Filed under: Multimedia, Video, Internet
Adobe pre-release of Flash Player 10.1 now available
Adobe's Flash Player has long been a notorious CPU hog on Macs. Every time I hear my wife's MacBook's fans going off like a cyclone on the other side of the living room, I know it's because she's playing Bejeweled Blitz or some other crazy Flash-based game that's pegging her poor machine's CPU to infinity and beyond.Things are a bit rosier with Adobe's pre-release of Flash Player 10.1. The Windows version has significant improvements, namely support for hardware-accelerated video decoding of h.264 video, but the Mac and Linux versions do not include support for this feature. As usual, Adobe blames Apple for "not being open enough" -- "Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs" according to Adobe -- but even without hardware-accelerated video decoding, this pre-release build of Flash boasts significant CPU load improvements over its predecessor.
Anandtech tested the performance improvement of the pre-release version of Flash Player with the following results:
I took the same Office clip I'd been using for all of the other tests and ran it on my Mac Pro at full screen (2560 x 1600). Using Activity Monitor I looked at the CPU utilization of the Flash Player plug-in. I compared both versions of Flash and saw a significant drop in CPU utilization:
Flash 10.0.32.18: 450%
Flash 10.1.51.45: 190%
Going from roughly 450% down to 190% (or a bit over 10% of total CPU utilization across 16 threads) made full-screen Hulu playable on my machine. In the past I always had to run it in a smaller window, but thanks to Flash 10.1 I don't have to any longer.
Since I'm in New Zealand, I don't have access to hulu videos (shakes fist in rage), so I wasn't able to precisely replicate Anandtech's results. I did test fullscreen video performance at TVNZ.com and YouTube both before and after upgrading to the pre-release build of Flash 10.1. While I didn't see the huge drop in processor load Anandtech did, Flash did indeed suck up far less CPU under 10.1 than under the previous build.
Test machine: Early 2008 MacBook Pro, 2.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Fullscreen YouTube video, Flash 10.0: 50%
Fullscreen YouTube video, Flash 10.1: 35%
Fullscreen TVNZ video, Flash 10.0: 110%
Fullscreen TVNZ video, Flash 10.1: 50%
Even for piddly YouTube videos, the drop in CPU utilization is pretty noticeable, and CPU load for TVNZ went down by more than half. I've got to admit, this is the first time in a long time that Flash has impressed me.
I don't know how crash-happy this build of Flash is compared to previous builds, and since it is a pre-release build, they most likely haven't shaken out all the bugs yet. So if stable Flash (an oxymoron if there ever was one) is critical to your workflow, upgrade at your own risk. If you roll with 64-bit Safari as your main browser in Snow Leopard, though, the risk is somewhat lessened -- Flash runs as its own process, so it won't bring Safari down with it if it crashes.
[Via MacRumors]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Jordannelms@gmail.com said 4:11PM on 11-17-2009
I wonder if this will help us MBA rev.A owners with out playback issues....anyone?
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DJFriar said 5:02PM on 11-17-2009
Undervolting your MBA will fix that problem. Google it (I don't have the link handy), but I set mine lower and it runs every bit as smoothly as my friend's 13" MacBook Pro.
stoleyrbike said 12:58AM on 11-18-2009
I have been using Coolbook to prevent the kernel_task process bringing my MBA to a grinding halt, but I uninstalled it before trying Flash 10.1
With Flash 10.1 I've been having less kernel_task problems, but they haven't gone away entirely. By all means give it a try, but don't expect miracles -- 10.1 still doesn't utilise the MBA's (crappy) gpu.
And if you haven't tried Coolbook, it's probably worth doing. Info on the Macrumours forums.
stoleyrbike said 1:25AM on 11-18-2009
Also I would recommend ClicktoFlash, which lets you load Flash selectively, and includes an option to view Youtube vids with Quicktime. They look better and should perform flawlessly on your MBA.
rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/
andy said 4:11PM on 11-17-2009
So Flash no longer supports PPC Macs?
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andy said 4:12PM on 11-17-2009
My B: just read that PPC support will show up in the next prerelease:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes.pdf
RotaryDial said 4:14PM on 11-17-2009
I can hear my MBP whine when my girlfriend plays Farmville full screen... But I don't know if it's due to Flash or the fact it's Farmville... probably both...
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chrono said 10:12PM on 11-17-2009
It's flash. This doesn't happen on my friend's Windows PC's nearly as much
RotaryDial said 4:19PM on 11-17-2009
My MBP always begins to whine when my girlfriend plays Farmville... I can't tell if its because its a Flash based game... or because it's Farmville.... probably both.
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Mentok said 4:20PM on 11-17-2009
I have to give some props to TUAW, you guys didn't just copy and paste a press release like Lifehacker did. The real story is that Adobe refuses to fix a bug that is their bad, basically GIFAR, or in this case Flash-AR 2.0:
http://mindtaker.blogspot.com/2009/11/flash-vulnerability-found-adobe-says-no.html
Sun fixed it in Java for GIFAR. Adobe needs to 'gender-up' and do the same.
-Drunken Economist
http://mindtaker.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/drunk_economist
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Sean Wolter said 4:23PM on 11-17-2009
"I've got to admit, this is the first time in a long time that Flash has impressed me."
Ha! Set the standard for performance so low and your users will be impressed by anything better than terrible. Good job, Adobe.
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Information Central said 6:56AM on 11-18-2009
Not to mention that Flash is a crutch used by hack Web "designers" to create cumbersome, amateurish Web sites. Not only do these sites irritate desktop users, but they ruin many companies' global portals by making them inaccessible to mobile users.
Sadly, the businesses most often taken in by swoopy, dumb conference-room Flash demos by these lamers are the very ones that can't afford to have their addresses and phone numbers buried in an unviewable Flash animation for mobile users: restaurants, hotels, resorts, and boutiques.
The fewer sites that rely on Flash, the better for everyone. Use cross-platform, non-proprietary standards.
John Schroeder said 4:28PM on 11-17-2009
Great... just what we all need! Faster running and high def banner ads... no Thanks ;-\
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Galley said 4:36PM on 11-17-2009
Adobe Flash Player 10.1 - now with less suck!
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phlyingpenguin said 4:40PM on 11-17-2009
It's worth noting that this plugin crashes for me in Chrome and Chromium every time I right click on a flash object.
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skyleranelson said 5:02PM on 11-17-2009
No good so far... the functionality on flash sites is crap... the pointer hand goes away and you have to click twice on every flash button. Not cool.
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Mr Lizard said 5:26PM on 11-17-2009
"Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs"
Linux does, and there's no GPU support there either. So I don't buy that excuse. I'd much prefer it if they'd just said "we're concentrating our efforts on the platform with the biggest exposure".
Hell, even Silverlight runs on my machine better than Flash.
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Willson Smith said 5:49PM on 11-17-2009
(Youtube HD) Flash test
Flash player 10.0...
Boondock Saints II Trailer
50 - 60% CPU
Avatar Trailer
60 - 77% CPU
Flash player 10.1P
Boondock Saits II Trailer
30 - 43% CPU
Avatar Trailer
30 - 65% CPU
Quite a decent drop.
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pk said 6:12PM on 11-17-2009
It's been installing on my Mac Pro for the last 40min and counting... so far, I'm not impressed. Anyone else had it take so long?
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Paul Bryan said 7:58PM on 11-17-2009
I had an experience a bit like that - turns out a window had popped up asking me to shut Firefox - and the installer wouldn't continue until I did that. Probably not the same as your problem, but it stumped me for a few minutes.