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Will Flash ever truly be optimised for OS X?

M

martynmc7

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 30, 2008
207
0
It's always seemed ridiculous to me that with so many OS X users out there Adobe has never seen fit to really push flash optimisation on Macs. There seem to be small incremental improvements, after recently updating to flash player 10 my CPU usage on YouTube HD videos went down from 80% to around 50-60%, but these are still ridiculous numbers for a simple YouTube video (not to mention my lap getting stupidly warm after enough YouTube-ing thanks to the CPU load).

What are people's thoughts, will Adobe ever bother? Will flash ever die and give way to a better format that can be optimised for Macs straight off the bat? Will Snow Leopard make any difference? Do Adobe even care? Is there anything to be done?
 
Tallest Skil said:
I sure hope not. I want HTML5 to replace everything that Flash used to be the go-to app for.

Use web standards for webpages, not Flash. Not from one company.
Click to expand...

I agree, the internet is an open forum for information and discussion, and as such shouldn't have to use proprietary means. Companies can do what they like with their software and OS', but no one company owns the internet, it should be based on open formats for all it's media.
 
martynmc7 said:
I agree, the internet is an open forum for information and discussion, and as such shouldn't have to use proprietary means. Companies can do what they like with their software and OS', but no one company owns the internet, it should be based on open formats for all it's media.
Click to expand...

Yeah, now all we have to do is hope that the browser vendors decide on a format. Or at least decide on formats anyone can use.
 
Tallest Skil said:
... I want HTML5 to replace everything that Flash used to be the go-to app for. ...
Click to expand...

A recent posting on WHATWG by Ian 'Hixie' Hickson, author and maintainer of the Web Applications 1.0/HTML5 specification, regarding codecs for <audio> and <video> seems to indicate you may be waiting a while... Quoting from the message:

The current situation is as follows:

Apple refuses to implement Ogg Theora in Quicktime by default (as used
by Safari), citing lack of hardware support and an uncertain patent
landscape.

Google has implemented H.264 and Ogg Theora in Chrome, but cannot
provide the H.264 codec license to third-party distributors of
Chromium, and have indicated a belief that Ogg Theora's quality-per-bit
is not yet suitable for the volume handled by YouTube.

Opera refuses to implement H.264, citing the obscene cost of the
relevant patent licenses.

Mozilla refuses to implement H.264, as they would not be able to obtain
a license that covers their downstream distributors.

Microsoft has not commented on their intent to support <video> at all.
Click to expand...
 
localoid said:
A recent posting on WHATWG by Ian 'Hixie' Hickson, author and maintainer of the Web Applications 1.0/HTML5 specification, regarding codecs for <audio> and <video> seems to indicate you may be waiting a while... Quoting from the message:
Click to expand...

Yes, this is a major bummer when the standards committees can't reach a conclusion.
 
Unless there's a radical change in personnel at Adobe, I don't see it happening. Their products have gone down in quality a lot in recent years and the OSX versions seem to be consistently worse than their Windows counterparts. Same is true with the Flash plugin.
 
I keep my hopes up that one day Apple will buy Adobe. Then maybe they'd fix Flash.
 
It should be possible to add H.264 support to Firefox with a plugin. There are some open source H.264 decoders out there.

For Opera, I don't think most people will care about what they will be doing.
 
vanc said:
It should be possible to add H.264 support to Firefox with a plugin. There are some open source H.264 decoders out there.

For Opera, I don't think most people will care about what they will be doing.
Click to expand...

I think the easiest thing, and something that has been mentioned in the discussions I've read, is for each webpage to see what operating system & browser is running and to make the determination of which video to play. Sites already have multiple video files anyway (mov, wmv, etc) so having an h.264 and an ogg file will not be a departure for them, but for the user the experience becomes transparent, and that ought to be the goal for HTML5--creating the experience for the user.
 
jdechko said:
I think the easiest thing, and something that has been mentioned in the discussions I've read, is for each webpage to see what operating system & browser is running and to make the determination of which video to play. Sites already have multiple video files anyway (mov, wmv, etc) so having an h.264 and an ogg file will not be a departure for them, but for the user the experience becomes transparent, and that ought to be the goal for HTML5--creating the experience for the user.
Click to expand...

