Adobe Releases Flash Player 10.1, But Hardware Acceleration on OS X Not Supported

[eric356]

Steve Job fan boys agree...

I so agree with you, it's such a joke to see these people on the steve jobs bandwagon... I work with Flash every day, it's not going anywhere anytime soon, there is a reason Flash has been around as long as it has... p.s. Steve, Flash can do touch gestures. I love Macs and I like Flash, there I said it.... people make up your own mind look at the facts, Flash is alive and well : )

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Maybe that has to do with the fact that VLC plays around 20 Video and 30 audio formats and that dreadful plugin plays .. how many again?

I'm trying to figure out what does 100MB install size [all dylibs included] have to do with CPU performance and virtual memory seeing as when VLC is running it's foot print is far less.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

VLC is a media player. Flash is capable of a LOT more than just playing videos. And even HTML5 is simply incapable of replacing ALL the things it can do right now so all this talk about HTML5 is beside the point for those that want to access ALL web sites. It irks me every time I see the iPad commercial saying it can access "all" web sites. Yeah right. No flash = massive numbers of sites that it simply CANNOT use and all because Steve decided for us whether we can use it or not. It should be the user's choice. Some of us just want to access web sites. We don't care about Apple's profit margins versus Adobe or Microsoft when it comes to that.



VLC is fine for saved videos. What good does it do me for animated web sites? None. More to the point, if you "hate" flash so much, just don't use it. You already CANNOT use it with any iOS device, so just delete it and then you won't have to rant about it anymore. I'm not a huge Flash fan, but if it makes a given web site work better, I want the web site to function, not throw back a "sorry, this site requires Flash" warning or miss half the stuff on their site because the plain HTML version cannot do everything the flash version can do.

We're testing against FLV videos within Flash and within VLC.

VLC runs at a fraction of the system resources and that's odd seeing as Adobe hasn't opened up the spec for the Interactive Control layers.

A simple playback on both should be the same performance, but in the Flash plugin it eats the CPU and much greater Virtual Memory space.

There is no excuse for that.

 

[eric356]

dum dum

Flash is not going anywhere! Stop kissing Steve's ass. You want to run your computer like a fart box Tandy 2000 hx from 1980 that's your choice get all the silly flash blockers you want on your mac. 95% of the worlds web is still using flash.

 

[WilliamLondon]

Flash is not going anywhere! Stop kissing Steve's ass. You want to run your computer like a fart box Tandy 2000 hx from 1980 that's your choice get all the silly flash blockers you want on your mac. 95% of the worlds web is still using flash.

If you mean it's not going anywhere *today* you're right in that no progress has been made with this latest release.

If you mean it's not going anywhere *tomorrow* you're wrong, except you're right. By that I mean, it'll still be there, but the world (and web) will have moved on. The future isn't Flash, and they've just confirmed that today.

Flash tomorrow will still be where it is today. Websites will just stop using it. It'll still be there, just displaying all the websites that have died but not realised they are dead.

 

[Swift]

Yeah, but...

Why are they bringing us 10.1 without the hardware acceleration? I've been using the 3rd beta "Gala" for a few weeks, and I haven't detected any problems with this one. Previous versions had trouble with layering the Flash material underneath ads, for instance. This one seems to work.

I took it for granted, when I saw the "release" version, that this was the same thing. But when I tried to install it, I got the message that "you have a newer version than this..." and that was it.

Perhaps people should know that Flash has a zero-day exploit that was announced last Friday. It afflicts all platforms, Windows, Mac and Linux -- though no implementation of the malware in Mac OS or Linux thusfar -- and only installing 10.1 will free you of the danger. Oh, maybe I've answered my own question: they released "10.1" without the hardware acceleration for the Mac because then all the 10.x people out there, running on systems made before the supported chips and 10.6.3, will not be prey to the "arbitrary crashes which can lead to injection of malware and control of your computer." But it's not REALLY 10.1.

Flash is such a piece of crap.

 

[Swift]

Flash is not going anywhere! Stop kissing Steve's ass. You want to run your computer like a fart box Tandy 2000 hx from 1980 that's your choice get all the silly flash blockers you want on your mac. 95% of the worlds web is still using flash.

