Adobe CTO on Flash for Mac | Hacker News Reader

Adobe CTO on Flash for Mac

blogs.adobe.com

26 pointspieter34 comments

Apple is certainly blocking Adobe despite being able to run Flash on a machine like the iPad. The reason for this isn't because it can run, it's that it can't run well enough to not break the flow of the device, making it feel slow. Most mud being slung back and forth seems to be ignoring this.

To a large degree, I agree with this choice, and I welcome Flash's demise (if it happens) in favor of something more open / capable / faster. Flash serves unique needs which have now largely been done better by other tools.

Apple is all about feel, and as they absolutely cannot control the quality of the flood of old / crappy flash apps that will grind the machine to a halt if they enable it, they've decided to block it outright. It fits perfectly with their App Store model, where they can ensure programs run quickly enough. Whether you agree with the App Store model or not is another issue entirely, Apple is being merely consistent in all this.

On equal terms there is also the issue of Apple's control over the software that iPhone OS devices run. Adobe's Flash includes an interpreter, that will be used to deliver applications to devices circumventing the AppStore.

While Apple officially supports scripting WebKit and extends it ever deeper into iPhone OS APIs, I don't think they'll be willing to take on a similar venture with Adobe's Action Script.

"These crashes you are seeing do not exist. The 100% CPU usage is likewise an illusion. Also, Google is evil. Believe me!"

FWIW, Flash in Firefox on Win32 has never ever crashed for me. In terms of CPU usage, that was relevant to me perhaps 5 years ago, but now a single core at 100% doesn't break 12.5% system usage - but I seldom see that much CPU usage from Flash except in things like games, where a game loop (=> 100% single CPU) would be expected anyway even if it wasn't Flash.

On the other hand, I'm no apologist for Flash. I wish it would go away just as much as the next guy. My only worry is that annoying advertisements that I can currently block trivially using FlashBlock may later be implemented using JS, SVG, canvas, etc., and thereby become much much harder to block reliably.

Yes, on Windows Flash performance is quite acceptable. Try living with it on OS X for a few weeks.

Can you link me to a site that currently thrashes your machine as a result of Flash on the page? I use a white MacBook (i.e. not exactly a monster of a machine) and my biggest headaches come from leaving Firefox open too long (which is why I've switched to Chrome).

I don't have a link on me now, and I'm at work on a windows machine so I can't go fine one. I have a couple year old white macbook and while I've never had a crash from Flash (Or maybe I did and thought it was something else) running flash video pretty much stops the computer from being able to do anything else and proc usage goes to about 85 - 90%. Try running two things in flash at the same time and I might as well not have a computer at all.

I think that part of the problem is that the Netscape plugin API only allows the plugin to draw when the browser explicitly allows it to. This is also the case on Windows, but for some reason it's much slower on the Mac.

Switching to Core Animation drawing (as in Flash Player 10.1) allows the plugin to draw directly to a backing store in video memory without having to wait for the browser. The plugin still has to request that the view be updated, but it's much faster as it can be done mostly on the GPU.

I'm not an expert on plugins or graphics, but that is how I understand it.

Youtube heavy-users aside, Flash's crashes are somewhat rare, but significantly more than any other plugin I've used. I've had about as many crashes on my Windows boxes as on my OSX. Speed-wise, though, it's definitely faster on Windows for no reason I can come up with except laziness / intentionally ignoring everything but Windows.

Could it be that some crashes are the fault poor programming and not the Flash Player itself?

I can eat up 100% of your CPU with Python.

Actionscript in the right hands can perform very well. A big part of the problem lies with the barrier to entry (low) and the features available to developers and designers via its API and tool-set.

Things like bitmap manipulation and real-time filters (drop-shadow, glow etc), they are really easy to implement and designers love the effects that can be achieved and tend to design with them in mind (can't blame them really), but without optimization care and skill it will eat a CPU alive.

These effects can also be implemented without a single line of code, a lot of the time it is not even the developers at fault.

I worked agency level for a number of years before I lost the will to live and gave it up, I seen this kind of thing daily and the culture of getting it out there didn't help either, unless there was a really switched on PM or lead developer in charge who understood this optimization time was generally second class.

