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

[KnightWRX]

Again...They needed the access because they were lazy.

No, they needed the framework because there was no other way to support hardware accelerated decoding of h.264 on OS X for something like Flash that requires decoded frames, not just a control that plays back video. Lazyness has nothing to do with it.

VDA is the only low-level framework on OS X that gives them this functionality. It appeared in April of 2010. The Flash player that supported it shipped in April 2010.

That isn't lazy, that's waiting on Apple.

Maybe if you want some credibility, you could offer another solution they could have used ? I'm waiting, oh great OS X software developer.

 

[klamse25]

Worst. Feature. Ever.

I actually like it. I find that it fits in with all my other iOS devices better.

 

[Benjamins]

Yeah, it's so strange that a vendor releases a Tech Note the day after the NDA is lifted. No really, they should have posted that yesterday! The madness!

You guys realise Adobe couldn't release any Lion information prior to the NDA being lifted right ? Right ?



Yet they managed to one-up Apple and ship Cocoa ports of their major apps first.



The hardware acceleration required appeared in 10.6.3 in the form of VDA. I think it took all of a week for Adobe to release a Flash player beta based on it. 1 week is really long ? Seriously, no one told them of HW acceleration on OS X because it wasn't there in a usable form prior to VDA.



Like every other developer, they were under NDA. And seriously, retrofitting apps to support the new features is not going to happen. Moving forward they might.

Also, the bug with Flash might not be an Adobe bug at all. It could be a bug in VDA itself, and Adobe is stuck waiting for Apple to fix it. Right now, maybe all they can do is release a tech note.

Seriously guys, you have 0 information and from the comments in this thread, a lot of you guys have 0 software development experience. So you might want to tone down the Adobe hate a little, or you might have egg on your face if this indeed happens to be an Apple issue.

lol they don't need to release ANY Lion information to fix those so called "issues".

Oh and flash's problem was NOT just high CPU usage for video, which Apple released a dedicated update for later on. It's EVERY freaking part of it was crap. Loading Flash was a horrible experience, running complex Flash animation was crap. It wasn't until Apple call them out, they started using core animation for Flash.

Must be the VDA's fault. maybe 1Password and all other software venders should wait for Apple to revert the new safari's sandboxing feature to the old one.

 

[mcmlxix]

And they'll include them in CS6, available in six months for a hefty upgrade price.

They better not. If CS5 is broken, I'm going to be PISSED off if they issue a new suite instead of fixing the current one.

 

[Morky]

This has been exactly Apple's issue with Adobe for a long time now. Yes, Flash performance is terrible, especially in the mobile space, and Apple doesn't want to support it. But the bigger issue is that Adobe has a history of being extremely slow to adopt new software technology.

Adobe bought Macromedia in 2005 and until very recently had made no performance improvements. They seriously dragged their feet supporting OS X, then Intel Macs, then 64-bit in Photoshop.

Sorry, this is just not fair. Apple announced a platform change in the middle of one Adobe CS development cycle, and then, completely with out notice, dropped 64-bit Carbon in the middle of another CS dev cycle. Adobe ported to the new platform in the following dev cycle and ported nearly their entire CS suite from Carbon to Cocoa in the cycle following the 64-bit Carbon announcement. These are not trivial tasks no matter what the size of the development house.

The 64-bit Photoshop port in particular was a remarkable achievement. They basically had to re-write their entire 20-year-old massive app in a new language and still deliver the new features of CS5 to stay in parity with the Windows version. Not too shabby.

That said, I do agree Adobe should have had some patches ready for the Lion release, but it doesn't sound like the bug list is that extensive to get nasty about.

 

[munkery]

In reality, Flash has greater market share than any browser because it is installed in almost all of them. I believe it has around 95% market share.

So, Adobe has to support multiple browsers on multiple OSs. I think Adobe has their own developmental schedule for their product. And, given the scope of their development across platforms, Adobe doesn't readily go out of the bounds of that schedule.

 

[APPLENEWBIE]

Yes, they are indeed small.

