“Last week, critics hammered Adobe over a report showing that Flash drained the new MacBook Air’s battery life by several hours. It’s not the first time Adobe has been in fisticuffs with Apple: the companies have been duking it out ever since Steve Jobs began ridiculing Flash and touting its alleged-killer, HTML5. Today, in an interview with Fast Company, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch answered critics who might say HTML5 is somehow more efficient than Flash.”
Adobe CTO on MacBook Air, HTML5
49 Comments
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2010-11-10 7:37 am
Bill Shooter of Bul Platinum Prime
Don’t I know it. They tried the shared source route way back in 2001, but they never responded to my emails to discuss licensing. They could have received money for no effort on their part, but we ended up having to implement svg instead.
It’s certainly true that rendering something consumes more power than rendering nothing. However it’s also true that rendering things the user doesn’t care about in Flash is becoming a significant power drain.
Perhaps the next step for Adobe should be to invest more in limiting the ways Flash renders redundant content. IIRC 10.1 no longer renders on background tabs, for example. It’d be great if this can go further to all off-screen surfaces, or when the browser is not the active process, or even if the same flash applet is re-rendering after 5 minutes of no user interaction when not playing video, etc.
You cannot deny that FLASH is at fault here.
I deny!
Fisticuffs?
I never heard that word before in my life.
It means fist fighting.
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=define%3A+Fisticuffs&me…
I could say that I cannot agree, it is not HTML5, but overloaded CSS + bad javascript can make my laptop choke (hey maybe I should buy a mac) as much as bad flash. But right now dynamic html is faster because it is still more difficult than flash (that is difficult for illustrator/photoshop user to understand ), and thus used by more seasoned web developper.
Fast forwarding 2 years from now, I’m pretty sure that 2Ghz/4 Gb would be necessary to surf horribly cluttered “HTML5” pages.
Hopefully, Amazon should still be browsable with lynx.
Remember the “best browsed with internet explorer” logo, I guess we are coming back to it as people seem to target more and more the webkit engine (because the others are “outdated” ?, and do not support shiny new features)
How about instead of the CTO whining about Apple they actually do something so that their plugin doesn’t suck royally on Mac OS X and other non-Windows platforms. I’m sick and tired of hearing the same excuses over and over again when it is clear that 95% of the problems relating to Flash reside with Adobe and not with Apple. I only need to look at the Creative Suite and the down hill slide in quality that has been over the last several years – CS5 being the biggest waste of time. How about moving to Cocoa already!
I could go on about them all day – and the worst part of all this, the CTO refuses to listen because apparently its everyone else’s fault. People talk about how arrogant Steve Jobs is – holy shitballs, the CTO of Adobe is in a league of his own when it comes to being arrogant and out of touch with reality.
Adobe has put out flash for many different platforms and I have had relatively few problems with it. When exactly is Apple going to make iTunes for something other than Windows or OS X? Oh thats right, NEVER. Apple also tries to limit development of its software to happen only on OS X. Apple is far more controlling than Adobe has ever been.
The big difference between Apple and Adobe is that Apple has an OS, hardware sales, and media sales as well, while Adobe only has its software.
Obviously, both companies are looking to what is better for themselves. Should we expect anything else? I don’t think so. And if we should say that open source is different, it’s not. We see these same kinds of conflicts in the open source community.
Adobe is trying to sell tools to write Flash Ads, pages, deliver video etc. It’s where they make their money. And we might notice that only they can write the tools or a Flash plug-in or player. That’s pretty controlling.
Jobs gave Adobe notice before the iPhone went on sale almost 4 years ago now, that Flash would only appear on the phone when it worked properly. Adobe said, confidently, that they would have it in a few months. “It’s easy”, they said. 4 years later, and it’s just on a small handful of phones, and still doesn’t work as well as it should.
Apple is interested in protecting what they see is the performance of their products. Adobe wants to get the software on all products. Who is right?
It seems to me that the major function of flash on small mobile devices is to present video. Flash enabled sites are far less useful on phones, and even tablets. Flash Ads, well, I think we all feel the same way about that! I’d rather not have my phone burdened with them.
But for video, HTML 5 is catching up. 54% of all video is now on HTML 5, as opposed to 16% just 6 months ago. Do we doubt that 6 months from now HTML 5 will pretty much have caught up with Flash? Flash has been at about 75% for ages, and it’s not going to get higher.
So when HTML 5 catches up, will most people care about flash on their phones?
Even a powerful tablet like the new Samsung Galaxy functions poorly when Flash is on, and much better with it off, which shows that this has nothing to do with Apple, but rather Adobe, and the technology in general.
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pcs/laptop…
That isn’t the only galaxy review that states this about Flash on the device.
