Google Chrome Set to Gain Integrated Flash Player Plug-In

[JackAxe]

I don't quite follow your argument.

Playing back this video in Youtube's HTML5 player makes Safari use up ~25% of my Macbook 1g CPU resources with the Macbook's fan running at a speed that makes one barely able to hear it . The same video, using Youtube's Flash player uses up ~ 70% CPU resources, with the fan quickly running at such a fast speed, that the sound becomes quite annoying.

HTML 5 YouTube on a Mac under Safari is Quicktime via GPU acceleration. So yeah, it's using less CPU, because the GPU is doing all the work and it's an OS integrated video player. This is good if you're using Safari on the Mac and your OS is 10.5 or later. So it's good for a tiny % of a tiny % of users.

If your fans kick on with only 70% CPU usage, your MacBook is running too HOT. Download Fan Control and invest in a notebook cooler. It's a portable, so it's not that efficient at cooling and it doesn't help that by default that Apple has set the the fan's RPMs to low. So with the mentioned software and a cooler, your fans shouldn't kick on when running a simple Flash video. My Mac portables don't.

Back to HTML 5 video. It does not work under FireFox or IE 8 and sooner -- let's see if 9 complies -- and it doesn't always take advantage of the GPU with most other platforms.

On my older Aluminum 17" when running HTML 5 video under Safari -- when I had 10.4.11 installed, the HTML 5 video examples I tried used a whopping 120% CPU just siting at the stupid play button. Then when it finally got going, it jumped to over 160% CPU.

For the majority of users, Flash does not hog the CPU. The example you provided did not rev up on my fans. When playing it full-screen it uses about 49% CPU on my Unibody 17" and about 57% in Chrome's browser frame. Before I ramble, full-screen video in Flash actually offloads some of the work to the GPU and eventually with future version of Flash, this wil all be offloaded even in the browser. Mobile device using Flash 10.1 beta, like the Nexus One, can offload all video and drawing to the GPU now, so it's coming to desktops sooner than later.

 

[iDarbert]

Are you sure? I remember reading only the GeForce 9400M is supported for gpu accelleration
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/1...ardware-acceleration-and-opencl-requirements/
I'm not sure it's still true though

also yes, html5 video works awful outside Snow Leopard, I'v tried enabling it on a Leopard iMac and the CPU goes around 60% vs Flash's 70%

HTML 5 YouTube on a Mac under Safari is Quicktime via GPU acceleration. So yeah, it's using less CPU, because the GPU is doing all the work and it's an OS integrated video player. This is good if you're using Safari on the Mac and your OS is 10.5 or later. So it's good for a tiny % of a tiny % of users.

If your fans kick on with only 70% CPU usage, your MacBook is running too HOT. Download Fan Control and invest in a notebook cooler. It's a portable, so it's not that efficient at cooling and it doesn't help that by default that Apple has set the the fan's RPMs to low. So with the mentioned software and a cooler, your fans shouldn't kick on when running a simple Flash video. My Mac portables don't.

Back to HTML 5 video. It does not work under FireFox or IE 8 and sooner -- let's see if 9 complies -- and it doesn't always take advantage of the GPU with most other platforms.

On my older Aluminum 17" when running HTML 5 video under Safari -- when I had 10.4.11 installed, the HTML 5 video examples I tried used a whopping 120% CPU just siting at the stupid play button. Then when it finally got going, it jumped to over 160% CPU.

For the majority of users, Flash does not hog the CPU. The example you provided did not rev up on my fans. When playing it full-screen it uses about 49% CPU on my Unibody 17" and about 57% in Chrome's browser frame. Before I ramble, full-screen video in Flash actually offloads some of the work to the GPU and eventually with future version of Flash, this wil all be offloaded even in the browser. Mobile device using Flash 10.1 beta, like the Nexus One, can offload all video and drawing to the GPU now, so it's coming to desktops sooner than later.

 

[tkermit]

HTML 5 YouTube on a Mac under Safari is Quicktime via GPU acceleration. So yeah, it's using less CPU, because the GPU is doing all the work and it's an OS integrated video player. This is good if you're using Safari on the Mac and your OS is 10.5 or later. So it's good for a tiny % of a tiny % of users.