ADBE: $14.96B market cap, $4.05B revenue
AAPL: $358.5B market cap, $87.45B revenue

Installed base, Mac V. Windows

 

[Eidorian]

No, they needed the framework because there was no other way to support hardware accelerated decoding of h.264 on OS X for something like Flash that requires decoded frames, not just a control that plays back video. Lazyness has nothing to do with it.

VDA is the only low-level framework on OS X that gives them this functionality. It appeared in April of 2010. The Flash player that supported it shipped in April 2010.

That isn't lazy, that's waiting on Apple.

Maybe if you want some credibility, you could offer another solution they could have used ? I'm waiting, oh great OS X software developer.

Whoa, careful some people do not want to remember back that far.

https://www.macrumors.com/2008/10/1...oding-of-h-264-on-new-macbooks-pros-and-airs/

Lets go back even more!

 

[KnightWRX]

It is actually considerably more likely (and well supported by history), that Adobe is terrible at performance tuning software on every platform and does a fairly crappy job of properly leveraging published APIs and updating their software.

Updating to what ? The documentation for VDA does not list any changes for Lion. It's the same it was. The published API is VDA. What are you suggesting is the problem here ?

Again, we don't know for sure. A lot of other people are reporting problems with VDA suddenly reporting the decoder as busy even if they aren't using it on their system with Lion. This seems like a bug or a system service that is holding a lock on it.

Whoa, careful some people do not want to remember back that far.

https://www.macrumors.com/2008/10/1...oding-of-h-264-on-new-macbooks-pros-and-airs/

That is actually talking about QTKit. Unfortunately, it is a high level API, and did not give back decoded frames to the applications. Flash cannot use something like QTKit because it requires post-processing of frames for adding overlays and other stuff. It required an API that decoded on a frame by frame basis.

Hence VDA. Hence their adoption as soon as it was released.

 

[wovel]

No, they needed the framework because there was no other way to support hardware accelerated decoding of h.264 on OS X for something like Flash that requires decoded frames, not just a control that plays back video. Lazyness has nothing to do with it.

VDA is the only low-level framework on OS X that gives them this functionality. It appeared in April of 2010. The Flash player that supported it shipped in April 2010.

That isn't lazy, that's waiting on Apple.

Maybe if you want some credibility, you could offer another solution they could have used ? I'm waiting, oh great OS X software developer.

The same solution Microsoft used to stream higher resolution H.264 videos at about 5% of the CPU cost? You act like Adobe is the only 3rd party to ever make streaming video plugins for OSX.

 

[!¡ V ¡!]

I have Flash version 10.3.181.34 installed and I am not having any problems with Safari, FireFox or Chrome under Lion. I must be one of the few.

Installed base, Mac V. Windows

Wait s second there, its no longer a Windows versus Macintosh. Its Windows, Macintosh and Linux. Do not alienate the iOS and Android crowd.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I suggest disabling Flash.

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

I use Click to Flash, NoScripts, etc. so I only use Flash when I want, but one would be hard pressed to 100% not use Flash. Too many sites either incorporates it or (gasp!) are written nearly 100% with it, you know, when you get one of those "this site requires Flash," messages.

 

[miknos]

I know there is many Flash supporters but for how long Adobe Flash sucks on the Mac? Just give up.

I have it uninstalled and my browser never crashed (might be the adblock helping it too).
When I find a website that asks for Flash, I go to Develop menu and put iPad as a UserAgent. Most of the times it shows the quicktime (h264) video. In other cases I simply use Develop/Open Page With/Chrome Browser.

 

[Eidorian]

That is actually talking about QTKit. Unfortunately, it is a high level API, and did not give back decoded frames to the applications. Flash cannot use something like QTKit because it requires post-processing of frames for adding overlays and other stuff. It required an API that decoded on a frame by frame basis.

Hence VDA. Hence their adoption as soon as it was released.

True but my point is many people here appear to easily forget the times before we had such wonderful things like any video playback hardware acceleration under OS X. Adobe jumped on it the minute VDA showed up.

