MBA and the new version of Flash?

[Maven1975]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone would like to share there results with the new version of Flash.

I have the latest version of the MBP and it seems to run MUCH cooler.

Flash was a program that really heated up my old 2.13 MBA.

Fingers crossed!

 

[jav6454]

Flash for OS X doesn't have much goodies. You'll notice a very small decrease of CPU usage. But nothing exaggerated.

 

[Maven1975]

Flash for OS X doesn't have much goodies. You'll notice a very small decrease of CPU usage. But nothing exaggerated.

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

"In an early review of Flash Player 10.1, however, Anandtech still found significant improvements in CPU utilization under Mac OS X, dropping from 450% CPU load to 190% in viewing full-screen Hulu content on the Mac Pro used for testing."

Its worth trying. 450% to 190% is a decent improvement.

Im just curious...

 

[a.Lias]

@OP: My sig MBA runs cooler when watch hulu, too.

Can't wait for the GPU acceleration.

 

[three]

If this doesn't cause my fan to go to 6200RPM, I will be happy. Very happy.

 

[macsation]

I watched the movie Ronin on regular Hulu a few days ago. It was somewhat choppy and dropping frames. I fired it up on Hulu HD last night after upgrading flash. It played almost completely smooth, with only a few very minor glitches. BTW, I have a rev a HD MBA.

 

[slapguts]

Installed the update. So far I'm pretty happy with it. Of course, if I had to review it in two words, they would be-

Sucks less.

Here's a neat little test to see how well flash runs-

http://www.craftymind.com/factory/guimark/GUIMark_Flex3.html

Dead cold, my MBA is averaging 12-13fps. Much better than yesterday, when in the middle of a kernel_task panic, I was getting 1-2fps.

 

[Esopus]

One of the concerns I had when I was considering a Rev B 1.86/SSD for my mom recently was that it couldn't handle HD video delivered Flash. I went ahead and bought it anyway, thinking that my mom would just have to forget about playing Flash HD video with the MBA.

So when I saw this thread I headed over to my parent's house, grabbed her MBA, uninstalled the current version of Flash, and installed the 10.1 prerelease (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/). I definitely wasn't going to wait until the "first half of 2010" for the final version!

Flash HD video (YouTube HD, Hulu etc.) has gone from an unwatchable, stuttering mess, to nearly perfect. No stuttering, no breakups, no crashes, and the fans can't be heard in 20 minutes of playback so far.

Flash performance on OS X has been terrible for far too long, so it's great to see Adobe *finally* trying to improve things in this regard.

Also, because of this update, my mum's MBA is now *completely* perfect for her, and I'm very glad I didn't get her the MBP 13 instead!

 

[MultiFinder17]

Oh wow, using that test site linked above, my 1.83 Rev C Air went from 12-13 FPS to 17-18, an extremely noticeable improvement in smoothness

 

[iGrant]

Oh wow, using that test site linked above, my 1.83 Rev C Air went from 12-13 FPS to 17-18, an extremely noticeable improvement in smoothness

I watched a few HD clips on my Macbook Air Rev. A last night before and after geting the Flash beta, before my fans were at 6200, same thing on my Macbook, however now I can watch video, its not choppy and the fans are only at like 3500 ~ 5000, a nice improvement for me

I will see if I can uninstall the update and make two videos of the differences if I have time tonight when I get home.

Thanks
iGrant

 

[LinMac]

Am I the only one that found the update to be so unstable that it caused Firefox to crash constantly even after repairing permissions and other fixes?

 

[aleksandra.]

^ Firefox didn't crash, but the performance is worse with 10.1 (on the test linked earlier went down from ~15 to ~12.5 fps), also CPU heats to 80° C within a minute (compared to 60-70° C after several minutes previously). Rev B/SSD.

I guess it somehow adds optimization for Safari - there's some improvement (~15.5 fps on the test, but heat is terrible).

I'm going back to the last stable release.

 

[iGrant]

I have tried both Firefox 3.5.5 and Safari 4.0.4 . . . I think, it it was working better but I have a Rev. A with 80gb hard drive . . . sounds like its not as good for the SSD crowd maybe . . .

-iGrant

 

[Scottsdale]

It's too bad Apple doesn't care enough for its Mac users to allow Adobe the API resources to make Flash as capable on OS X as it is on Windows. We are all giving more than ever to have our OS X. It sucks that Apple just doesn't care about its fan base, professionals, or consumers. Apple shows us time and time again that is simply doesn't care to make our computing experience terrific if it has to assist Adobe in any way... it's BS!

I wish we could start a movement like people did when FireWire was removed from the aluminum MBs. Apple might cave in if people could stand firm and say we're not going to buy Macs and OS X until you allow it to be as capable as a Windows XP machine that's six years old. I can run Flash better on a 6yr old piece of crap Dell Inspiron laptop than I can on my 5month old Mac. WHY? Thanks Apple!

