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Comment by mcav | Hacker News Reader

Is there a technical hurdle that has given Adobe performance problems on OS X? Or is it really just the relative market share leading to few development resources on Mac?

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Look, let's not kid ourselves, the problem is not technical. I'm sorry, but this stuff isn't rocket science, and even if it was, this plugin has existed for over 20 years, so they should have figured it out by now. Just think to yourself how much better the browser has gotten in that time frame, and its roughly how much worse the plugin has gotten.

The reasons are clearly either politics or incompetence. Now, I'm not sure what those politics might be. I don't personally believe that its that Adobe is "angry" at Mac or something, but I for example know that they are absolutely paranoid about accepting changes to the core code (even obvious crasher fixes require a ton of approval and consideration).

It really is to their own detriment. Regardless of how big the Mac market may be (its too big now to ignore and getting bigger), its a very powerful market of people that matter: i.e. developers. If Adobe got their act together, they would wipe the floor with JS, HTML5, etc. I mean, they almost do now, its purely due to their inability that they haven't completely and absolutely taken over the web.

Of course, the same can be said of standards. Taking 10 years to have any sort of measurable change on the W3C side is equally unacceptable (and we still ended up with a video solution that guarantees Flash will dominate this field for the next 10 years). Its always funny to me when people talk about whether "standards" or "flash" is winning, because it seems like a race where both parties are running backwards.

really well said.

this plugin has existed for over 20 years

14 years.

Regardless of how big the Mac market may be (its too big now to ignore and getting bigger)

Nu-uh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Operating_system_usage_sha...

because it seems like a race where both parties are running backwards.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1925723,00.ht...

14 years

Sorry, you are absolutely correct the plugin itself came out in 1996 with the original software having been developed earlier by PenPoint.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Operating_system_usage_sha...

Not sure what that is supposed to prove, some would argue that that is a sizable chunk (bigger than Windows 7 currently). But that's really besides the point since the argument was that the people that matter are running it.

When you want to deliver video or games on the web then it's flash, period. There is no alternative, consequently adobe doesn't need to care about a few crying developers.

As you pointed out this may partly change at some point in the future with the HTML video tag, but that happens independently of happy or unhappy developers.

Yes, we all know this is the case, this is not novel information and I will in fact take it a step further and say that its not just games but just about any media products on the web where Flash is the only answer. For example, it is completely unrealistic to make a YouTube or Vimeo or even ESPN.com without Flash today.

My point is that they could have more than just the pure media market if they got their act together. Its never a good place to be when the only reason people use your software is because theres nothing else, and not because they actually like it. Additionally, assuming that there will never be an alternative is just silly. When your developers are unhappy, they will switch once its possible. The fact that Google Docs and similar apps are being done in JS+HTML should be scary to Adobe, if it isn't then they are frankly not very intelligent. Google will define the web tomorrow, and you better believe the second they can realistically go Flashless they will.

Again, all these same arguments apply on the standards side as well, they have dropped the ball and missed the same opportunities again and again, which is why Flash is still in the running (again, both survive due to eachother's weaknesses rather than their own strengths).

If Flash absolutely sang on every computer, it would be a much more difficult argument to make to go the standards route. Not necessarily impossible mind you, but certainly much harder. If it worked well and exactly the same on every computer, then its a hard thing to beat.

Mostly tuning in again to express my amusement over the downvotes from the (certainly large number of) flash haters. :-)

As for your points, yes, I didn't mean to argue any of that. Just wanted to set straight that from a business angle Adobe doesn't need to care about that 6% rounding error at this point.

They're waging a platform war which is different to, say, the browser war. Their dominance is so overwhelming that developers have no choice but use them, no matter how much it sucks - adobe knows that very well. That may not have been the reason for their consequent neglect towards the minority platforms from day 1. But not spending more resources today on remedying that situation is most likely a conscious decision (mixed with a bit of incompetence).

They know that making said developers crazy happy at this point doesn't help them one bit against the coming open standards. When the HTML video tag arrives then flash will be pushed out of the video niche, no matter how good it is or how happy the developers are.

Consequently there's simply not much reason for them to spend resources on making the OSX or Linux plugin better. Their focus is on the mobile market now, which is a battle that they really need to win if they want to maintain any relevance in the future.

Adobe doesn't need to care about that 6% rounding error at this point

I don't have any hard statistics but my anecdotal experience is that the developers of new, "Web 2.0" applications are more like 60% using macs, not 6%.

I don't think Adobe have given any explanation. Neither have they given any sign that they are working on fixing the performance and stability issues. It seems to me that Adobe's position can be summed up like this - "That's not a priority for us. Learn to live with it." As an example of this there is this mini-flamewar between John C. Welch and Adobe's John Dowdell: http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2009/06/doing_it_wrong.html

I would really, really love to know the answer to this too.

It's hard to describe my surprise that my 5-year-old PC, with a low power 1.6Ghz CPU, can easily breach 100fps while playing JamLegend, and my 9-month old, dual-core 2.66Ghz MacBook Pro can barely squeak out 40fps.

Speaking of framerate in Flash, setting the framerate on a particular SWF does not actually make the SWF run at that framerate, even if the client machine can run at that framerate. Rather, the framerate seems to be more a measure of CPU resources dedicated to running the SWF.

For example, back to JamLegend: My MBP can run JamLegend at 40fps, but not if the framerate is set to 40fps. If it's set to 40fps, I'll get 20. It it's set to 60fps, I'll get 30. In order to get 40fps, the framerate has to be set to 100. Meanwhile, on my old XP machine, setting it to 40 gets 40, 60->60, and 100->100.

So, very good question, why is it that Flash performance is so different on OS X than Windows?

True on the framerate -- it's an upper gate. Static video which overburdens a configuration can drop frames to keep up. But interactive presentations need to display each intended frame, and so will drop framerate instead. More here: http://www.kaourantin.net/2006/05/frame-rates-in-flash-playe...

For the "why", that's Adobe Corp's tale to tell, but I haven't yet met a person inside Adobe who wouldn't be very, very happy if Mac/Win performance differences could be made to disappear.

That's a great link, I had not seen that article before. Though, in practice,the actual framerate to vary from the specified by much more than the -10 / +5 fps that he lists.

His final sentences might be relevant to this topic:

On high CPU load we might actually cut [the max framerate] into half, e.g. 30 frames/sec. OS X already does this in certain conditions.

Wish he had expanded on that a little more. Any idea what conditions cause OS X to halve the framerate?

I'd guess any plausible explanation would also have to account for the fact that basically every Adobe product on the Mac has gotten much worse over time with the exception of Lightroom.

See this blog post, and the comments that follow for the comments of hardcore Adobe users:

http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/a-big-assed-post-about-fire...

It's probably both. Couldn't find the source, but I remember it having to do with the OS X driver API and how it doesn't let you do the same kind of low-level voodoo that makes Flash work on Windows. And with limited resources, Adobe probably hacked something together that ran "Hello world!" and shipped it.

I'd like to hear an Adobe engineer's point of view.

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