If your fans kick on with only 70% CPU usage, your MacBook is running too HOT. Download Fan Control and invest in a notebook cooler. It's a portable, so it's not that efficient at cooling and it doesn't help that by default that Apple has set the the fan's RPMs to low. So with the mentioned software and a cooler, your fans shouldn't kick on when running a simple Flash video. My Mac portables don't.

Back to HTML 5 video. It does not work under FireFox or IE 8 and sooner -- let's see if 9 complies -- and it doesn't always take advantage of the GPU with most other platforms.

On my older Aluminum 17" when running HTML 5 video under Safari -- when I had 10.4.11 installed, the HTML 5 video examples I tried used a whopping 120% CPU just siting at the stupid play button. Then when it finally got going, it jumped to over 160% CPU.

For the majority of users, Flash does not hog the CPU. The example you provided did not rev up on my fans. When playing it full-screen it uses about 49% CPU on my Unibody 17" and about 57% in Chrome's browser frame. Before I ramble, full-screen video in Flash actually offloads some of the work to the GPU and eventually with future version of Flash, this wil all be offloaded even in the browser. Mobile device using Flash 10.1 beta, like the Nexus One, can offload all video and drawing to the GPU now, so it's coming to desktops sooner than later.

That's all well and good, but you should note that in practice, if you're on 10.6 running Safari, Flash will almost certainly use up a lot more resources than HTML5-based video, and consequently might rev up your fans, depending on your specific Mac model, where other video playback won't. As a percentage of overall Mac users, I would estimate the number of users on 10.6 using Safari to not be as tiny as you like to suggest.

As for your point about my Macbook running too hot: Yes, Apple seems to be fine with letting the first-generation Macbook's CPU get pretty hot, but as far as I can see the temperature stays within the acceptable range that has been specified by Intel, at all times and I wouldn't really want the laptop to be louder either, so I'm just gonna trust them on that. I'd be interested in knowing why you think that it runs 'too hot', as that would seem to imply a malfunction. Note that I've seen this behavior on every first-generation Macbook I've come in contact with. I'm certainly not about to invest in a notebook cooler.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Flash is a platform. The issue lies in the coders. Some Flash sites are amazing I no issues, some make my fans go crazy. Never had flash crash my Mac Book Pro Uni.

 

[jaw04005]

Are you sure? I remember reading only the GeForce 9400M is supported for gpu accelleration
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/1...ardware-acceleration-and-opencl-requirements/

You’re correct. QuickTime H.264 hardware decoding is only supported on the 9400M.

"QuickTime H.264 hardware acceleration requires a Mac with an NVIDIA 9400M graphics processor."

http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

So, Safari wouldn’t be using the GPU for HTML 5 compatible H.264 video playback on machines without the 9400M.

On my MacBook (Late 2006, Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, 2GB of RAM, GMA 950) viewing a 360p video in Safari using the latest Flash 10.1 beta — the Flash plug-in sucks up 55% of my CPU according to Activity Monitor. While opting in to YouTube’s HTML 5, the same video at the same resolution uses exactly 20% of my CPU.

The difference was even more dramatic before I installed the 10.1 beta — hovering around 70%+.

As far as I’m concerned, I hope the use of Flash as a method to display video (particularly H.264 video) dies out. There’s no advantage whatsoever now that the <video> tag is available to putting a Flash wrapper around a MPEG-4 H.264 file. It just adds an unnecessary layer.

I couldn’t care less about Flash remaining around as a developer tool or Web site element, but as the primary method to display Web page video — it just needs to go.

 

[inkswamp]

What's amusing about this to me is that Google fans constantly go on and on about how open and free Google is and how closed and proprietary Apple is, and yet, Apple is the one trying to unshackle users from proprietary plug-ins like Flash and Google is tying the users down to it whether they like it or not.

Sometimes I feel like we're all living in that alternate version of reality from Lost.

 

[cwwilson]

Woooow. So Googs is doing everything they can to spite Apple. They know Apple and its iPad/iPhone army are trying to take Flash down and now Google is shoving Apple back claiming that they want to "standardize" flash not only in internet form but as an integral part of their upcoming PC OS? No, it's about advertising and the money they get from it...And lo and behold most ads are Flash-based uber annoyances that take over your page with their flashing and stupid sounds. Ugh, I'm really stating to dislike this Apple v Google "war".

