Flash and OS X

This has already been discussed to death, but a newer version of Flash for os x was released which apparently solved a lot of problems...

Anyway, I was just wondering for those running newer Macbook pros/airs (i.e. 2011-) how well does flash run?

I have an old, 2007 white macbook running lion, and flash runs horribly, and is pretty much my only complaint. I have a windows laptop as well, which I use for gaming, but am often forced to watch NBA tv etc on there because flash on my mac just uses up a lot of CPU, and I am forced to run a lower quality and playback is poor... I've been running flash block and html5 converter plugins, so overall I can live with it, but its very frustrating when I really need high quality flash playback I have to use another pc.

My macbook is a relic from my school days, so I am not really keen on spending the $$$ for a new one, but I particularly like its integration with my iPhone, plus OS X is always fun to use

So I was just wondering were I to buy a 2011 or 2010 refurb, what could I expect in terms of flash performance? Do you think its possibly worth the upgrade?

 

The sooner Flash dies the better and i'm no Apple fanboy.

 

Is it worth the upgrade just for Flash performance? Depends on how much Flash content you consume.

I will say that starting with the NVIDIA 320m, there's hardware acceleration of Flash video. So those 1080p videos on YouTube will hardly cause a blip in CPU usage under Chrome/Safari/Firefox. It's still Flash though, and it still has it's share of odd quirks.

 

^ What HAL said. They run Flash just fine. But you'll still want to use Flashblock to avoid all the Flash ads and save your battery.

 

Apparently there is hardware accel for the old intel gma 950's now as well, with the new version of flash. I get decent (pretty good actually) playback in firefox, but it runs horribly in safari. My main beef was that cpu usage would climb into the 30-40% range, and the fan would start running, which annoys everyone around you

Probably will hold off, just don't see the need to upgrade, especially as some people have been able to install mountain lion on the older macs. Maybe after ivy bridge

Thanks for the replies guys!

 

There is no hardware acceleration of any kind on the GMA 950. The GMA 950 doesn't even have an H.264 decoder/encoder. Only MPEG2... and even then only very certain stream types.

That's VERY interesting that it runs decently in Firefox but crappy in Safari. Chrome is the only browser that comes with Flash... it's self contained. Safari and Firefox both use whatever version you have installed.

Start watching a video with Safari and then Ctrl+Click on the video and look and see what Flash version it's running. Then do the same in Firefox. What works for one should work for both and they SHOULD be the same version... no reason one should perform better or worse.

 

I was under the same expression re: hardware acceleration on the 950

but according to this article:

http://www.cultofmac.com/160343/adobe-releases-first-flash-player-11-3-beta-for-mac-os-x/

 

But the GMA 950 lacks the hardware for any type of h.264 acceleration. It's probably just an error on Cult of Mac's end, it wouldn't be the first time they made a statement with an error in it and it definitely won't be the last time. Apple could have put a custom version of the GMA 950 in their Macs that offered h.264 hardware acceleration but I highly doubt it since neither Intel or Apple made a big fuss with that IGP.

The Intel HD 3000 (and older GMA 4500 along with the HD 4000 in Ivy Bridge) offer hardware acceleration for h.264 and a variety of other video formats (I think VC-1, mpeg-2, standard mpeg-4, and there might be one other in there). Performance is alright on my MBA when viewing 720p or 1080p content but the cooling fans do kick on rather quickly. It doesn't matter if I use FireFox, Safari, or Chrome to playback HD Flash videos. The CPU is pretty relaxed but the browsers do consume more RAM when playing HD Flash content. All-in-all, Flash still doesn't provide the best experience under OS X. I can switch over to the HTML5 version of a 1080p video and Safari will consume less RAM and the cooling fans don't turn on at the same level (a lot lower, the same as when I am watching HD content stored locally on my Mac).

 

It was on the Adobe doc as well:

http://labsdownload.adobe.com/pub/labs/flashplatformruntimes/shared/air3-3_flashplayer11-3_p2_releasenotes.pdf

Not sure what it means by gating though. The wording there is really really messy.

Youtube runs fine on html5, run 720 videos no problem at all, no major cpu usage, and no fan going crazy. Just damn flash.

Really needs to be culled from existence.

Sigh, such a stupid problem to have. The macbook does such a good job as an addition to a windows gaming PC, and I would like a newer one, just not sure how much REAL benefit I will be getting for the money spent.

 

Well, seeing as you have a model from 2007, CPU performance increases alone would be rather drastic. Even the Intel HD 3000 in the current MBA provides performance above and beyond the GMA 950. Just to give you an idea, a 13" MBA is able to outperform the 2010 17" MBP in terms of everything but GPU performance. That is how far Intel has come over the last few years. An Ivy Bridge dual-core CPU (even a low voltage one for the MBA) would run circles around your current setup in CPU and GPU performance (although it would have an IGP, not a GPU).