I know I won’t be the only one to be happy to completely say goodbye to Flash someday.
That is obviously a skewed stat due to the amount of video that youtube provides. However Google uses Flash for video rentals which says enough.
Flash isn’t going anywhere and I say this as a longtime Flash hater. It has a 97% install base and some key advantages over HTML5 video like DRM and layered advertising.
What do you mean by layered advertising? You should be able to do a youtube styled ad hover in front of the main video with an ad in html 5.
Adobe makes it easy for content providers to add and remove layered advertising to video without needing to modify the page or write Javascript. HTML5 video needs to provide this same functionality.
There is another problem which is IE8/7/6. It doesn’t make sense for a content provider to ditch older users of IE. What is the gain exactly? The advantages of HTML5 are on the client side. Some have suggested that content providers provide both Flash and HTML5 but again….why? Why not spend $0 and keep using Flash?
What is needed is for a company like Google to require an HTML5 compatible browser, not just provide support. But this won’t happen either since Google is in the advertising business and wants to gain as many viewers as possible.
Time will probably favor Adobe in the next few years. The Adobe CEO was insulted by Jobs and probably put an extra team on Flash out of spite.
Oh, you are confusing the technology with the tools. The flash bytecode is much more difficult to work with than html 5. Try adding a layered ad on top of a video with out any special purposed adobe labelled software. Html 5 ( the technology) does *not* need to “provide for layered advertisement on top of a video”. It already has the *capability* to do that. Adobe is working on *tools* to make working with html 5 easier for people who can’t code html/javascript/css. Once finished, it will be just as easy, and not a single line of the html 5 spec will be changed and not a single html5 compliant browser will have to be updated.
But your choice of vocabulary is probably a harbinger of things to come. I suppose its adobe/macromedia’s fault in this case as its difficult at times to understand whether people are referring to the binary flash file, or the creation program at times. But it probably means alot more of this type of misunderstanding is on the way.
No I’m not, HTML5 video will not use a format that allows overlay advertising. It does not have the same technology.
Tools are also technology and there is currently no tool that provides similar functionality.
That doesn’t mean it is difficult, that just means it is proprietary.
You’re talking about webpage layers which could then be parsed out with a plug-in. Not the same and there is currently no easy way to do it. Maybe there will be in the future but that would still not be enough for major content producers to warrant a switch. You have to provide benefits over Flash, you can’t just offer a subset of features.
So you are still on the “Flash is DOOMED” bandwagon even though Google has said that Flash isn’t going anywhere? Why should Hulu switch to HTML5 from Flash?
The HTML5 crowd incorrectly predicted that sites would like Hulu would switch over to HTML5 because of the iphone. What Hulu did instead was create a streaming app for idevices. No market loss so what is to be gained by switching at this point?
I think it would be great if content providers like Hulu streamed naked video but there isn’t a good business case for them to do so, especially when Flash has a much higher install base.
Thats like saying that the img tag doesn’t support a picture format that supports captions.
Why would you use a plugin to parse html in a browser?? I would expect the browser to do it.
Nope. Never said I was. I’m just assuming that HTML 5 will increase in popularity due to Apples’ banishing of Flash and Adobe’s stated intention to build tools for it.
If I understand correctly, your contention is that video overlay ads implemented in HTML5 could be easily filtered out, putting HTML5 video at a disadvantage.
If that’s what you’re saying, one big objection jumps immediately to mind: it’s already possible to block Flash video-overlay ads. I recently installed AdBlock Plus for that reason alone (after encountering a pre-roll ad on blip.tv that couldn’t be paused or even muted).
Oh, thats what he meant. That makes a lot more sense. Any DRM can be removed from any media, given a motivated hacker. HTML just accepts that fact. Its written with the assumption that the client can choose how to best render the content in an appropriate manner.
I haven’t really taken a position on the likely hood of major content owners to use html 5 over flash, I don’t really care that much about other people’s business plans. Flash works, but architecturally, I prefer the layered, unixy approach of html5. It just seems stupid to use a plugin inside a browser to render content. I also remember the days in which some people were designing entire websites in flash, such that html was just a wrapper for the flash file. That’s not the web I want.
Ripping protected video in Flash requires specialized software and a high-end desktop.
HTML5 video can be ripped with a right-click.
Again I think it would be great if sites like Hulu just played naked video but I don’t see it happening, especially when Flash has a larger install base.
Yup. Although, the terms “Specialized software” and “high end desktop” make it seem a lot more exotic and difficult then it really is. Attacks on DRM, just like any crypto system, always get better with time, not worse.
Adblock can’t remove layers on top of Flash video. I’m not talking pre-roll but ads layered on top of the video that you want to watch.
I just tried it in youtube, didn’t work.
