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Adobe CTO on Flash's Effect on Battery Life, Apple's Negative Campaigning

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In its review of the new 11-inch MacBook Air published last week, Ars Technica noted that the battery life of the machine takes a substantial hit when browsing sites with Adobe's Flash Player enabled, pointing to the prevalence of CPU-heavy Flash ads in use on the Internet.
Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably - as much as 33 percent in our testing. With a handful of websites loaded in Safari, Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary, and the best time I recorded with Flash installed was just 4 hours. After deleting Flash, however, the MacBook Air ran for 6:02 - with the exact same set of websites reloaded in Safari, and with static ads replacing the CPU-sucking Flash versions.
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The difference has gained much attention due to the MacBook Air's limited battery capacity, the ongoing dispute between Apple and Adobe over Flash, and Apple's decision to ship the new MacBook Air without Flash Player pre-installed, a change coming to all of the company's Mac products.

Fast Company spoke with Adobe Chief Technology Office Kevin Lynch about the MacBook Air news and the broader dispute over Flash, and Lynch argued that it makes perfect sense that displaying Flash content would utilize more battery power than not displaying it. Lynch also claimed that displaying the same content in Apple-supported HTML5 technology would use as much or more battery power than in Flash.
"It's a false argument to make, of the power usage," Lynch explains. "When you're displaying content, any technology will use more power to display, versus not displaying content. If you used HTML5, for example, to display advertisements, that would use as much or more processing power than what Flash uses."

Lynch said several studies have already confirmed Flash's higher battery life, and also argued that HTML5 had far less reliable playback.
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Lynch went on to focus on the "negative campaigning" against Adobe's Flash technology, taking aim at Apple for "inciting" the movement, calling Apple's choice to cut off access to Flash content for its iOS users "hurtful" to Adobe and Flash developers and "counter to [Adobe's] values".
"I just think there's this negative campaigning going on, and, for whatever reason, Apple is really choosing to incite it, and condone it," Lynch says. "I think that's unfortunate. We don't think it's good for the web to have aspects closed off--a blockade of certain types of expression. There's a decade of content out there that you just can't view on Apple's device, and I think that's not only hurtful to Adobe, but hurtful to everyone that created that content."
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For its part, Adobe is looking at how to accommodate the growing presence of HTML5 content on the Internet, recently offering a demo of a tool that would allow developers to easily port much of their Flash content to HTML5.

Article Link: Adobe CTO on Flash's Effect on Battery Life, Apple's Negative Campaigning
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/11/08/adobe-cto-on-flashs-effect-on-battery-life-apples-negative-campaigning/
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tripjammer

macrumors 6502a
Apr 28, 2010
581
0
Adobe says Flash uses the same or less battery power than HTML5????

What crack are they smoking?
 
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wallinbl

macrumors regular
Jan 11, 2003
144
206
To some extent, it is a "false argument", but most of the Flash content on the web is content that I don't actually want. So, if it gets me two extra hours of battery, I'll at least continue to run a Flash blocker. He's no doubt correct that you're viewing less content without Flash and you should see a boost to your battery because you're rendering fewer items. What he didn't mention is that most of those items are undesirable. Ads are necessary, but they shouldn't suck 33% off the battery life of a user's laptop. That's over the top.
 
cmfilms

cmfilms

macrumors regular
Feb 19, 2009
160
1
Central Iowa
Adobe Talking Head said:
"There's a decade of content out there that you just can't view on Apple's device, and I think that's not only hurtful to Adobe, but hurtful to everyone that created that content."
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Seriously? A decade of content? I have a decade of BetaMax tapes, but I still own a Blu-ray player. We can move forward. Every time my computer crashes, I can trace it back to Flash content. Prolific, yes, but it's also a disaster.
 
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A

asdf542

macrumors 6502
Oct 26, 2010
490
0
I suggest everyone install ClickToFlash. You will never look back. It even finds flash video and converts it to HTML5. I haven't clicked on a single flash element in weeks and my computer is thanking me. Anyone who monitors their system can easily tell that Flash uses more resources than HTML5 with or without hardware acceleration. Adobe is just blowing smoke.
 
Consultant

Consultant

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,314
34
What the Adobe CTO failed to understand is that MacBook Air IS running HTML5 on both tests. The only difference is flash.
 
