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Adobe Goes To Flash 10.1, Forgoes Security Fix For 10
An anonymous reader writes "The recent critical zero-day security flaw in Flash 10 may have fast-tracked the release of Flash 10.1 today. Adobe 10.1 boasts the much anticipated H.264 hardware acceleration. Except for Linux and Mac OS (PDF): 'Flash Player 10.1, H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under Linux and Mac OS. Linux currently lacks a developed standard API that supports H.264 hardware video decoding, and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs.' Your humble anonymous reporter, who is using Fedora Linux with a ATI IGP 340M, is very pleased that the developers of the OSS drivers have provided hardware acceleration for my GPU ('glxinfo : direct rendering: Yes,' 'OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R100 (RS200 4337) 20090101 NO-TCL DRI2'), but even if Adobe did provide hardware acceleration for H.264 on Linux, they wouldn't provide it for me because they disable it for GPUs with SGI in the Client vendor string. Adobe 10.1, with all its goodness, now gives me around 95% CPU usage as opposed to about 75% with the previous release. Good times. I anticipate my Windows friends will have a much better experience."
Then why didn't VLC, Mplayer, perrian etc use the official APIs? None of them had hardware acceleration on OSX either until this latest API release. Read up on the problem. The old APIs simply do not work.
I think the problem was that Adobe didn't move to the Cocoa framework which has these APIs but instead stayed on the Carbon framework which doesn't.
This is why Steve Jobs called Adobe "lazy" as Cocoa and Carbon were first released back in 2001. Adobe before CS5 of this year didn't migrate their flagship products to Cocoa. That's nine years...
Adobe is only slightly lazier than Apple themselves then, as Finder and quite a few other parts of OS X were still Carbon until Snow Leopard. That's eight years and they're the ones who developed the frameworks.
Many of their apps are still Carbon.
Snow Leopard isn't 100% 64-bit, despite Apple's claims. Front Row, iTunes, Grapher, and DVD Player are all still 32-bit apps. That's because they are written in C++/Carbon instead of ObjC/Cocoa. Apple has had how long to rewrite them?
VLC, Mplayer, Perrian, etc on OSX can play better than Flash, that is not the same thing as "perfectly fine". VLC and Mplayer a quite optimized so with a fast enough CPU they can grunt through playback without help. That doesn't mean it's working fine. Use VLC or Mplayer on Windows or Linux on the same hardware and the CPU use is drastically reduced because hardware acceleration works.
Just because Flash sucks doesn't absolve Apple of the problems that are their fault.
If everything was "perfectly fine" why did Apple release a new API that actually works and why are all the third party players updating to use it?
Next time I see a commercial website that requires Flash, I'll call the vendor and explain why I can't use their website. Should help kill Flash once and for all.
The vendor collects internal stats and subscribes to Net Applications and other services.
He knows that you represent less than 1% of his target audience.
It's really pretty simple: Adobe doesn't want to make the investment necessary to make the Flash player efficient, stable, secure, and bloat-free. On the other hand, they want to keep making money selling the Flash development tools.
Excuse me, but.... huh?
I'm going to assume you haven't actually researched this (i.e. "I went to the source and got the full story for myself" research and not just "I read a Slashdot comment once and got angry" research) and are just running at the mouth because you're angry, not because you're right.
Which you aren't.
Here, let me introduce you to a guy. His name is Tinic Uro, and he's one of the people who actually programs Flash. He's an engineer like us, not a marketing droid (or worse, an executive).
Here are three blog entries you should fully familiarise yourself with before making any further comment on what Adobe is doing in terms of improving Flash on OS X.
Flash 10.1 and Core Animation:
http://blog.kaourantin.net/?p=81
(TL;DR: yes, Flash 10.1 uses Core Animation to accelerate overall Flash graphics performance -- not video specifically -- but you need OS X Snow Leopard and a super-new version of Safari)
Flash 10.1 and timing:
http://blog.kaourantin.net/?p=82
i>(TL;DR: They rebuilt the timer model in Flash 10.1 to use significantly less memory, however Safari on OS X is less flexible than other browsers when it comes to firing timer events, thus making video playback less smooth)
H.264 hardware acceleration in OS X:
http://blog.kaourantin.net/?p=89
(TL;DR: Adobe has released a post-10.1 beta version of Flash that supports full and proper video H.264 acceleration on Mac OS X, with the caveat that you have to have 10.6.3 and certain current graphics chips)
The real story is this:
Apple has been well behind Microsoft Windows when it comes to providing third parties with APIs to do hardware acceleration, and to do high-performing timer operations that are necessary to run browser plugins smoothly. I know the Slashdotterie will get all worked up over that assertion, but speaking as someone who's actually written browser plugin code, you'll just have to trust me on this. IE has always had the best timer support, which is one reason why video- or timeline-heavy plugins have always performed better than other platforms. As of OS X 10.6.3 and Safari 5, Apple has pretty much caught up.
- Despite the headline-grabbing statements from Steve Jobs and other executive-types, there are actual hard-working developers at Apple and Adobe who actually collaborated to define a good API for high-performance video access for browser plugins. If Apple wasn't so deliriously secretive, you'd hear a lot more about it. Trouble is.... the only people who are allowed to blog at Apple are people who'll make the company look good and forward-thinking -- like the Webkit team.
The problem with performance isn't 100% Adobe's fault. It can't be. Adobe's engineers aren't stupid -- if there had been an easy solution to good plugin video performance on the Mac all this time, they would've fixed it years ago. Why spend several years intentionally using a bad approach?
Lastly.... despite what the article summary says here on Slashdot, overall Flash performance is quite a bit better in 10.1, especially on OS X. Do your own benchmarking; you'll see for yourself. It's still not as good as it should be, but it's a massive step forward. They know HTML5 is coming... they know they have to make Flash as good as or better than HTML5 or they'll be toast by 2020. They know all this.