Unless the ads are part of the video data itself, then yes, overlay ads can be blocked. It works exactly the same as blocking pre-roll ads – or static image ads for that matter. You block the hostname where the ads are coming from (with an adblocking plugin, the old .hosts trick, etc) and you’ve blocked the ads.
It does if you subscribe to a filter filter that specifically blacklists the servers where those ads are coming from. I’m using the English version of the “EasyList” subscription (first one listed here: http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions ), FWIW I haven’t seen any pre-roll or overlay ads sneak through it yet.
maybe you can blame it on designer clocking their flash at 120 fps (!!!) or 60fps in the best case to try to squeeze the fluidest experience possible when only 30-10 fps would be sufficient.
Some of the HTML5 experiment easily fire up the processor fan for me, and make my old laptop crawl.
What you posted is a prime example of non sequitur if I ever saw one – we aren’t talking about Apple, iTunes, Unicorns or Pink dragons, what is being discussed is Adobe and their inability to provide a plugin that doesn’t royally suck. I don’t a crap what *YOUR* experience is because *YOUR* experience is in the minority when compared to end users who find their CPU is pegged at 70% when watching a movie for fuck’s sake! Come on, I don’t iTunes is bad but even iTunes doesn’t peg the CPU at 70% when playing back a video or a song.
As for ‘Apple limit’, again I don’t give a crap – completely irrelevant to the discussion. Apple doesn’t limit a damn thing; it is Adobe who refuses to use the high level API’s because it might require them hire some Mac developers instead of having multi-platform developers catering for the lowest common dominator. Adobe know what is required and time and time again they refuse to allocate the resources to fix the plugin up.
I remember when the flash authoring tool showed up some mac OS9 related error message on windows (actually asking us to use the finder to close some program I think).
On another hand I don’t think the move from carbon to cocoa is trivial, even some Apple software haven’t made the move yet (itune and final cut pro for example).
Actually your experience is probably a minority as most users are still Windows users
Flash works damn well on Windows. You might also want to use a browser that’s working properly with Flash such as IE or Firefox, since Chrome has some issues with it. (Again, yep.)
You’ll notice some tabs in Chrome crash “probably due to flash” but it’s not going to crash in FF/IE.
What the hell have iTunes to Flash!?
Maybe you had few problems. I’m a Flash/Flex Developer and I can assure you that this technology, tools form Adobe and Flash Player is seriously fu**** up.
Agreed.
I also can prove him wrong. I’ve done testing of 720p YouTube streams of both flash and html5/h.264 and Flash consistently powered up my fan.
vmstat and Activity Monitor didn’t lie either. Flash took up a considerable amount of CPU while html5 went along at a steady hum.
Now try the same on an operating system with a more modern graphics stack, like Windows 7. Suddenly, Flash 10.1 uses about the same amount of CPU power as straight HTML5 (meaning, very little).
the graphic system of osx is quite modern. some gpu drivers suck, but that’s not the main problem with flash in osx either. depending on the combination of gpu, browser and flash/html5/codec, you can get good results or horrible results. but in generall, flash is only acceptable with the most recent gpus, while webkit/html5/h264 works nice even with a lowly gma950. firefox/html5/webm sits somewhere in between. opera/html5/webm is even worse than flash, at least on my old mb.
i do think that it’s the typical problem of software first developed for windows and later ported to osx with limited ressources and the goal to make it work – no more, no less.
OSX has a very modern graphics stack, problem is Flash does not use it right.
On my old MacBook, with core duo processor, and intel graphics (which DOES NOT SUPPORT HARDWARE DECODING), Flash uses about 70% cpu for YouTube streams, whilst HTML5 uses about 10%. Things are even worse when I boot into Linux when it comes to Flash.
Again, there are no hardware graphics decoding capabilities on this machine. Simple matter of fact is that Adobe does not give a rat’s ass about anything other than Windows.
Anyway, I’ve since installed Click To Flash (a flash blocker) on all my machines and I could not be happier. I click to enable a flash item perhaps once or twice a week, say to watch something on CNN. It certainly seems like 99.99% of flash out there are annoying as hell advertisements that spin up your fan and drain your battery.
Incidentally, CNN used to use Windows Media formatted video, and even though I’m a Mac user, WMA worked about 1000% better than Flash.
Which GPU do you have? Even the GMA950 does support limited bits of hardware decoding, and newer revisions support more (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA .) Trouble is, Apple don’t provide any interfaces to use any of it except on a small set of GeForce cards (on Snow Leopard at that), so Adobe must use the CPU. It’s not even clear that ATI cards can be used by Adobe today. It’d be interesting to find if Safari’s h264 renderer is using support that Adobe can’t, particularly on Intel X3xxx (or newer) GPUs.