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sjo

macrumors 6502a
Aug 30, 2005
510
0
wallinbl said:
To some extent, it is a "false argument", but most of the Flash content on the web is content that I don't actually want. So, if it gets me two extra hours of battery, I'll at least continue to run a Flash blocker. He's no doubt correct that you're viewing less content without Flash and you should see a boost to your battery because you're rendering fewer items. What he didn't mention is that most of those items are undesirable. Ads are necessary, but they shouldn't suck 33% off the battery life of a user's laptop. That's over the top.
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On the positive side, the flash content you don't want is extremely easy to block. Let's see how it goes when the unwanted content begins to utilize HTML5...
 
KnightWRX

KnightWRX

macrumors Pentium
Jan 28, 2009
15,046
4
Quebec, Canada
lewis82 said:
Flash is a just-in-time compiled language. No doubt it requires more CPU power than regular HTML...
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Of course, straight HTML doesn't produce results like Flash does either. HTML5 heavily uses Javascript for Canvas animations which... dum dum dum... is a JIT compiled language on modern browsers.

Anyway Flash doesn't eat battery by being installed, it does so by being used. Just don't use it, extensions to make it "on-demand" exist for about every browser out there. Use them. Best of both worlds.
 
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tripjammer

macrumors 6502a
Apr 28, 2010
581
0
asdf542 said:
I suggest everyone install ClickToFlash. You will never look back. It even finds flash video and converts it to HTML5. I haven't clicked on a single flash element in weeks and my computer is thanking me. Anyone who monitors their system can easily tell that Flash uses more resources than HTML5 with or without hardware acceleration.
Click to expand...


Flash is dead...or dying....
 
runeasgar

runeasgar

macrumors regular
May 26, 2004
158
0
Nashville, TN
flash uses vastly more CPU resources to play video on my computer than html5. i've actually went to the trouble to test it.

stop blaming the rest of the world for your inefficient garbage plug-in.
 
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BraydenJames

macrumors member
Jun 4, 2010
36
0
Go AdBlock Plus! Allows me to keep flash installed to view what I want, without sucking down CPU to load worthless Flash ads :).
 
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NYCMacFan

macrumors regular
Jun 5, 2007
161
0
Real Issue is being able to turn it off

The real issue then is having an easy system to turn it off and on that is built into each web browser and/or integrated into the OS.

Or perhaps you need to go through specific extra approvals each time you want to play flash. So if you are on youtube, no biggie to click the screen with the content and then click okay. But you don't have a flash ad running passively on say the NYTimes website.

I've no experience with flash blockers, so you guys tell me how they work. But I'm guessing its not seamless if its third party.
 
cmaier

cmaier

Suspended
Jul 25, 2007
25,405
33,471
California
That's a weak response. Doesn't address the fundamental truth: flash installed, lose a couple hours of battery life (and customers don't see the value-added in blinky ads, so unless they want to run flash games, they're better off without flash).
 
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wewantsthering

macrumors newbie
Nov 8, 2010
6
0
asdf542 said:
I suggest everyone install ClickToFlash. You will never look back. It even finds flash video and converts it to HTML5. I haven't clicked on a single flash element in weeks and my computer is thanking me. Anyone who monitors their system can easily tell that Flash uses more resources than HTML5 with or without hardware acceleration. Adobe is just blowing smoke.
Click to expand...

Exactly! Click to Flash is installed on all of my browsers. :) Every browser runs significantly faster now.
 
M

MacSignal

macrumors regular
May 8, 2010
241
1
Sometimes, I think Apple gets too much credit (or blame) for Flash's unpopularity. Flash had plenty of critics before Apple. I like blocking Flash just as much on a Windows machine as I do on a Mac.
 
B

bdkennedy1

Suspended
Oct 24, 2002
1,275
528
Flash is a 15 year old bloated POS. Yesterday I left Safari open on a web page on my iMac when I went to work. When I got home I had a nice little message on the screen that said Flash crashed Safari and my system was practically unresponsive which means there was probably a memory leak somewhere.
 
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ishcabittle

macrumors newbie
Nov 8, 2010
3
0
for a chief technology officer...

...he hasn't done much testing. HTML5 kicks flash's ass all over the place. Lying through your teeth isn't a good campaign.
 
T

throttlemeister

macrumors 6502a
Mar 31, 2009
550
63
Netherlands
runeasgar said:
flash uses vastly more CPU resources to play video on my computer than html5. i've actually went to the trouble to test it.

stop blaming the rest of the world for your inefficient garbage plug-in.
Click to expand...

Funny, I have too and I cannot tell a damn bit of difference between watching the same movie on YouTube in Flash or HTML5. Both use the same amount of CPU and both make the fans turn on to max to deal with it.
 
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