Youtube hates macbook battery

[danielfishr]

I have a white macbook, the machine is great and I'm especially happy with battery. I'm looking at the meter now and it says I have 5:30 remaining, excellent. Not many machines can compete with that.

The problem begins when I browse to a flash video website. Youtube, BBC iplayer etc. I know and expect this will drain the battery faster than visiting macrumours.

However I do not expect my cpu usage to sky rocket. The fans to begin working overtime to prevent the machine from melting and my estimate battery time to drop to 1:00 from over 5.

Does everyone else have this problem? Are some browsers better than than others for preventing this? Or is it all down to adobe and there atrocious video implementation.

 

[daxomni]

I get the same thing on my 2K9 MBP. Not sure what the problem is, but I'm guessing it's Adobe's inefficient code.

 

[NewMacbookPlz]

It's a Flash issue.

Flash for OS X is horribly written and uses far more CPU power than it does in a windows environment. Adobe knows about the issue, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be a key/forefront issue in their eyes at this point in time.

Everybody with a Mac experiences this issue with Flash and battery life. In my experience, browser choice makes no difference.

 

[mrsir2009]

Yeah, its a OSX problem. At school I was playing this simple game on a website and after about 5 mins of playing the computer got really hot and the fans went crazy! Then it crashed 🙁

 

[danielfishr]

What I thought...

I guessed as much.

One of the major advantages for me of a macbook (pro) over any other laptop is the battery life.

This flash issue wipes out this advantage for me... 😡 Adobe need to sort this out, and produce more efficient code.

If Apple and even Microsoft can get good quality video on a mac (Silverlight 3) without pounding the cpu then why can't Adobe.

No wonder Steve Jobs doesn't want flash on the iphone. The batteries will be running dead in under an hour, that or exploding. Useless...

 

[Richard1028]

I'm looking at the meter now and it says I have 5:30 remaining, excellent. Not many machines can compete with that.

That even exceeds Apple's claims. Use that macbook for a few simple tasks and check what is says 2 hours from now. I guarantee it won't say 3:30 remaining.

I get maybe 4 1/2 hours if I'm lucky with bluetooth and airport disabled and the screen cranked way down.

 

[Full of Win]

No reason for Adobe to spend resources on it.

 

[Richard1028]

Everybody with a Mac experiences this issue with Flash and battery life. In my experience, browser choice makes no difference.

Not so for me. Firefox uses about 20% less.

I also flip back and forth between OSX 10.5 and 10.6. While Safari is still the king of CPU suckers, it's not as bad on Leopard.

Yes, Flash has always sucked on a mac but SL contributed to the problem as well.