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rrtzmd

Flash a "CPU Hog or Hot Tamale"?

...one argument for ignoring "flash" is that it is "inefficient" and a "CPU hog"...this article suggests otherwise:

www.streaminglearningcenter.com­/articles­/flash­-pla...

...is it a fair comparison?

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18 replies
coologuy1957

looking at the tests objectively, it seems Apples closed system again is what is killing them with Flash and not Flash itself. Flash 10.1 outperforms HTML 5 in all tests using Windows and the CPU utilization is so low that it doesn't seem like any problems would arise from it. It really seems that Adobe has done their part to make Flash better, while Apple has simply shut their door too early and not given them access to processes which would improve its performance on Macs given that they have nearly identical innards now...

looks like a win for Flash!

If anyone has tests showing different results, I would love to see them...
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sinX

It's funny 'cause I don't think they would be working nearly as hard on flash for mobile if it was t for the iPhone.
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Naraka

Interesting article. I do wish flash in a video player sense was on the ipad. However I do know that when I play a flash based game on my little laptop/netbook, my cpu starts a crunchin, fans start a blowin, and battery gets to draining. On machine with decent horsepower however flash runs fine.

I think a lot of the web will soon move away from flash, not that everything is suddenly going to be converted, but slowly as sites redesign it will mostly go.
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Neel

Fight the propaganda!
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Gogo

Breaking news, flash sucks on the Mac!

On another note, I wholeheartedly applaud rrtzmd's dedication in ensuring the iPad discussion is full of life and interest.
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Gogo

In all seriousness, why won't Adobe use OpenCL?
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toddjy

I used to check the weekly ads at stores like Best Buy and Office Depot, then they all started using Flash exclusively. What does Flash give me that the previous ads didn't? The page turning animation? How much of my bandwidth is that wasting?

To paraphrase the Rogue's Gallery: Down with Flash!
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coologuy1957

way to crap on a whole technology with one crappy example... besides the fact that every site like the kind you describe has a non-flash alternative button you can press if you aren't amazed by the page turn animations.......
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toddjy

They used to have those buttons, but most have dropped the html pages and now only have Flash.

Want some more reasons why Flash is Trash? I used to download Unreal and Quake levels from FileFront. Each page was covered with Flash ads, and when I had three pages or more open, my browser would be incredibly slow.

The Pwn to Own contests? Most recently, no system falls until Adobe products are added.

Now, maybe Adobe has followed Microsoft's example and rebuilt Flash to be much more streamlined. I'll be glad when they do the same to Acrobat. It takes forever to load on my work computer.
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eikonklast

Flash on my iMac is right down awful. When I turn it off Safari flies. Turn it back on and soon I have no RAM left and the CPU is maxed out. The beta of 10.1 was a marked improvement but not stable enough for the sites I visit.
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NuclearFire

Ditto. Whenever I notice my fans are blowing but I'm not doing anything, I know that I must have left a webpage with flash on it open.
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phathom

I hate flash, they originally used it to replace animated gif files for advertisements due to Compuserve trying to sue the crap out of everyone. It's slow, eats a good chunk of bandwidth as well. Flash block in Chrome has been the best addon I've used so far. My chrome doesn't even crash anymore since it's been installed. Adobe does such a horrible job with flash. It was a bit better when macromedia did it before the buyout.
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coologuy1957

according to the tests and the testimony in the article you are having flash problems on your macs because of Apple design, not Adobes... they could open up to them but they choose not to... your loss...
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dave

This argument from Adobe makes no sense to me. Macs can run some pretty graphically intense games (providing they're released for the platform!), do all sorts of crazy 3D rendering and media creation, yet the Flash player sucks and Adobe blames this on *Apple*?
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coologuy1957

then why does it run amazing in these tests on windows platforms and then the perfomance drops on macs? can you explain that? according to this genleman , its because apple has specifically closed off adobe from accessing components that would bring parity... thats adobes fault???
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dave

That's what I'm saying though. How can all these programs use GPU / hardware video acceleration on a Mac, but somehow, Adobe can't? It makes no sense to me. Granted, I'm not a systems architect, but I would love for someone to clear this up for me.
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Gogo

From Apple.com:
"OpenGL has been optimized for the Macintosh platform and includes a suite of extensions that give developers access to advanced graphics hardware capabilities."

Hardware acceleration is available to Mac developers, Adobe just doesn't seem to want to use OpenGL for some reason.
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coologuy1957

sounds like a grudge match where only iphone/imRad users lose....
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