It's really BS that Apple just doesn't care. Whether it's the iPhone or the Mac, Apple refuses to let us have a great experience. Flash is part of the Internet whether Apple likes it or not, to have a crappy experience or NONE at all is extremely wrong and we can thank Apple for this. Adobe has expressed interest and desire to make Flash just as capable on the Mac and even iPhone but Apple refuses... Thanks again Apple!

 

[iGrant]

It's too bad Apple doesn't care enough for its Mac users to allow Adobe the API resources to make Flash as capable on OS X as it is on Windows. We are all giving more than ever to have our OS X. It sucks that Apple just doesn't care about its fan base, professionals, or consumers. Apple shows us time and time again that is simply doesn't care to make our computing experience terrific if it has to assist Adobe in any way... it's BS!

I wish we could start a movement like people did when FireWire was removed from the aluminum MBs. Apple might cave in if people could stand firm and say we're not going to buy Macs and OS X until you allow it to be as capable as a Windows XP machine that's six years old. I can run Flash better on a 6yr old piece of crap Dell Inspiron laptop than I can on my 5month old Mac. WHY? Thanks Apple!

It's really BS that Apple just doesn't care. Whether it's the iPhone or the Mac, Apple refuses to let us have a great experience. Flash is part of the Internet whether Apple likes it or not, to have a crappy experience or NONE at all is extremely wrong and we can thank Apple for this. Adobe has expressed interest and desire to make Flash just as capable on the Mac and even iPhone but Apple refuses... Thanks again Apple!

Don't take this the wrong way but if the only thing OS X doesn't do well is flash then I'm plenty happy . . . my user experience with OS X has been amazing . . . even before they switched to Intel . . . I remember how excited I was about the G4 iBooks . . .

OS X is so simplistic its almost stupid and its why I love the OS . . . installing and un-installing programs is so simple is amazing, minus flash, everything just works . . . its just intuitive. On on the flash note, it does work just not as efficiently as ya'll would like.
I can't say the same . . . for any version of Windows or Linux . . .

No OS is going to do everything you want perfectly . . . ever

Also I really doubt a 6 year old Dell Inspiron laptop can play flash better than a 5 month old mac . . . my wifes 3 year old Inspiron B130 in which I upgrade the CPU from a Celeron to a Pentium M, and went from 256 ram to 2gb ram can barely play videos on youtube without issues . . . My Macbook from 2006 could still play youtube videos fine with just getting a little hot and my Macbook Air Rev. A plays youtube and hulu videos better than the 3 year Inspiron ever did . . .

-iGrant

 

[cheapa55]

I watched a few HD clips on my Macbook Air Rev. A last night before and after geting the Flash beta, before my fans were at 6200, same thing on my Macbook, however now I can watch video, its not choppy and the fans are only at like 3500 ~ 5000, a nice improvement for me

I will see if I can uninstall the update and make two videos of the differences if I have time tonight when I get home.

Thanks
iGrant

I agree. Tried hulu.com/hd before and after the update and it was choppy before. after, i can watch it almost perfectly. My fans were still going crazy at over 6000rpm though.

 

[iGrant]

I agree. Tried hulu.com/hd before and after the update and it was choppy before. after, i can watch it almost perfectly. My fans were still going crazy at over 6000rpm though.

I need to revise my statement, all the HD was on youtube not hulu, I haven't tried that yet . . . still youtube was definitely better . . .

-iGrant

 

[still in school]

I have a Rev A and it didn't improve at all for me with that test page.

 

[mobilevisual]

According to the test program above, Chrome gave me 45 fps. Yes, 45 frames per second, consistently. I ran a dozen tests over two days. Range from 42-48 fps. Safari and Firefox are under 25fps. Can someone else confirm my Chrome Flash test. Too good to be true.

 

[LinMac]

According to the test program above, Chrome gave me 45 fps. Yes, 45 frames per second, consistently. I ran a dozen tests over two days. Range from 42-48 fps. Safari and Firefox are under 25fps. Can someone else confirm my Chrome Flash test. Too good to be true.

Has anyone else confirmed this?

 

[MrCheeto]

From experience, I have only this to say.

Before, no Youtube without a chillpad.

Now, longer battery life and a comfy lap.

 

[Fishrrman]

RE:
"So when I saw this thread I headed over to my parent's house, grabbed her MBA, uninstalled the current version of Flash, and installed the 10.1 prerelease"

Just wondering - how does one UNinstall a previously installed version of Flash?

(Adobe's page on the Flash update said to check the release notes, which I did - all I found was how to uninstall in Windows. If there was anything there about the Mac side of things, I missed it.)

 

[MrCheeto]

How to uninstall the Adobe Flash Player Plug-In

 

[Fishrrman]

Thanks for the help, MrCheeto!

 

[crazyrog17]

Not a MBA, but I went from 16.24 to 24.48 fps on my MacBook Pro.