But that would require work and extra server space...... and work by the webmasters. WORK!

I don't see that happening on a large scale at any time.
 
madog said:
But that would require work and extra server space...... and work by the webmasters. WORK!

I don't see that happening on a large scale at any time.
Click to expand...

But it's precisely what's happening now. Webmasters are having to maintain a quicktime version and a windows media version for different platforms. The only difference is that we (the users) have to select which one we want to watch.
 
jdechko said:
But it's precisely what's happening now. Webmasters are having to maintain a quicktime version and a windows media version for different platforms. The only difference is that we (the users) have to select which one we want to watch.
Click to expand...

I think this is actually happening less now than it used to--thanks to Flash.
 
I remember reading that if google changed its homepage to a black background the power savings throughout the world would be huge. Imagine if flash optimized their plugin, i think its ecologically unsound and unfair for them to not open up the code for optimization and then allow some of our laptops to cool down. id buy a new computer just so it doesnt have to have the fans whirring everytime i watch some youtube clips.
 
ruku said:
I remember reading that if google changed its homepage to a black background the power savings throughout the world would be huge. Imagine if flash optimized their plugin, i think its ecologically unsound and unfair for them to not open up the code for optimization and then allow some of our laptops to cool down. id buy a new computer just so it doesnt have to have the fans whirring everytime i watch some youtube clips.
Click to expand...

Actually on TFT monitors aka LCD, it reqires more energy to produce black then white with the exception being Vertical Alignment lcd's which account for less than 5% of lcds.
 
blackhand1001 said:
Actually on TFT monitors aka LCD, it reqires more energy to produce black then white with the exception being Vertical Alignment lcd's which account for less than 5% of lcds.
Click to expand...

Beat me to it, though I was going to ask if IPS monitors would have the same "issue".

To explain the concept a little further (while still keeping it basic): twisted nematic (TN) LCDs apply current to "twist" the arrangement of the liquid crystals in each cell on the screen. The more current, the tighter the formation, and the less light let through. So full current would get you black, and no current gets you white.
 
martynmc7 said:
It's always seemed ridiculous to me that with so many OS X users out there Adobe has never seen fit to really push flash optimisation on Macs. There seem to be small incremental improvements, after recently updating to flash player 10 my CPU usage on YouTube HD videos went down from 80% to around 50-60%, but these are still ridiculous numbers for a simple YouTube video (not to mention my lap getting stupidly warm after enough YouTube-ing thanks to the CPU load).

What are people's thoughts, will Adobe ever bother? Will flash ever die and give way to a better format that can be optimised for Macs straight off the bat? Will Snow Leopard make any difference? Do Adobe even care? Is there anything to be done?
Click to expand...

it's not really optimized for any OS...pretty slow all around
 
Yes, this is a major bummer when the standards committees can't reach a conclusion.
Click to expand...
It's not a problem of reaching conclusions, they had already made this decision but the industry was against it, as the posted text shows. They can't really do much, they only propose standards. If companies that make browsers refuse to accept those standards, they don't mean anything.

Originally Posted by Boneoh View Post
Funny, I keep praying that MS Won't buy Adobe! I am too dependent on CS4...
Click to expand...
That would almost completely kill the design industry!
Click to expand...
:D Good one...

it's not really optimized for any OS...pretty slow all around
Click to expand...
I agree to an extent, but it's still much much better on Windows.
 
Cinder6 said:
I think this is actually happening less now than it used to--thanks to Flash.
Click to expand...

You're probably right. But we know that the biggest problems with flash are 1) it's still crappy video, 2) it requires a plug-in and 3) it sucks on anything but Windows. Since HTML5 <video> is supposed use native codecs, which are better quality than flash, all 3 of those points are addressed.

I don't know how they will resolve this conflict, but hopefully someone will do something to compromise so that these new advancements in HTML5 can be used. In the solution I posted (which isn't mine, I'm just repeating it), it just seems to me like it's the web developer that's going to have to do it, or we're going to be stuck using flash, silverlight, wmv, h.264 and ogg, in plug-in hell.
 
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