 

[keypox]

It just dawned on me that Google makes their money from advertising, and flash is largely used for advertising. I wonder if Apple's attempt to kill Flash is a factor in the "feud" between Apple and Google.

Apple doesnt want to kill flash, they want to kill alternate ways for people to enjoy things that they sell. Essentially flash is a competition to apple store products, thus apple wants to kill it.

Flash is great in windows.

 

[tkermit]

Apple doesnt want to kill flash, they want to kill alternate ways for people to enjoy things that they sell. Essentially flash is a competition to apple store products, thus apple wants to kill it.

I find it very hard to believe that Apple's only or even biggest reason for not allowing Flash on their mobile devices should be that they are scared of the competition it poses

 

[Nuvi]

What's amusing about this to me is that Google fans constantly go on and on about how open and free Google is and how closed and proprietary Apple is, and yet, Apple is the one trying to unshackle users from proprietary plug-ins like Flash and Google is tying the users down to it whether they like it or not.

I'm definitely not a Google fan but I have to admit they've created some good products. However, I think its clear to most whats their motivation to create and provide us with information (advertising is their business and they want the efficiency). Regarding Apple "unshackling end users from proprietary plug-ins", honestly Apple is really not doing any of that. First of all there are no "shackles" to get rid of in the first place. That talk is some open source aficionado bull. Create me a highly interactive rich media site with opens source tools and I show you a super duper geek with way too much time in their hands. Having variety of tools, open source or not in your disposal is freedom. Having being locked down in one solution is not, be it open source or not. Regarding Apple's aim with Flash on pads, phones and pods is not to support open standards. Its to control media distribution. If you want open then let us install what ever plug-ins we like so we can decide ourselves what we want to use. Anyway, regarding the annoying banners. Why on earth would anyone think we won't be seeing plethora of HTML5 banners as soon as HTML5 has reached wider support on browsers.

 

[tkermit]

Regarding Apple's aim with Flash on pads, phones and pods is not to support open standards. Its to control media distribution. If you want open then let us install what ever plug-ins we like so we can decide ourselves what we want to use.

For better or worse, I think Apple is successful because they often prevent their users from making such decision on their own. I would agree that they want control. The question is, what exactly they are trying to control. In my opinion, it is the user experience that they'd like to have complete control over, which incidentally is seen by many as the unique selling point of their products . Ultimately, they want to sell hardware devices and that's what they make the lion's share of their money from. I find it much more probable that they are scared of tainting the user experience than that they are scared of losing their status of being the sole media distributor on their platform due to potentially better offerings by competitors .

 

[Nuvi]

For better or worse, I think Apple is successful because they often prevent their users from making such decision on their own. I would agree that they want control. The question is, what exactly they are trying to control. In my opinion, it is the user experience that they'd like to have complete control over, which incidentally is seen by many as the unique selling point of their products . Ultimately, they want to sell hardware devices and that's what they make the lion's share of their money from. I find it much more probable that they are scared of tainting the user experience than that they are scared of losing their status of being the sole media distributor on their platform due to potentially better offerings by competitors .

It is not just hardware sales they are after. Especially with lower profit margin products such as iPads and phones they probably want to utilise the media distribution chain to the max. Regarding the user experience, I don't think plug-ins wouldn't disrupt it as long as you could install / uninstall / enable / disable them easily. I don't think Apple is afraid of other stores selling competing media products. Its more like they are afraid consumers are content with free content and therefore don't purchase media products from Apple. Anyway, if they can successfully sell closed products such as the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone they have little incentive to open up the platform for third party plug-ins. If the sales slow down its likely they will loosen they grip on third party plug-ins policy.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Playing back this video in Youtube's HTML5 player makes Safari use up ~25% of my Macbook 1g CPU resources with the Macbook's fan running at a speed that makes one barely able to hear it . The same video, using Youtube's Flash player uses up ~ 70% CPU resources, with the fan quickly running at such a fast speed, that the sound becomes quite annoying.

I'm at 14% CPU in the flash version, 1993 rpm on my fans. Don't know what your issue is on your machine.

I find it very hard to believe that Apple's only or even biggest reason for not allowing Flash on their mobile devices should be that they are scared of the competition it poses

Anyone remember when Apple sued Sorenson for selling the Spark video codec to Macromedia when Flash integrated video for the first time?

