types if issues unless he feels he's losing ground. Flash WILL be on the iPhone by 2011.
Adobe's chief executive revealed this week that his company is currently testing an optimized version of Flash built specifically for Apple's newly released MacBook Air.
Hang on, surely this implies that Flash wasn't optimised for Macs & that SJ was right & Adobe were lying all along!
Hardware acceleration only helps video while it's playing. Perhaps Adobe can tell me why my fan comes on full, and the CPU usage skyrockets even while a video is paused, or has ended and still happens to be on screen.
And what about non-video flash - how is hardware acceleration going to help there?
"CPU usage skyrockets...." Jesus....don't be such a drama queen....give us a percentage....
Comments
Wait, I thought that Flash was supposed to be a "web standard"? Why would they need a special version for the MBA?
You don't understand how this stuff works. They are building a special client.
While I don't care for flash, my Mac Mini's CPU (2.0Ghz dual core) usage for a flash video only increases (according to Activity Monitor) only about 10-12%. That really isn't skyrocketing.
If you want to someone to take you serious...don't use hyperbole.
The MacBook Air currently runs Flash just fine. I'm not sure if it is performance that needs help, or if they want to tweak something to help with battery life.
Now, if Adobe truly were trying to make Flash better they would follow OpenCL route. OpenCL code works on much wider array of graphics adapters, and while not as efficient as dedicated video decoding processor it would allow to speed up every other heavy aspect of Flash. And Flash needs it: Those 2 hours of battery life lost - they didn't play videos. It was just browsing. With ads. Personally, I don't think Adobe is up to it, because it's a major architecture change. Basically it would be simplier to write new Flash from scratch than try and fix the current one.
Adobe had it coming for a very long time. I remember when increasing the size of a flash video on my PowerBook G4 dropped framerate to 10-15 FPS. It wasn't higher resolution, mind you, just pixel doubling. THIS KIND OF OPERATION HAS BEEN HARDWARE ACCELERATED BY THE LOUSY S3 cards since 1994!!! Apple's core image API is incapable of drawing it THAT slow, unless programmer doing some incredible stupid stuff. And apparently Flash is written by the exactly that type of programmers.
I'm starting World of Warcraft and it takes about 5 mins for fan in MacBook to become audible. A particular site my GF likes with animated flash ads (no video!)? Always under a minute. And then this guy from Adobe comes out and tells me that animating those three objects in the ad and running a virtual machine for ActionScript takes higher toll than drawing, shading, rendering thousands of polygons in 3D space while keeping network up, parsing LUA scripts and doing Blizzard-knows-what-else. And that it is somehow Apple's fault. If all engineers in Adobe are like this guy then I won't event pity that company.
Hey, Adobe! Wanna see some browser plugin running efficiently and with hardware acceleration (not only for video) even on a mobile device? Look at Silverlight. And you know what? It has no future on the web too. Because it is a plugin. A patch to fix browser shortcomings that aren't there anymore. Flash, be it decently written could have survived without the web. But it won't. It will cling to farm games, while dying slow (hopefully, painful) death.
Best
Click to Flash is indeed alive and well and is now an extension for Safari instead of just a plugin. I use it on my Mac Book Pro as I use that mostly for media, if I am watching Hulu I only have the Mail app open, everything else is closed save Safari. I also watch Netflix on the MBP, I rarely have issues with Silverlight, strange that M$ can deliver a better media player than Adobe. The Mac Pro is my production machine and I usually have the whole Creative suite open and several other apps open. Creative Suite is another resource hog, but there is no alternative to that right now. Blocking the Flash Player completely has helped with performance. (this on a quad core 2009 model with 16 gb of ram) Why Gruber decided to not use Click to Flash is so the Flash player is not installed at all. Click to Flash still allows the player to load, but blocks the swfs from running until you click on them. Since my laptop is mostly for playing media I allow Flash Player to load, but only run a few apps on that machine. Crashing is almost non-existant, however what ever Flash player that Hulu uses is really junk, I have so many issues with it, the audio won't play, the ads don't load right, or they hang the page, on and on, stuff not working right. And if anything crashes it is the Hulu Player, no way would I pay them anything for their service, I have Netflix and they are adding more and more content daily and Silverlight of all things actually works well.
What gruber does in uninstall flash completely. Chrome has an imbedded version of flash. So use safari for most of your browsing, but when you need flash use Chrome. Pretty good advice if you ask me.
