Adobe Suggests Disabled Hardware Acceleration for Flash Player in OS X Lion

[Cheffy Dave]

Lucky you. I just couldn't... I had to convince myself that the "enemy's door was down" to be able to do anything, until I went to find the setting.

But choice is good. I work with Windows and Snow Leopard at work and have Lion and Snow Leopard (Core Duo) at home. I need consistency, otherwise I will loose whatever hair I have left...

You got me a chuckle

 

[a.gomez]

I actually like reading Apple / Flash posts. Good debate. I don't like Flash but I think it's purpose in life was to get people thru the IE 6 years and differences in HTML among browsers and limitations. In that respect, I am thankful that Flash was developed. Hopefully, this problem with Flash will be fixed in a later version soon until it can be replaced forever with open standards.

im just replying in case someone missed it they would have another chance to read it

 

[diamond.g]

What makes you think they didn't test Flash on Lion ? What makes you think they haven't checked their code ? What makes you think they haven't submitted bugs to Apple for the VDA framework which went unfixed ?

Why are you jumping on Adobe and yet not on Apple ?

What insight do you have that we don't ? Or do you even have any insight ?

Because Adobe is lazy? Didn't you read the past 7 pages?

 

[wikus]

Well then it really shouldn't be anyone else's top priority either, and yet, other people seem to be doing the job anyway.

What does that say about Adobe?

Like LTD said, they dont care.

But I do appreciate the fight between the two, it only pushes Adobe to make Flash better in a shorter time period. The last little while Flash has come a LONG way. Ultimately the winner in their fight will be the consumer.

 

[Dainin]

I downloaded Lion yesterday to my 4 month old MBAir and discovered my fan running for extended periods. Apparently, click for flash isn't compatible with Lion yet?

After uninstalling Flash my fan shut off.

The clicktoflash installer doesn't work.

But if you go to http://extensions.apple.com and install it from there it works in safari.

 

[50548]

Uninstalled Flash yesterday anyways, i decided i don't need junk on my computer.

Excellent move.

In fact, with 76 billion USD in cash, Apple should simply buy them for the sake of closing that POS company the next day...unbelievable.

 

[AidenShaw]

You haven't done much Windows/UNIX/VMS programming, have you?

APIs how do they work, this is Adobe problem not Apple, every new OS APIs change,

Most of the time there are *no* changes to existing userland functionality - the API is a "contract" between the OS and the developer, and the API should not randomly change. If there are new features, then either the existing API calls should be modified in a compatible manner, or new calls should be added.

As an example, there are some deprecated (but still supported) APIs in Windows that had some odd bugs (going back 10-15-20 years). When Microsoft fixed the bugs, all hell broke loose during field testing - developers had created workarounds for the bugs, and when the OS was fixed it broke everything with the workaround. Microsoft renamed the fixed API call to a different name, and restored the broken one under its original name (and deprecated the old call).

A similar thing happened much further back on VMS. It was discovered that DCL ("Dave Cutler's Language" - the shell on VMS) had a bug so that function calls inside of comments were being executed. Comments with side effects are bad things. (All of the programmers on the board just threw up a little in their mouths, I'm sure.) This also caused an uproar when it was fixed though, because it turned out that calling the verification (echo) function inside a comment was the only way to create a shell script that was silent - and untold thousands of those scripts were in the field. The end result was that the "fix" was adjusted to do a special case check for an immediate mode verification function inside a comment, and execute it if found. Documentation: http://www.openvms.compaq.com/doc/83final/9996/9996pro_123.html (last paragraph in description, before the examples section).

Apple-land appears to be the only place where the users turn on the vendors when the OS screws things up.

The rules are a little different in kernel-code. Sometimes progress requires that an old API has to be abandoned, or incompatibly modified.

Of course, a browser plugin is not kernel-mode code.

It's Adobe job to upgrade their software and have it ready when a new OS comes out. This one of main reasons companies have betas.

We disagree here - it's Apple's job not to create needless work for its vendors by randomly changing APIs and directions.

 

[Taz Mangus]

We have freedom of choice. And as long as people keep buying everything that Apple makes, it's not going to change. They will give us what Steve wants regardless of what we want.

No one is forcing you to buy anything Apple. Please don't, by all means, since you clearly indicate that you are so dis-satisified with Steve Jobs and the Apple clan. In fact, no one is forcing you to be at this website either. Maybe a nice Adobe-centric website would serve you better since you seem to be so enamored with Adobe. Better yet, a Windows-centric website might even be better for you as you can discuss, to your hearts content, how you "have on old Windows XP computer with a Pentium 4 that still handles flash without any problems at all."

If you have not figured it out yet, this is a Mac-centric website. Hence, there will be people enamored with Apple products visting and posting here. This is why it is a Apple-centric website. What a concept, people actually buy Apple products because they love how they work. Sorry can't say the same of any Adobe product I have owned.

If it were not for forwarding thinking companies like Apple we would still probably be using floppy disks. Adobe is the floppy disks of the software world. It is time to move on.

What is it with the anti-Apple people that post at this website. I don't go to Adobe or Windows websites and stir up trouble there. Not a cool thing to do here either.

 

[Taz Mangus]

What makes you think they didn't test Flash on Lion ?