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2002/05/02/apple_sues_sorenson_for_flashing

Apple claimed Sorenson "intentionally disrupted the economic advantage" that Apple had with their Sorenson video quicktime codec license. Apple was worried about competition in the video field at the time. Although there was Real, windows media, etc back then, whenever something had to look GOOD pre 2002, quicktime was almost always the fallback for knowing something would look amazing. The first Star Wars Episode 1 trailer was released in quicktime for a reason. It looked fantastic compared to everything else.

Fast forward 4 years, and people are watching video online through flash.

Fast forward another 4 years, and Apple has picked themselves up off the floor after getting their ass kicked in the online video realm, but the game has changed again. It's about monetizing the content. And Apple will fight for that. Freshly infused with massive cash from their iPod, iTunes, iPhone, App Store, and laptop sales, Apple uses it's significant media clout to throw another punch in an age old fight.

This is not a new tactic for Apple. I don't blame them for acting in their own best interests, but I certainly dislike it when their interests and mine diverge. I rather like my flash video sites, and my apple devices, but Apple won't let me put their chocolate in my peanut butter.

And I likes me some peanut butter cups!

 

[tkermit]

It is not just hardware sales they are after. Especially with lower profit margin products such as iPads and phones they probably want to utilise the media distribution chain to the max. Regarding the user experience, I don't think plug-ins wouldn't disrupt it as long as you could install / uninstall / enable / disable them easily. I don't think Apple is afraid of other stores selling competing media products. Its more like they are afraid consumers are content with free content and therefore don't purchase media products from Apple. Anyway, if they can successfully sell closed products such as the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone they have little incentive to open up the platform for third party plug-ins. If the sales slow down its likely they will loosen they grip on third party plug-ins policy.

I'm not sure I would call the iPads and phones "lower profit margin" products, but you are certainly right about Apple's desire to fully utilize the media distribution chain. The way in which Apple restricts the usage possibilities of their products brings to light a certain, often arguably justified, arrogance within Apple which is based on the conviction that they know what the users want better than the users themselves. It is only natural that they can't always be right in this regard and I think there are valid arguments to be made for the inclusion of Flash. Strategically though it appears to me that they've made the right decision in not offering Flash support at the current stage. From the viewpoint of a user, I couldn't imagine Flash on an iPad device to currently be a great user experience, so I won't miss it, and also appreciate the pressure Apple are putting on content providers to offer alternative, standards-based ways of accessing their products (even if this is not really an end in itself from the perspective of Apple).

I'm at 14% CPU in the flash version, 1993 rpm on my fans. Don't know what your issue is on your machine.

Well, what kind of computer are you using? The 'issue' with my machine I suspect is that it is a Macbook from 4 years ago

 

[conradwt]

I just think it's rather coincidental that I couldn't watch the iPad tutorials on Chrome (sound only, no picture) when they "magically" play perfect in Safari. Aren't they both using webkit?

Yes, both Chrome and Safari use WebKit as the rendering engine. However, each company adds their browser specific code base to produce the end product (i.e. Chrome or Safari). Next, I was able to watch the videos just fine in Chrome on Mac OS 10.6.3.

 

[conradwt]

I find it very hard to believe that Apple's only or even biggest reason for not allowing Flash on their mobile devices should be that they are scared of the competition it poses

Apple wants to stick with web standards and Flash isn't a web standard. I have been much more impressed with WebGL 2D and 3D animation which is a web standard developed on top of another web standard (i.e. HTML5 canvas tag). Furthermore, it uses much less CPU resources than Flash and it doesn't tie me to their associated Flash development tools. Please don't get me wrong because I use Dreamweaver and Photoshop on a regular basis. Will Adobe be supporting HTML5 in their Creative Suite 5 (CS5)? Let's see what happens on April 12th.

 

[MotleyPete]

Does Chrome for Mac have a decent PDF plugin yet?

 

[Nuvi]

Apple wants to stick with web standards and Flash isn't a web standard. I have been much more impressed with WebGL 2D and 3D animation which is a web standard developed on top of another web standard (i.e. HTML5 canvas tag). Furthermore, it uses much less CPU resources than Flash and it doesn't tie me to their associated Flash development tools. Please don't get me wrong because I use Dreamweaver and Photoshop on a regular basis. Will Adobe be supporting HTML5 in their Creative Suite 5 (CS5)? Let's see what happens on April 12th.