I believe gruber even got rid of click to flash because it is no longer available in safari, not sure about that detail.
looking into the issue a little deeper, it appears that there is a huge discrepancy between flash in windows and flash in OSX:
http://www.streaminglearningcenter.c...-depends-.html
I'm trying to find other sources to confirm those results, but if they are true, then something is definitely fishy about those numbers. Maybe flash really isn't optimized for OSX or maybe they really don't have access to the GPU; if adobe's "optimized version of flash for macbook air" could get CPU utilization to whats found on the windows side, then there really isn't much to complain about.
Click to Flash is indeed alive and well and is now an extension for Safari instead of just a plugin.
Sorry about that, my writing was quick and unclear. I meant to say he did not have click to flash installed for safari because safari, at least on his computer cannot run flash anyway so why have click-to-flash.
I have so many issues with it, the audio won't play, the ads don't load right, or they hang the page, on and on, stuff not working right. And if anything crashes it is the Hulu Player, no way would I pay them anything for their service, I have Netflix and they are adding more and more content daily and Silverlight of all things actually works well.
Which browser is having the trouble? Safari? Chrome?
Once I read Gruber's article,
Did you do his user agent trick
http://daringfireball.net/2010/11/ma..._mobile_safari
The word is being used correctly. It is your opinion that the word is pretentious.
No it isn't, although you're right that labeling pretentious is completely subjective.
They have access. Didn't Steve Jobs call them lazy?
Actually, Adobe didn't have access to hardware acceleration from Apple until this year and they quickly put out a prerelease version of Flash player that took advantage of. On platforms ? like Windows ? where those APIs have existed for years, Adobe took advantage of it.
Actually, Adobe didn't have access to hardware acceleration from Apple until this year and they quickly put out a prerelease version of Flash player that took advantage of. On platforms ? like Windows ? where those APIs have existed for years, Adobe took advantage of it.
Inconvenient facts like that are not welcome here.
Inconvenient facts like that are not welcome here.
Here's another inconvenient fact: Unstable applications with access to low-level drivers can cause problems down to the OS level.
Anyone ever remember an Adobe application that was stable? Even the good ones?
<crickets>
Developers *currently* do not have the ability to create any system-wide services or applications. All 3rd party code runs in a sandbox.
& so they should. Apps are GUESTS of the system, they are not the system. That way us consumers get apps that play nicely together, that don't stumble over each other and that don't drain system resources as if they are the only kid in the playground i.e. we don't get apps that are as precious and short-sighted as their developers!
This is the real problem with Adobe they want to create a surrogate OS - a cuckoo! No thanks! Maybe they should release their own device.
McD
Actually, Adobe didn't have access to hardware acceleration from Apple until this year and they quickly put out a prerelease version of Flash player that took advantage of. On platforms ? like Windows ? where those APIs have existed for years, Adobe took advantage of it.
That's for video playback only. Apple have provided, and game writers have used, vector acceleration via OpenGL since 2002 & Adobe have only just picked up on the idea. On my non-GPU-accelerated iMac (the GPU's not covered) other video players use 15-25% of that required by Flash for similar & higher bit-rate video so no excuses.
McD
I love competition especially when a serious player like Apple raises the stakes and makes folks like Adobe sweat!
Are you serious? Adobe has Google/Android for mobile and 90% of all desktops, Apple will eventually succumb to Flash much in the same way they loosened the license. Be patient my Friend, Apple is sweating now, Steve Jobs never speaks on these types if issues unless he feels he's losing ground. Flash WILL be on the iPhone by 2011.
Adobe's chief executive revealed this week that his company is currently testing an optimized version of Flash built specifically for Apple's newly released MacBook Air.
Hang on, surely this implies that Flash wasn't optimised for Macs & that SJ was right & Adobe were lying all along!
McD
Hardware acceleration only helps video while it's playing. Perhaps Adobe can tell me why my fan comes on full, and the CPU usage skyrockets even while a video is paused, or has ended and still happens to be on screen.
And what about non-video flash - how is hardware acceleration going to help there?
"CPU usage skyrockets...." Jesus....don't be such a drama queen....give us a percentage....
I'm getting tired of reading this without stating what it is that Apple actually restricts on iOS devices.
APPLE DOESN'T ALLOW ANY 3RD PARTY RUN-TIME ENGINES ON IOS DEVICES!
This isn't some Flash only conspiracy that the media and blogosphere love to portray it as. For instance, Silverlight is also not allowed.
Developers *currently* do not have the ability to create any system-wide services or applications. All 3rd party code runs in a sandbox.
And users are much happier for it because their devices actually work great!