I recommend buying a new Mac if you want an all around performance boost. Do not get a new Mac just to run Flash smoother as that seems like a big waste. I would also wait until the updated models hit here in the next 3-4 months. They won't really provide that much of a performance increase over the current generation (about a 15-120% boost, something that won't be noticeable) but, if you are going to buy a new Mac, you might as well get the latest model instead of buying last year's tech.

Even a baseline 11.6" MBA would provide better performance than your current setup so you wouldn't have to spend that much money to get a noticeable increase in performance for everything.

 

I have a macbook 2008 unibody and running flash gets my laptop warm in an instant and eventually the reaches the 85-90 mark. This happens when playing tetris battle over facebook but i think its because your laptop and my laptop has only 1 fan as compared to the mbp which have 2 fans. Correct me if iam wrong.


Currently:Macbook unibody 13.3 late 2008.
Getting a 6165 or a 6110 by june!

 

Yeah, that was something that initially stopped me getting the early unibody models.

By then I had a pretty good custom built windows desktop which I keep upgrading, and I purchased an acer laptop 2 or so years back coz I got a pretty awesome deal.

Either way, its pretty unbelievable how bad flash is

 

I cant believe that apple designed a very poor laptop, and they brag how good the engineering/design team is. 1 fan for a laptop is enough but not if your body is made out of aluminum which is a conductor of heat! Id go with sager as my nxt laptop. Mbp15' is simply way to expensive and not practical esp today where in money is hard to get/earn/have. Id rather go with a sager, half the price of a mac 3/4 the price alienware and performs good enough to be in par with alienware laptops!


Currently:Macbook unibody 13.3 late 2008.
Getting a 6165 or a 6110 as soon as i see reviews when playing games!

 

then go buy a sager, you don't need to discuss this across multiple threads.

 

Um explain why aluminum is a poor choice? You do realize that when the aluminum gets warm it's doing it's job in acting as a heatsink. That's how electronics works.

I'm always amazed how consumers seem to know more than someone who has an engineering degree.

 

This is not worth asking. Just take it for what it is, an opinion without a justification.

 

Aluminium is good for conducting the heat away, but if the laptop is in your lap...

Have had limited experience from unibody models, but if it truly heats up as much as some say, I am not sure how comfortable it would be

 

Pardon my ignorance, but how do you "switch over to the HTML5 version" of a video if it is encoded in Flash?

 

Flash is not (just) a video format. Flash video can mean a variety of things. On youtube, flash video is h.264 video. The player is built with flash, the video itself is an mp4. When you switch to the HTML5 player, if you're using safari, the only difference is that the player itself isn't built with flash anymore, the video you get is the same. Presumably, kornchild's experience was based on Safari, because he noted that the cooling situation had improved.

With other web browsers, like firefox and chrome, the html5 video is available if it has been transcoded to the VP8 codec, which is fine, but that doesn't have any hardware acceleration, heat will be much higher, your fans will kick in sooner. Presumably, new videos are encoded to both VP8 and h.264 from the source that you upload to youtube. Older videos that were already uploaded are transcoded from h.264 to VP8. When you switch to HTML5, you just change how the youtube website chooses to deliver you content.

edit: indeed- he mentioned safari, just noticed

 

Thanks for that explanation ^ ^.

And I too missed that he had referred to Safari, though I might not have know what it meant.

One last question: when you say HTML5 may be available on other browsers, where to you make the setting change? I can't find it.

 

Not to be a contrarian, but I just read in the Sony Forum one of it's leading "gurus" state that IB ULV cpus will perform about as well as a SV Arrandale with the same clock speed, except that the IB ULV may be more limited thermally in turbo speed because it is likely in a thin chassis while the 2010 SV chassis for the Arrandale likely has better cooling, allowing it to overclock under more conditions because the TDP ceiling would not be as readily reached.

I would think if the 2010 MBP 17 had an Arrandale Core i7 and it had an SSD, as the MBP has, it would perform as well or better than the MBP. My Sony Z13 has just such a configuration and its PC Mark Vanatage score is around 10,500, exactly the same as the MBP. I'm not sure about Cinebench scores, but I tend to think the MBP 17 would score higher than the SB equipped MBA.

Now, if we're talking standard voltage IB cpus vs. anything Arrandale, the performance would be greater owing to two cycles of technology greater (one Intel "tick" and one "tock"). How many users would notice this difference is debatable.

 

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

towards the lower half the page it says "Join the HTML5 trial"

If you're using firefox or chrome, that means html5 player + vp8 video if it's available (video can't have ads + vp8 transcode/encode has to be available), otherwise flash player + h.264 video. Unfortunately, performance and quality will be worse for html5+vp8, because it's a transcode, vp8 isn't as good as h.264 (yet), and vp8 doesn't have any hardware acceleration (yet).

If you're using safari, you'll get html5 + h.264 video (if the video doesn't have ads) or flash + h.264 otherwise. html5 + h.264 video doesn't improve the video quality, but it does mean that you'll get better performance, because you don't have to run flash. The video itself is hardware accelerated either way in safari.