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I agree, you summed your own reply up correctly in your first paragraph :)

Happy to be wrong. How exactly? :)

Direct2D is a new API from Microsoft.

ATI and NVIDIA had to introduce an enhancement to their GPUs such that the data from a decoded H.264 stream could be copied back to system memory. They also had to expose this via their drivers in a way that was usable - both released new drivers for existing hardware for it to work.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe_flashplayer_plus_nvidia.html

http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-accelerates-flash-player-2009nov17.aspx

This is different to decoding it and displaying it to a set rect on the screen - the other, older method of video decode acceleration. Not suitable for Flash as it needs to be able to layer on top.

The lack of Cocoa use is entirely Adobe's fault!

The H.264 decoding framework was introduced with 10.6.3
Pray, tell me how Adobe could implement it prior to this being added?

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2010/tn2267.html
 
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Flash uses more power, which causes more carbon output, which kills the earth.

Save the earth, kill flash. :D

So I have to use the stove to fry my eggs again and stop using my MBP running flash? :eek:

Happy to be wrong. How exactly? :)

Your previous comment, the way I read it, seemed to be absolving Adobe from blame. Perhaps I misread it.
 
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Adobe doesn't need an MBA-specific version of Flash, they need a Mac-friendly version of Flash.

That Shantanu Narayen still doesn't get that tells me either he lives in a fantasy world, or his team consistently lies to him. Or both. :p
 
There's nothing quite live blissful naivety to make a false argument! :p

The boring reality is that Adobe actually required hardware (GPU) and API (driver and OS) enhancements from Microsoft, Apple, ATI and NVIDIA to develop, test and introduce proper hardware acceleration to their software.

That would only make sense if the only performance issue people had with Flash was when it is playing H.264 video. That's the only difference with hardware acceleration in this case.
 
Adobe doesn't need an MBA-specific version of Flash, they need a Mac-friendly version of Flash.

That Shantanu Narayen still doesn't get that tells me either he lives in a fantasy world, or his team consistently lies to him. Or both. :p

+1

Flash on a Mac has been behind its PC counterpart since the Macromedia days. The current Apple/Adobe feud wouldn't be half as bad as it is now if they had taken the time to make a passable Flash player for Mac.
 
I get the impression that if it wasn't for Steve constantly pressuring and harassing Adobe to fix Flash and make it a reasonable experience on the Mac, Adobe would be doing absolutely nothing to improve their Mac version of Flash. Good for Steve. It shouldn't take a nonstop stream of public shaming to cause Adobe to actually fix their software.

Remember, in order for Adobe to improve Flash performance it required Apple to make available the graphic acceleration APIs.... it has only been in the last 6 months that Apple have done so. Until Apple had done this, graphic performance would always be crap.
 
Remember, in order for Adobe to improve Flash performance it required Apple to make available the graphic excelleration APIs.... it has only been in the last 6 months that Apple have done so.

Again, that only applies to playing H.264 video. Flash has a whole lot of other performance problems. And security problems. And privacy problems.
 
That would only make sense if the only performance issue people had with Flash was when it is playing H.264 video. That's the only difference with hardware acceleration in this case.

Video decoding is the major resource consumer when it has to be done in software.

For windows, Direct2D was a new feature with Windows 7, back ported to Vista, to allow general acceleration.

Granted, Cocoa has been around for a while which would reduce resource consumption - but I've mentioned that as an Adobe failing. As is the lack of a stable 64-bit build.

They have also been architectural improvements made to Flash to stop crappy content using too much resources - throttling back timers e.t.c. That's not directly Adobe's fault, more developers using Flash badly.

I can do the same thing with HTML and Javascript directly in a browser - It's perhaps just harder...
 
Why is Adobe trying so hard to hang on to Flash when it's out dated? Clearly there is something better that the consumer is asking for. I don't understand how this video software works, so I can't give any opinion on the tech side, but it sure sounds like Adobe is being stupid!!!:cool::apple:
 
Somebody want to explain to me exactly why the flash runtime has to be optimized for a specific model Macbook???

Does that mean the rest of us are still stuck with an unoptimized POS version??
 
Hardware acceleration is a relatively new feature for Flash even on Windows, so what was their excuse to blame Apple before then?

Well they didn't blame Apple as far as I can see? It's taken momentum in the whole industry to change both hardware and software behind the scenes - which Adobe are now leveraging. I think you're being disingenuous. ;)
 
Video decoding is the major resource consumer when it has to be done in software.

We aren't talking about video decoding in general. Only H.264 decoding is addressed by hardware acceleration. There is a great deal of Flash video on the web that is not encoded in H.264.

For windows, Direct2D was a new feature with Windows 7 to allow general acceleration.

Granted, Cocoa has been around for a while which would reduce resource consumption - but I've mentioned that as an Adobe failing. As is the lack of a stable 64-bit build.

They have also been architectural improvements made to Flash to stop crappy content using too much resources - throttling back timers e.t.c. That's not directly Adobe's fault, more developers using Flash badly.

I can do the same thing with HTML and Javascript - It's perhaps just harder...

