Adobe CTO Promises a Better Flash Experience for Mac Users

[IntelliUser]

http://www.macnn.com/articles/10/02/05/video.a.special.focus/

Macs will perform substantially better when running Flash Player 10.1, promises Adobe's chief technical officer, Kevin Lynch. The executive claims that Flash 10 now runs at "almost exactly" the same level of CPU usage on Mac and Windows systems, where previously the Mac suffered significantly. The v10.1 update is set to use CoreAnimation, which Lynch suggests could make Macs faster than Windows in some cases.
Lynch concedes that video is still a major weakness, as a 480p video, running on a 1.8GHz Mac mini, uses 34 percent of the CPU in Mac OS X and just 16 percent in Windows. Flash 10.1 is expected to cut CPU consumption in half.

The executive also remarks that performance may depend heavily on browser choice. Safari is said to be the fastest Mac software in this regard, whereas Lynch cautions people against Google's Chrome. The Mac version of Chrome is still in beta, and is believed to have problems with running Flash and other plug-ins.

Flash Player 10.1 remains in beta, and has no fixed release date other than the first half of the year.

I hope Adobe gets back on the right track with the new suite and the new Flash.

 

[rhett7660]

This would be nice. I know a lot of people have issues with the way flash is handled on the Mac and I hope this puts an end to those issues. Maybe this was a wake up call for Adobe...

 

[MikhailT]

This would be nice. I know a lot of people have issues with the way flash is handled on the Mac and I hope this puts an end to those issues. Maybe this was a wake up call for Adobe...

Flash is better with 10.1 on the Mac for sure, but a polished turd is still a turd. There's a lot of improvements that can be done but I know Adobe isn't entirely at fault. Something about how Apple is not giving Adobe the hardware (GUI) APIs needed to accelerate the video performance via OpenCL. I'm not a programmer and I don't know how much of it is bull crap spurned by Adobe.

 

[MadeTheSwitch]

Lynch cautions people against Google's Chrome. The Mac version of Chrome is still in beta, and is believed to have problems with running Flash and other plug-ins..

Wow. That's not true at all. I play lots of Flash games, including the very demanding Facebook game Farmville and it works like a champ in the Mac version of Chrome. FAR better then either Firefox OR Safari. The same goes for all other games. Facebook games, Pogo, I've thrown everything I can at it to see if it could take it, and it does! And watching videos on TV Network sites also performs well. Although there is a flickering cursor issue. But hey, I'll take that if things work better otherwise. And they DO.

 

[mcnicks]

A better Flash experience for Mac users:

http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/