One more thing, back in the dark ages Silverlight would get better performance compared to Flash. Thank you NBC...

 

[millerb7]

I use Click to Flash, NoScripts, etc. so I only use Flash when I want, but one would be hard pressed to 100% not use Flash. Too many sites either incorporates it or (gasp!) are written nearly 100% with it, you know, when you get one of those "this site requires Flash," messages.

If it is written 100% in flash, that is a HORRIBLE design choice.

They are missing out on a HUGE market.

Flash is meant to "add to a site" not to "make a site"... plain and simple.

 

[KnightWRX]

lol they don't need to release ANY Lion information to fix those so called "issues".

Except again if those "issues" are not Adobe but Apple issues. Wait and see before you start name calling.

Oh and flash's problem was NOT just high CPU usage for video, which Apple released a dedicated update for later on. It's EVERY freaking part of it was crap. Loading Flash was a horrible experience, running complex Flash animation was crap. It wasn't until Apple call them out, they started using core animation for Flash.

I used Flash back in my Pentium II 333 mhz days to watch vertex based animations/movies and play games. It worked like a charm. Flash's "CPU hog" reputation comes from its software decoder for video.

Seriously folks, wait and see. Less egg on your face if you happen to be 100% wrong. We don't know the source of the problem yet, there's no reason to lambast Apple or Adobe in this. It could simply be a bug.

The same solution Microsoft used to stream higher resolution H.264 videos at about 5% of the CPU cost? You act like Adobe is the only 3rd party to ever make streaming video plugins for OSX.

Microsoft used VDA. Or maybe they used QTkit, but that prevents them from doing post on frames before displaying them. Which with Flash would break a lot of existing functionality.

QTKit shipped earlier, but not by much (see the post by Eidorian) and was completely inadequate.

 

[Shivetya]

Did Apple seriously have to disable hardware acceleration on Flash? We get it, Steve, you don't like Flash. Some of us do like having it, though.

Well I will join you and incur the wrath of the fanbois, but damn there was no reason to turn off the hardware acceleration. I lost two good weather apps yesterday that I wanted to use.

 

[dguisinger]

Grrr, forgive me if someone said the same thing past page 5, but all these whining idiots are really getting on my nerve.

The whole "Sandboxing is opt-in", "Sandboxing is optional", "If every application that accessed a file needed to be rewritten", blah, blah, blah

You guys have no idea what you are talking about!!!

Flash is not the application running in a sandbox, not all applications have to be rewritten!!!

SAFARI IS THE APPLICATION RUNNING IN A SANDBOX. Stop screaming at Apple and use your brain for once.

Safari is utilizing the new sandboxing, Flash is running as a PLUGIN. Adobe obviously needs to update their code to work in a sandboxed environment.

Sandboxing is optional, and for the time being will always be optional if your application is not sold through the AppStore.

No one is being forced to rewrite their stand alone applications just to run on the OS.

I can't believe people are b*tching about a web browser running in a more secure mode. I suppose they think the flash player plug-in should automatically be granted access to every file on the hard drive as well.

 

[!¡ V ¡!]

I use Click to Flash, NoScripts, etc. so I only use Flash when I want, but one would be hard pressed to 100% not use Flash. Too many sites either incorporates it or (gasp!) are written nearly 100% with it, you know, when you get one of those "this site requires Flash," messages.

Second that, I also use C2F and it works great. My system watching Flash Vids does not even reach 100%. Though what is puzzling is that my iMac handles Flash Vids quite well, while my MBP seems to run the fans full speed. Not sure if it is a processor or hardware issues since both were running SL at the time.

I do not blame or Adobe.

 

[BC2009]

When as Apple offered the same courtesy to Adobe in the past ? Seriously, wasn't it Steve Jobs that called them lazy, which is the oft repeated mantra around here... And seriously, he called them lazy over Flash, when it required Apple to ship a framework to help fix... and when Apple did, Adobe implemented it in less than a week.