I'm not sure what that has to do with what I said. Adobe has had plenty of performance issues outside of H.264 decoding that only seem to have begun to be addressed since Apple made their stance against Flash.
 
Why is Adobe trying so hard to hang on to Flash when it's out dated? Clearly there is something better that the consumer is asking for. I don't understand how this video software works, so I can't give any opinion on the tech side, but it sure sounds like Adobe is being stupid!!!:cool::apple:

I dunno, maybe because they make money off the development tools. Flash isn't outdated, it's still ahead of html5 (seeing how it's not even been ratified). It's just the implementation sucks of Flash sucks, like most things that have been around for years and acquire bloat.
 
I'm honestly a little curious; it's not clear to me from his comments if by "hardware acceleration" he means "h.264 hardware decoding" or if he means "hardware acceleration of all 2D drawing routines."

Because those are really, really different things. HTML5 video in h264 requires substantially less CPU grunt to display than Flash video in h264, but that's not why having Flash installed and enabled reduces battery life by a ridiculous amount. No, it's Flash-based ads, few of which play video without prompting. It's a banner sitting there displaying a sliding monkey sprite or something else barely (or not) animated, yet chewing up 100% of an entire CPU on a dual-core, 2+GHz system.

Now, maybe he's saying that's going to get hardware accelerated too. That would sure be nice, and would make a massive difference when it came to battery life and heat output on a laptop. If he just means GPU-based video decoding, then he's blowing smoke, and I could care less.

Also, none of this addresses the fact that Flash is the most crash-prone abomination of software since Word 6. On my Core Duo Mac, where Flash still runs as part of the browser since it's not 64-bit and Apple hasn't broken it out into its own little suicide-prevention sandbox, nine out of ten Safari crashes are Flash. Just yesterday, ten tabs and windows open, had been open for a couple of days, but trying to watch a Youtube video, and boom, Flash kills Safari. Thanks.

Seriously, I could almost accept Flash being a horrific resource hog--at least that I can use Flashblock to get around--but crashing constantly is far more annoying.
 
I dunno, maybe because they make money off the development tools. Flash isn't outdated, it's still ahead of html5 (seeing how it's not even been ratified). It's just the implementation sucks of Flash sucks, like most things that have been around for years and acquire bloat.
Adobe could just as well make money out of HTML5 development tools.

As to Flash being ahead of HTML5 because the standard still isn't ratified? Sorry, I missed the part where Flash became a ratified open standard. Flash is way behind HTML5 in that respect.
 
I gave Adobe the benefit of the doubt when Steve had his public later on flash. I can't really anymore. They even can't get their crap together on mobile, and that's a platform where Apple isn't strangling them.
 
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Flash has the encrypted video segment locked up. Until HTML5 can encrypt/protect video from copying, Flash will continue to exist.

As to why a model-specific build, maybe since the new MBA is the first line of computers to completely give up the HDD ghost, Adobe can optimize how Flash works with SSD space?
 
Flash misbehaves since I installed the hardware accelerated version on my MBP. :mad:
 
Happy to be wrong. How exactly? :)

Direct2D is a new API from Microsoft.

ATI and NVIDIA had to introduce an enhancement to their GPUs such that the data from a decoded H.264 stream could be copied back to system memory. They also had to expose this via their drivers in a way that was usable - both released new drivers for existing hardware for it to work.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe_flashplayer_plus_nvidia.html

http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/amd-accelerates-flash-player-2009nov17.aspx

This is different to decoding it and displaying it to a set rect on the screen - the other, older method of video decode acceleration. Not suitable for Flash as it needs to be able to layer on top.

The lack of Cocoa use is entirely Adobe's fault!

The H.264 decoding framework was introduced with 10.6.3
Pray, tell me how Adobe could implement it prior to this being added?

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2010/tn2267.html
Outside of Betas, Flash didn't support hardware acceleration on any platform prior to 10.1 in June. Performance issues on OSX go back much further then this past June, so most of this talk of GPU acceleration is a red herring.
The problem is that Flash's poor performance extends far beyond simply video playback. Basic Flash animations or even applets simply waiting for a mouse over event also consume inordinate CPU, RAM and have always had questionably stability under OSX.
My MBP loses over an hour of average battery life with Flash installed w/o watch any video.

I understand that the battery issue is not all Adobe's fault. A lot of it is the result of inept developers that don't properly throttle their animation frame rates. but the fact remains that today browsing the web on a Mac w/o Flash enabled has significant advantages.
 
Also, none of this addresses the fact that Flash is the most crash-prone abomination of software since Word 6. On my Core Duo Mac, where Flash still runs as part of the browser since it's not 64-bit and Apple hasn't broken it out into its own little suicide-prevention sandbox, nine out of ten Safari crashes are Flash. Just yesterday, ten tabs and windows open, had been open for a couple of days, but trying to watch a Youtube video, and boom, Flash kills Safari. Thanks.

Seriously, I could almost accept Flash being a horrific resource hog--at least that I can use Flashblock to get around--but crashing constantly is far more annoying.

Here's the problem. Safari crashes a lot using Flash, BUT when I use Firefox on the Mac, it doesn't.

WHY is that? Safari isn't the best browser anymore.
 
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