Educate yourself:
http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html
Umm, yes, I’m familiar with that.
Question is whether the API now supports ATI or not. The documentation implies it does not. See http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2010/tn2267.htm… .
Unity, Silverlight works just fine on mac. So sorry – it’s not apple fault, not poor drivers or graphic stack (read about quartz and OpenGL – then tell if it’s poor done). Just bad programmers/lazy from Adobe.
Yes, Flash sucks, and badly needs to be improved, and Adobe has failed so far in doing so adequately.
However, Apple isn’t pure in this matter either. Just look at iTunes, which is absolutely horrible on Windows – takes eons to start up, it’s slow, bloated, and has terrible fonts.
Cat, meet kettle.
Also, both Apple and Microsoft are pushing very heavily on HTML 5. But look at their ulterior motive – h.264 – the video codec that is patented up the wazoo, and the patent’s owner, MPEG-LA, is a notorious patent troll. And guess what – both Apple and Microsoft are part of the ownership group!
Thus, I only support HTML5 for video if it’s not using h.264 – using Google’s VP8 open codec instead.
But make no mistake – Apple and Microsoft both want to lure people into h.264, and create a patent lock-in on web video.
Google, like any corporation, is evil. But their business plan – essentially selling advertising, is conducive to openess, which is great to all of us. Apple and MS, by contrast, make money selling software licenses and computers, so their business plan is more conducive to lock-in, monopoly, or other non-consumer friendly, anti-competitive, behaviors.
That’s not to say they’re more evil. It’s just a “buyer beware”.
Google is not interested in lock-in? Is that why they created their own non-standard Java for Android instead of using JME or Qt? Google passed on using Qt because they wanted to lock in mobile developers. They didn’t want to create a stack like MeeGo since it would mean that developers could easily port their software to new platforms.
Google cares more about maintaining an open source image than conferring the standard benefits of open source. Oracle also exists in a gray area but they at least aren’t trying to pass off a phony image.
Dalvik and Android are open source, and therefore, by definition not a case of lock-in. You know just as well as I do that Google would’ve used default Java if it weren’t for the fact that Sun had been dicks about licensing (re:Harmony) from the get-go.
Calling something that is completely open source and Free software “lock-in” is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.
No way on earth would Google have used javaME. Have you poked around in chrome’s sources?
http://spot.livejournal.com/312320.html
They’ve actually been doing a good job fixing those issues since the release, but it just shows you the mentality of Google towards open source at the time. If they were allowed to use/call it Java, it probably would not have been compatible anyways.
But no, What google does isn’t lock in, just bad behavior.
I don’t consider charging for a product to be a dick move.
Android is an open source stack but the non-standard API discourages porting. Mobile developers would have preferred Qt but Google wanted to build up an Android library, not a cross-platform library.
Not happy? Uninstall Flash.
No, seriously, it’s easy to live without it now. You can get browser extensions to switch YouTube to HTML5 and everything else simply isn’t important. I’ve been living without Flash on my personal machine for two years.
To add to that, you may also participate in the html5 beta on youtube. All their videos aren’t converted yet though.
http://www.youtube.com/html5
Yeah, you should also be fine with links ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_(web_browser) ) too, its battery usage is quite easy on any system it is running on.
So youtube is important and the rest isn’t hmm.. Sorry but not quite
Personally I’m annoyed to hell when I’m browsing some page and I can’t view the video because there’s no flash and no alternative (eg iPhone, iPad). Don’t really care if Flash is used or not, just want to see the videos.
And is that Flash’s fault, or the content developer’s for not providing fallback or download links?
I disabled the Flash plugin on my new 11″ Macbook Air after a full charge and my battery life went from 5 hours before disabling to 6:30 after, so something is really going on here. I did this test 3 times with the same results on 2 different days. My battery life was much longer with the Flash plugin disabled. I performed this test on my old black Macbook and got similar results with an hour of extra battery life.
Flash performance varies from platform to platform.
On Windows is pretty good. It’s certainly better than HTML5 implementations for the video that I have seen so far, as in, the flash decoder uses less resources.
Yep.
Now, on Linux, but more especially on MacOSX it’s another story.
So no, Flash is not the evil battery / resource eating program. But it’s not great everywhere either.
There’s a decade of content out there that you just can’t view on Apple’s device, and I think that’s not only hurtful to Adobe, but hurtful to everyone that created that content
Yeah, sure… Remember that until 2009, Adobe had a policy of forbidding implementation of flash players based on their specifications [1].
So ok now they’ve changed, but really, Adobe isn’t quite a promoter of open standards. Not that Apple is better in that regard.
[1] http://www.adobe.com/licensing/developer/fileformat/faq/“ rel=”nofollow”>http://web.archive.org/web/20071111094129/