How's that floppy drive in your computer?

Flash is an old, failing bit of crap software that solves the problems of 2002. It will stay on the web for a while, but it will never run economically or well on mobile devices.

 

[Amdahl]

Perhaps people should know that Flash has a zero-day exploit that was announced last Friday. It afflicts all platforms, Windows, Mac and Linux -- though no implementation of the malware in Mac OS or Linux thusfar -- and only installing 10.1 will free you of the danger. Oh, maybe I've answered my own question: they released "10.1" without the hardware acceleration for the Mac because then all the 10.x people out there, running on systems made before the supported chips and 10.6.3, will not be prey to the "arbitrary crashes which can lead to injection of malware and control of your computer." But it's not REALLY 10.1.

They had said since 10.6.3 introduced the hardware acceleration API that Flash 10.1 would not ship with it, because there wasn't enough time to adequately test it. Flash 10.1 has been in public beta for at least six months. The release yesterday was Release Candidate 7.

It IS really 10.1. Mac OS X 10.6 will just get a little extra oomph (if you have one of the three Apple-supported GPUs) in a couple more months after Gala has enough testing.

 

[wetnap]

It matters less and less, with quad soon becoming common its just nothing to decode flash as piggish as it is. an i5/i7 processor is just wicked fast.

 

[Amdahl]

It matters less and less, with quad soon becoming common its just nothing to decode flash as piggish as it is. an i5/i7 processor is just wicked fast.

I think this is the kind of thinking that got Adobe in trouble in the first place. Then in 2004/2005, Ghz hit the wall and performance per watt became very important with smaller/portable devices.

 

[macintoshtoffy]

Spot on

I second that. I am running Flash 10.1 and find it a awesome upgrade from 10.0 (given that 10.0 marks pretty much a low point ) it is understandable that Apple doesn't want to be in yet another position where the whole business is being held to ransom by a single organisation.

Remember the year after year after year promises by Motorola and IBM regarding PowerPC processors that never came to fruition? each year Steve Jobs looking more and more nervous about whether their suppliers can deliver on their promises? I don't blame Steve, therefore, for having a sceptical view of Adobe having been let down (to the detriment of Apple) by partners in the past.

Mind you, Adobe is seeing the writing on the wall and you can export your Flash project to HTML5, and they will still be relevant in the future because the web market will still need high quality encoders (I love Media Encoder CS5 - 64bit goodness), video editing, development tools and so forth.

 

[wetnap]

I think this is the kind of thinking that got Adobe in trouble in the first place. Then in 2004/2005, Ghz hit the wall and performance per watt became very important with smaller/portable devices.

Well unless we are going 4k streaming any time soon it doesn't matter, i5/i7 and even lower easily handle 1080p content. Theres nothing more stressful coming over the horizon.

 

[cxc]

They had said since 10.6.3 introduced the hardware acceleration API that Flash 10.1 would not ship with it, because there wasn't enough time to adequately test it. Flash 10.1 has been in public beta for at least six months. The release yesterday was Release Candidate 7.

It IS really 10.1. Mac OS X 10.6 will just get a little extra oomph (if you have one of the three Apple-supported GPUs) in a couple more months after Gala has enough testing.

The Win7 10.1 offering includes much broader GPU support.
Do you know why this is the case and identical GPU Hardware is not supported on the OSX side of the fence? Is this situation likely to change?

 

[wetnap]

I so agree with you, it's such a joke to see these people on the steve jobs bandwagon... I work with Flash every day, it's not going anywhere anytime soon, there is a reason Flash has been around as long as it has... p.s. Steve, Flash can do touch gestures. I love Macs and I like Flash, there I said it.... people make up your own mind look at the facts, Flash is alive and well : )

Like it or not you should cross train now with alternatives. the install base ignoring flash is growing like it or not.

 

[KnightWRX]

I think this is the kind of thinking that got Adobe in trouble in the first place. Then in 2004/2005, Ghz hit the wall and performance per watt became very important with smaller/portable devices.