Actually Flash complies with standards set by W3C if done correctly with Satay Method. Regarding open source implementations, as said earlier the problem is with lack of good (make it decent) tools which allow devs to deliver the product in time and within the budget. Web dev open source tools without solid support just won't do it. Regarding HTML5 its only natural that Adobe will be supporting it. Actually they said they are and they are one partner developing it. Anyway, I have hard time seeing why there should be only one solution deving web rich media products. There is a right time and place for different solutions. The end results are up to those who create the product.

Regarding open standards in general, I think its hypocritical for Apple to preach about open standards when the whole company is based closed environment solutions. Its like Mao Zedong preaching about shining victory of capitalism.

 

[Darkroom]

Apple wants to stick with web standards and Flash isn't a web standard.

Quicktime isn't a web standard, but currently it's the only way to watch video on the iPhone OS.

ActionScript 3.0 conforms to the implementation ECMAScript draft specification while the Flex SDK is open source, free and allows you to develop your apps or flash sites with any IDE of your choice. it's great stuff!

 

[tkermit]

Regarding open standards in general, I think its hypocritical for Apple to preach about open standards when the whole company is based closed environment solutions.

I would agree as well as disagree with you there, depending on what you mean by "closed environment solutions". I think the problem is that people sometimes conflate the concept of closed end-user products that offer possibly narrow functionality based on opaque proprietary technology, with closed content and data, which, by its nature, might benefit from being accessible from a multitude of devices. I think it's perfectly fine for an iPod or iPad to present itself as a closed environment as long as it has means of 'communicating' in the language of open standards and you can freely share and access your data between devices, so that there's no vendor lock-in. Of course, there's still a lot to criticize about Apple in this regard.

 

[fat phil]

Quicktime isn't a web standard, but currently it's the only way to watch video on the iPhone OS.

ActionScript 3.0 conforms to the implementation ECMAScript draft specification while the Flex SDK is open source, free and allows you to develop your apps or flash sites with any IDE of your choice. it's great stuff!

Flex, and great. Two words that don't belong together...

 

[peter2]

Quicktime isn't a web standard, but currently it's the only way to watch video on the iPhone OS.

ActionScript 3.0 conforms to the implementation ECMAScript draft specification while the Flex SDK is open source, free and allows you to develop your apps or flash sites with any IDE of your choice. it's great stuff!

Html 5 video is just a tag in the html language. Apple uses a proprietary (licensing-requiring) codec - h.264 which certainly is not a web standard. Before you get overexcited, read http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/01/html5-video-and-h-264-what-history-tells-us-and-why-were-standing-with-the-web/

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Watch a vid and use 40% of my cpu, watch in hd and max out my cpu.

 

[K...]

What a load of crap; Adobe has had over half a decade to fix the problems with their Flash player; they have failed to do so every release. They claimed they never release a version of Flash with known crashes - and yet we have them finally admit that they did ship 10.0 with a known crash which they have since refused to fix up until recently.

...

Bullcrap - the issue is that if something goes wrong, who gets the blame? Adobe or Apple? I can bloody well assure you, having lived in the Microsoft world before, it is Microsoft who gets the blame for almost everything even if it has nothing to do with them. System crashes - who is to blame? the hardware vendor and their crappy drivers but Microsoft gets the blame. Software incompatibilities with a new version of Windows, whose the blame? the software vendor for failing to provide an update in a timely fashion but Microsoft gets the blame from the clueless legion of halfwitts who blame the biggest target rather than the cause of the problem.

Bullcrap back at ya. If Adobe can work with other companies to make Flash work well on their mobile devices, they obviously could do the same with MacOS, and the beefy CPUs in Macs. If Adobe says that they need cooperation from Apple to improve Flash on Mac OS, take them at their word. Jobs has some obvious reasons to skew public sentiment (namely conflict with the App Store). I use Flash all the time. It has never crashed on my Intel MacBook Pro. Yes, I'm one user, but many others report the same thing in these forums.

 

[PeterQVenkman]

Well, what kind of computer are you using? The 'issue' with my machine I suspect is that it is a Macbook from 4 years ago

Aluminum Mac Book Pro, the model before the Unibody laptops, 2.53 Ghz Core 2 duo, 6 GB RAM. BTW- thanks for the vid, I ended up watching the majority of it. Neat stuff.