EDIT: it did not help that OSX was a second class citizen and Flash took a 15% hit in Firefox (windows) either.

Flash video performanc is awful on OS X and Linux. That is entirely Adobe's fault.

An Intel Core2 Duo Mac Mini, with no graphics card to speak of (so this couldn't skew the results even theoretically) plays 720p H.264 YouTube-encoded videos with ~9% CPU usage, and no hiccups, the frame-rate is evenly distributed, every frame lasts for whatever time it should. Compare and contrast with the Flash decoder, that ceilings at about 70%, and plays un-evenly, even on a frame-by-frame level -- there is no way of telling how much time a given frame is showing on the screen.

That's why many will use Rentzsch' Click-to-Flash WebKit plug-in, to block all Flash permanently and play H.264 movies natively. github.com/rentzsch/clicktoflash

Here's another one, this time from Firefox for Maemo RC3:

> We’ve decided to disable plugin (not to be confused with add-ons, which are supported) support for this release. The Adobe Flash plugin used on many sites degraded the performance of the browser to the point where it didn’t meet our standards.

Sounds like didn't read the linked info either.

For Maemo, see earlier on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1090855

…but my web browser doesn't run python.

I can eat up 100% of your CPU with JavaScript.

"Works on my machine!"

FTA: Before we release a new version of Flash Player we run more than 100,000 test cases and have built an automated system that has scanned over 1 million SWFs that we use for testing from across the web. Our QA lab has a very large variety of machines to represent the machines in real use on the web.

Sounds like you didn't read the comment before commenting yourself, then...?

(Noise & disinfo levels seem at all-time highs recently... Engadget may merely be the first site of many to adapt.)

> Flash has been incredibly successful in its adoption, with over > 85% of the top web sites containing Flash content and Flash > running on over 98% of computers on the Web.

Oh really? I've disabled Flash on all my browsers a week ago and don't even notice that I'm missing so much web-content!

My guess is that 85% number is actually referring to a majority of that content being flash-based ads. So both of you are right.

That poses an interesting question: A certain amount of people here think that using ad-block is wrong, because you are denying that site revenue, etc. I don't want to rehash that argument, but what I'm wondering is do they feel the same about not installing flash? You're still blocking a lot of ads, but the main difference is you're choosing not to install something, rather than installing something extra to block things.

If they are having problems reproducing the crashes, they should pay for me to send my MacBook to them - it is 100% reproducible every single time. I actually installed Windows on a partition, and I boot in there to play flash video.

I open a video site. I try to jump to a location in the middle of the video. It crashes.

And of course, if you play 3-4 videos, the MacBook will decide to switch itself off because of overheating.

Link, please? Would like to try it on my Mac here.

Obviously it's the macbook's fault - It's not designed to play that many videos...

/sarcasm

Mine was shutting itself off because of heating when playing videos. Turns out my cooling fan didn't work at high speed. heck yours before melting something there...

I have to say Kevin is doing an incredible job remaining collected and professional even amongst the unprofessional comments from both the pro-Flash and anti-Flash.

He's saying that all the problems that all of us have with Flash on a daily basis actually do not exist. We're just imagining all of it, all of us. That is not doing an incredible job, it's just not listening.

Try actually reading what was said, instead of rephrasing it according to some internal narrative.

No matter how hard you try, no matter how long you try; you will never ever be able to convince the people of the internets that Flash isn't a crash prone performance hog.

Most people don't think it is. That's why everybody uses it.

Crashing seems to be mostly directly correlated with pseudonymous Apple-polishing on webforums.... ;-)

(btw, if you're sincerely trying to improve your own experience, there's a quick set of diagnostics here: http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2010/02/troubleshooting_player_sta... )

People don't use Flash because they like it, they use it to view the content that requires it. It astonishes me that you don't understand this.

Like I said; no amount of effort on your part is going to make us forget our experiences with your suck ass plugin crashing our browser every day. Thankfully, there are Flash blocker plugins that make this a more rare event.

Your inability to understand this does explain why Flash is getting worse instead of better though. So thanks for that.

Somehow he needs to enable ActionScript to cross the same bridge that JavaScript did. Remember when JavaScript was primarily the tool of script kiddies run amok?

It's possible to act collected and professional whilst also being obstinate and disingenuous.

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