Uh ? What does GHZ have to do with it ? You do understand that today's chips are much faster than in 2005 right ?

Instructions per clock are what matters.

 

[UTclassof89]

Flash is an old, failing bit of crap software that solves the problems of 2002. It will stay on the web for a while, but it will never run economically or well on mobile devices.

Some people use it to solve the problems of 2002.

Others use it the way it should be used (to build complex interactive web apps that would be far more difficult or impossible in other languages).

Those people who know what Flash is capable of, and optimize its performance, and tie it in to the browser BACK button, and provide for deep linking into a web app, are outnumbered by the noobs who don't do any of that.

(much like Photoshop noobs in 2002 would design a web page and save the whole thing as a single JPEG on an HTML page. It would be insane to blame Photoshop for the idiots who use it badly)

It's supremely ignorant to blame Flash for the people who use it badly.

It runs on Android now. Adobe will keep improving it. It will run on more devices next year. And more the year after that. As devices get faster processors and more RAM, and FlashPlayer gets more efficient, it will keep improving, and offer developers even more power.

If you don't like Flash content, block it. (and enjoy your CPU-intensive, non-blockable HTML5 ads). But saying it will never run well on mobile devices is ignorant hyperbole.

 

[macintoshtoffy]

Some people use it to solve the problems of 2002.

Others use it the way it should be used (to build complex interactive web apps that would be far more difficult or impossible in other languages).

Those people who know what Flash is capable of, and optimize its performance, and tie it in to the browser BACK button, and provide for deep linking into a web app, are outnumbered by the noobs who don't do any of that.

(much like Photoshop noobs in 2002 would design a web page and save the whole thing as a single JPEG on an HTML page. It would be insane to blame Photoshop for the idiots who use it badly)

It's supremely ignorant to blame Flash for the people who use it badly.

It runs on Android now. Adobe will keep improving it. It will run on more devices next year. And more the year after that. As devices get faster processors and more RAM, and FlashPlayer gets more efficient, it will keep improving, and offer developers even more power.

If you don't like Flash content, block it. (and enjoy your CPU-intensive, non-blockable HTML5 ads). But saying it will never run well on mobile devices is ignorant hyperbole.

Unfortunately Adobe doesn't make much of the fact that they can do all they're able to improve performance but if the programmer at the other end isn't using the technology properly - its going to have a nasty result. What Adobe needs to do as to counter the 'Flash sucks' is educate the public - if you see Flash, and it is running crappy - 9/10 it is because the numskull who wrote the website doesn't know how to code his way out of a paper bag. If they can do a marketing campaign about choice then they should also do one about crappy implementations are the fault of crappy programmers.

For the record I have 10.1 installed along with Safari and it is a massive leap forward - thanks to the improvement in both Safari and Flash we now have Flash using Core Animation, the Flash layer now using Core Animation so rendering is using the OpenGL path, and hopefully when Gala is released that we'll see GPU video decoding.

 

[Max(IT)]

Some people use it to solve the problems of 2002.

Others use it the way it should be used (to build complex interactive web apps that would be far more difficult or impossible in other languages).

Those people who know what Flash is capable of, and optimize its performance, and tie it in to the browser BACK button, and provide for deep linking into a web app, are outnumbered by the noobs who don't do any of that.

(much like Photoshop noobs in 2002 would design a web page and save the whole thing as a single JPEG on an HTML page. It would be insane to blame Photoshop for the idiots who use it badly)

It's supremely ignorant to blame Flash for the people who use it badly.

It runs on Android now. Adobe will keep improving it. It will run on more devices next year. And more the year after that. As devices get faster processors and more RAM, and FlashPlayer gets more efficient, it will keep improving, and offer developers even more power.

If you don't like Flash content, block it. (and enjoy your CPU-intensive, non-blockable HTML5 ads). But saying it will never run well on mobile devices is ignorant hyperbole.

last time I checked (Tron Legacy video in Apple's HTML5 demo and same video in YouTube using Flash 10.1 Gaia 2 Preview), HTML5 was less "cpu-intensive" by far ...

And the old adagio "you can't do something without using Flash" becomes false day after day ....