No, I do think that they didn't have to be courteous seeing the circumstances. Apple has been nothing be arrogant towards Adobe. I don't see where they deserve such respect.

Respect deserved or not, this is only making Adobe look bad. That was my point. This statement makes them look as if they have not even bothered to invest in making things run on Lion. I am not so much defending Apple here, but wondering why Adobe is shooting themselves in the foot. If indeed Adobe is waiting on Apple and they want to be jerks about it, then they should say "We have been working hard to get Adobe Flash running on OS X Lion for weeks now, but Apple is being extremely lazy about addressing bugs we have reported to them. As such we are unable to offer a working version of Adobe Flash Player for OS X Lion until Apple addresses these bugs."

When I read Steve Job's statement you must remember that it came after months of accusation that Jobs was being some kind of control freak (which he is) and refusing to let Adobe Flash run on iOS out of shear arrogance. Jobs did not throw the first stone. However, after months of that crap he responded to it, because from his point of view Adobe had been promising Apple a good version of Flash Player on iOS since 2007. Then when he refuses to approve their shoddy player for iPad and releases without it Adobe went on the offensive in the press. Steve Jobs made a single statement about it expressing his views in the years-old debate and has made no further comments. Adobe has kept slinging the mud. I'm sure Apple had some things to do on their end to get Flash Player working, but it was as if Adobe wanted to do nothing and Apple to just make it work from their end. Jobs wasn't buying into that.

From the looks of the very-beta-looking Flash Players on Android that are now available 16 months after the original iPad released and years after the promised versions for iPhone, I am inclined to believe that Adobe was indeed being lazy about it OR they were simply faced with a crap-load of legacy code that needed to be rewritten and they did not know where to start.

 

[KnightWRX]

SAFARI IS THE APPLICATION RUNNING IN A SANDBOX. Stop screaming at Apple and use your brain for once.

Safari is utilizing the new sandboxing, Flash is running as a PLUGIN. Adobe obviously needs to update their code to work in a sandboxed environment.

Plug-ins run outside of Safari's process space. Use your brain for once ?

EDIT : gak, you made me open Safari, what a piece of crap.

 

[Analog Kid]

I'm sorry, but this is just sad. Adobe is not some small no name developer. Apple has put out pre-release development builds of Lion for a while before its release. Adobe had plenty of time to put out a Lion compatible update. These comments make it sound like Adobe is just thinking about the implications of Lion now, after it's official release. They seriously dropped the ball here...

Exactly my thoughts. "Possibly"? They couldn't be bothered to even figure out what's happening, let alone fix it?

 

[wovel]

Microsoft used VDA. Or maybe they used QTkit, but that prevents them from doing post on frames before displaying them. Which with Flash would break a lot of existing functionality.

QTKit shipped earlier, but not by much (see the post by Eidorian) and was completely inadequate.

So are you asserting that Microsoft had access to information Adobe did not (because the performance advantage existed for well over a year) or that Microsoft is much better at performance tuning their applications then Adobe?

Your claim was that Adobe sucked because they did not have access to VDA, and then you claimed silverlight worked good because it used VDA (a year or more before Apple opened up access to it). You make a lot of interesting leaps in logic.

 

[Eidorian]

Plug-ins run outside of Safari's process space. Use your brain for once ?

EDIT : gak, you made me open Safari, what a piece of crap.

This has been the case since Snow Leopard...

I repeat myself far too often.

So are you asserting that Microsoft had access to information Adobe did not (because the performance advantage existed for well over a year) or that Microsoft is much better at performance tuning their applications then Adobe?

Your claim was that Adobe sucked because they did not have access to VDA, and then you claimed silverlight worked good because it used VDA (a year or more before Apple opened up access to it). You make a lot of interesting leaps in logic.

Silverlight had slightly better performance than Flash under OS X long before anyone had access to VDA.

 

[Henry Li]

I am against Apple monopoly. We, consumers, have the right to choose which product should stay. Personally Steve doesn't like flash, but this doesn't mean we hate flash. Give us back flash with hardware acceleration! I don't want mac os x lion to become iLion!