What makes you think they did?

 

[hglk]

How long did Adobe have to test their software on Lion? Adobe is full of crap. Adobe get your act together or watch people stop using flash. Google labs is making a flash to HTML5 converter, YouTube supports HTML5, if Adobe keeps spewing crap like this, they will be forgotten.

Adobe wont be forgotten, but flash might. Adobe makes amazing graphic designing tools that my whole job and field of study is based on. I think it's unlikely it will be forgotten.

Although, seriously. What the hell were they doing the whole time the beta was out??

 

[danielo2]

Call me crazy but at least on Lion GM both 10.2/10.3 and 11 (beta) flash player does hardware support just fine. If there is a change between GM and Release then indeed adobe got screwed or people are not implementing their flash player correctly.

I just tested this on 2008 macbook pro. 1080p h.264 video (3Mbit) on a 1600x1200 monitor.

hardware accel turned off : cpu 132%
hardware turned on : 23%

The not being able to set the settings has been known for _years_ it got worse (like always) in Lion this has been known and in the adobe bug tracker for 6months.

The work around is going to fullscreen and THEN opening settings with the right mouse it then works.

Not sure what to think of all this but someone is blowing smoke if this is true the fix should be easy since it was working on the GM.

Daniel.

PS: I am waiting for my macbook air so that why i am keeping this machine like this for now.

 

[Adey]

I've not seen anyone on this forum saying they want Flash on their mac/pc/iphone/ipad.

I've seen people saying they need it (to view such-and-such a site or play such-and-such a game), but no-one's saying "I want/need Flash because it's excellent..." or even "Flash is the best way to do what Flash does."

Everyone seems to want/need it despite it being second rate compared to other technologies now out there.

Weird.

 

[Frobozz]

So here's the thing ... OS X Lion builds have been available to the general development community for MONTHS. None of this should have been a surprise to them. I certainly hope each of these issues can be resolved in a timely manner, and that these revelations don't count as the starting point. I'd hope they got started a LONG time ago.

 

[Frobozz]

I did notice that my fans kicked in to overdrive while using a website that had some Flash video on it. Greeeeeeat. :-(

 

[50548]

What makes you think they did?

Common sense? Intelligence? Business acumen?

All of the above?

Otherwise, they are downright stupid, that's all...

 

[nemaslov]

Think I'll wait a few months before I tame the Lion.

 

[fxtech]

Seriously, a video took up 53% of my CPU yesterday...

A Møøse once bit my sister.

 

[MacSince1990]

Eh. Apple has been edging into Adobe's territory for years... as well as badmouthing their software. It probably won't be too long before they release their own version of Photoshop. I can't really blame Adobe.

 

[wovel]

with 4% of global PC market share and SAFARI no where near Firefox, Chome and IE nobody will notice

iOS devices get sent to mobile sites anyway

relax

iPads are not...

you wont get one because he is not a developer just like everyone talking nonsense about Adobe (and mentioning Pixelmaker) is not a designer

this is the iOS generation, you can not ask hard questions anymore

I did respond to him actually. You could tell he was googling the answers as we went along and had little practical kowledge. He knew nothing at all about Silverlight or the large scale distribution and processing of streaming video. He did not ask any hard questions, he simply provided hedging qualified answers to basic questions.

I will admit confusion at this entire thread. I have no problem with Flash under Lion on my bottom of the line 2010 iMac or my top of the line 2010 MBP. Watched several HD YouTube videos on both machines after I read this and can't find a glitch or a performance hit any worse then SL. In fact, I would say it is a little better. Is this problem related to some of the newer GPUs?

 

[majordude]

Great. So harbesting my Farmville farm is going to be even slower?!

 

[chrono1081]

I am not surprised that HW acceleration is "disabled" in the current version of flash. With the strict new sandboxing model on Lion, it did not seem like apps (or plugins) would be able to access the Graphics hardware without an update.

This. I'm sorry Adobe but its your fault your applications don't work. Update them, you had quite a long time.

Its amazing how other apps that do much more than adobe that use hardware accelleration managed to push updates out just fine yet Adobe can't.

 

[danielo2]

This. I'm sorry Adobe but its your fault your applications don't work. Update them, you had quite a long time.

Its amazing how other apps that do much more than adobe that use hardware accelleration managed to push updates out just fine yet Adobe can't.

Again see my post a few back. it works fine in the GM release something or someone is doing something wrong .

Daniel.

 

[jleon213]

Because Adobe is lazy? Didn't you read the past 7 pages?

yes... adobe is lazy, they have been around for about a month or less and their software is not even close to be a standard... designers around the world have no clue about adobe apps and have been using I don't know what app installed on macs for the last 10 years... they're really lazy... sure they are... i can't believe how adobe dares to even talk about apple... apple is right! the new OS with no backward compatibility is the right move.

 

[Taz Mangus]

A Møøse once bit my sister.

Seriously?

 

[wovel]

Again see my post a few back. it works fine in the GM release something or someone is doing something wrong .

Daniel.

It works fine on both my Macs (lion downloaded from MAS), just did that featured firework video in 1080p, CPU peaked at 38% and sat around 22 throughout most of the video.. Playback was smooth and glitch free.