 

[Intell]

Is anyone else having the sound only problem with 10.1? I tried going back to 10.0 but I still only have sound. The video does work, but only in full screen mode. Oh, and all the ads and clicky menus don't show up either.

 

[Mr. Gates]

It's funny how many people voted this with Negative.

Same people who stuck up for Apple when they shut Adobe out of the iOS dev market.

If Adobe wanted to they could REALLY cripple Apple by playing the same card as they have been dealt and start to ONLY support Windows and Linux.

PhotoShop ALONE would be a hit to Apple.

I think this is reminder........Don't Piss off your friends and respect the mutual dollar to be made

 

[Atkins]

If Adobe wanted to they could REALLY cripple Apple by playing the same card as they have been dealt and start to ONLY support Windows and Linux.

Nonsense. Even if they wanted, they'll still never do it. What's the point in losing money? This isn't some teenager issue.

PhotoShop ALONE would be a hit to Apple.

Whatever.

I think this is reminder........Don't Piss off your friends and respect the mutual dollar to be made

Friends? Again, these are companies, and I don't see how Adobe could be seen as "friendly". And nobody care about "mutual dollar" when you can make two alone.

 

[motulist]

10.1 supports back to G3 processors, and is the last release that will support G3 processors. Your G4 should be fine, and should benefit just as everybody else will benefit. The older your CPU, the better your perceived improvement, I suspect.

Greeeeeeaaaat, thanks for the advice. I just "upgraded" to 10.1 and now all flash videos stutter horribly and are unwatchable. In flash 10.0 the youtube flash video control interfaces were very sluggish to respond, but the videos themselves played reasonably well. Now after upgrading to 10.1 the interface controls are totally responsive, but the actual video is a jumpy stuttering mess. And hulu, which had previously been totally fine in both interface responsiveness and video quality, now has truly awful stuttering video quality, even when set to stream at 288p.

Ugh.

 

[Amdahl]

Well unless we are going 4k streaming any time soon it doesn't matter, i5/i7 and even lower easily handle 1080p content. Theres nothing more stressful coming over the horizon.

Yes, you're right. But in the intervening years, the name of the game has turned into 'low power' and 'mobile.' That's why all the hub-bub surrounding Flash is about Pads and Phones.

The Win7 10.1 offering includes much broader GPU support.
Do you know why this is the case and identical GPU Hardware is not supported on the OSX side of the fence? Is this situation likely to change?

Apple is the reason. They don't support their products. Not likely to change, because people keep buying their stuff anyway.

Uh ? What does GHZ have to do with it ? You do understand that today's chips are much faster than in 2005 right ?

Instructions per clock are what matters.

Rather than completely disagree with you (which I actually do, the 'much faster' part...), let's just say that the rate of increase of CPUs dramatically slowed after 2004. DRAMATICALLY. I could buy a 2Ghz Pentium in 2001... But I can't buy a 10Ghz chip today. This link shows why you're wrong on the instructions per clock. (Look to the Purple line in the graph)

That trend would have bailed out Adobe/Flash in the past. This time, it might bury them.

Greeeeeeaaaat, thanks for the advice. I just "upgraded" to 10.1 and now all flash videos stutter horribly and are unwatchable. In flash 10.0 the youtube flash video control interfaces were very sluggish to respond, but the videos themselves played reasonably well. Now after upgrading to 10.1 the interface controls are totally responsive, but the actual video is a jumpy stuttering mess. And hulu, which had previously been totally fine in both interface responsiveness and video quality, now has truly awful stuttering video quality, even when set to stream at 288p.

This problem has floated around for a long time... Has anyone ever figured out what causes it? Which is to say, I do not see it on any of the many Macs around me, and if it was a widespread problem, it would have been fixed. But I don't doubt that you are seeing it.

 

[peakchua]

adobe is so jealous and afraid of losing thats just sad ); if it had hardware acceleraiton.. our flash would scream!

 

[jimmyjoemccrow]

I put this new Flash on a 1.33 GHz Mac Mini and the World Cup stream on the BBC went from being a stuttery mess to just about watchable. Can't be all bad.