Why does Flash content in Safari/on a Mac make my fans roar?

[doowrehs]

This is something I've wanted to know for quite some time. From the Powerbook 15" running 10.3.1 I bought several years ago, through to the MacBook running 10.4.10 that I currently use - I've consistently noticed that pages with Flash content often cause my fans to run very fast and my CPU temp to spike dramatically. What's strange is that the same, identical pages when viewed on a PC don't seem to produce the same effect i.e. the PC's temperature/fans remain at normal levels. And what's even stranger is that not all Flash content seems to produce this effect on my Macs, only certain sites...

So what's happening here?? Is Flash just not very well implemented on Macs (i.e. is it Adobe's fault?), or is it a problem with Safari's webkit/Mac architecture? If Safari is the culprit, does anyone know if this is fixed in Safari 3.0?

 

[mkrishnan]

Yeah, there have been a number of threads about this before. Something is off with the way Flash for Macs works. It's always seemed to me that the Flash behavior of my iBook G4 / 800 was about what I expected, but definitely Flash seems to burden Windows PCs less than Macs. No one has come up with a super satisfactory answer. Just *tsk tsk* shame, Macromedia, shame. And now *tsk tsk* shame, Adobe, shame.

 

[BiikeMike]

Wirelessly posted (Treo: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; PalmSource/Palm-D052; Blazer/4.5) 16;320x320)

Odd, I've never experienced that.....

 

[aristobrat]

It's not a Safari issue .. Flash acts the same way in my Firefox, too.

No wonder they wanted to keep it away from the iPhone. You could probably watch 2 minutes of a Flash video before the phone either melted or the CPU usage drained the entire battery.

 

[xlopez]

Happens to me too. If you find out anything let us know.

 

[decksnap]

Flash on Macs is and always has been absolute crap. Blame Macromedia. I'll spot Adobe another six months of development time before I start blaming them.

 

[BiikeMike]

Well, after reading this earlier and never having a problem with Flash, I was just watching some embedded videos on a news website, and my fans on my MBP came on full force. Weird.