Flash Can Rob 2 Hours From MacBook Air's Battery Life

The lack of Flash in the new MacBook Air may annoy some users, but it has a big upside, too. According to Wired's report (citing Ars Technica) passed on by an anonymous reader, "Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably — as much as 33 percent in our testing. With a handful of websites loaded in Safari, Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary, and the best time I recorded with Flash installed was just 4 hours. After deleting Flash, however, the MacBook Air ran for 6:02 — with the exact same set of websites reloaded in Safari, and with static ads replacing the CPU-sucking Flash versions."

Comments

Why not install Flashblock by default

[microbee]

Block all flashes by default but allow user to enable one specifically. Problem solved.

Re:Why not install Flashblock by default

[iksbob]

There's a Safari plugin that does just that called ClickToFlash. It handles flash the way browsers handled images in ye olden days - they're replaced with a "flash" box that you click on to let the flash tidbit load and run.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with the makers of ClickToFlash, though I do use it.

Re:Why not install Flashblock by default

[sirsnork]

PrefBar gives you this in FF for those that want something other than flashblock

Re:Why not install Flashblock by default

[drougie]

yes, stock browser > settings > enable plugins > on demand

Re:Why not install Flashblock by default

[noidentity]

I love Flashblock for browsing YouTube. Then if you hit the back button a few times, you don't have to wait for the video to reload each time. Or you can go to a video and decide whether you even want to wait for it to load.

Re:Why not install Flashblock by default

[capnkr]

Bzzzt - Wrong WRT Hulu (dunno about CNN). Flashblock does *not* break Hulu. I use it under both Win32 and Lin32 w/FFox, and watch Hulu all the time, no problems.

On my 64-bit system, when booted into Linux there is an issue - Hulu fscked something up the other day and it hasn't been working at all. This issue has _nothing_ to do with Flashblock, however; it has been widely reported by many Lin64 users.

Re:Why not install Flashblock by default

[amicusNYCL]

I really don't see what Android has to do with any of this.

Like Opera, it's an example of a system with intelligent handling of plugins built-in. With all of the anti-Flash hype from Apple, I'm surprised they wouldn't just go ahead and add an option to load plugins on-demand instead of always-on.

Everyone knows, and has always known, that Flash taxes the CPU. If you're building a system where battery power is a concern (like a laptop, or phone), why would you set it up so that either the plugins always load, or you need to uninstall them? Why not load-on-demand?

Offtopic indeed... way to go, mods.

Would've been first post...

[by (1706743)]

...but my computer ran out of batteries and I had to find an outlet.

Re:Would've been first post...

[AnonymousClown]

...but my computer ran out of batteries and I had to find an outlet.

I have several outlets besides computers - cooking, swimming, yoga, masturbation to hairy milf porn, ....oh, you're talking power outlet! My bad.

Re:Would've been first post...

[cerberusss]

I have several outlets besides computers - cooking, swimming, yoga, masturbation to hairy milf porn

At the same time, right?

Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[sethstorm]

It couldn't be Apple, who has been impartial to Flash, and welcoming of it on their platform... ...oh, wait.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[Renderer of Evil]

There are many beneficiaries when flash eventually bites the dust and becomes a pariah like Java Applets. But I'd like to point out the biggest impact isn't the battery life, it's your crotch. Flash forces laptops to run extremely hot and it invariably burns your nads while you rewind Lady Gaga videos for the 20th time in a row.

The reason why male sack is situated in-between legs is because it needs to remain a certain temperature to function properly. Evolution never anticipated humans putting hot slabs of electronics on their privates for extended periods of time.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[nedlohs]

Evolution never anticipated anything, full stop.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[alvinrod]

Most people feed them.

You slay them.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[mcrbids]

Augh! Enough!

Flash isn't perfect, I'll grant that. But if Flash didn't solve a very real set of problems, it wouldn't be installed on 98% of all computers made!

Go back just 1 year. Want to watch a video, online, what tool do you use? Want to make an interactive, graphically rich application to deliver via the Internet, what tool do you use?

See what I'm saying? Sure, flash has its warts. But it does neatly solve a problem that even HTML 5 doesn't do all that well at, yet. And the cost is a bit of CPU time, which has traditionally been considered cheap....

How many conversations have been ended with: "No need to rewrite your PHP application in C - Hardware is cheap!"? It's the same conversation with Flash! It's highly abstract, platform independent, looks nice, and performs better than any other product available (still!) given these requirements.

I'm not saying that it couldn't be done better, but even with HTML 5, there still isn't a tool with a better overall combination of features and availability. (Hint: my small company's online training videos are all delivered with flash and FlowPlayer because it actually works - HTML 5 is not even close to universally available, yet)

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[jschottm]

There are many beneficiaries when flash eventually bites the dust and becomes a pariah like Java Applets.

The problem isn't just Flash, the problem is complicated and interactive ads, which is what advertisers push for (because they work). It doesn't matter which technology is being used, be it HTML5 or Flash, it's still going to suck up CPU time.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[iinlane]

Evolution never anticipated humans putting hot slabs of electronics on their privates for extended periods of time.

Actually, the evolution filters out the ones that keep hot laptop on their crotch in few generations. It's the specific task it's good at.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[abigsmurf]

Look at the incredibly crude HTML5 games that are sucking up 50%+ of a CPU core. You really think things will be better if advertisers switch over from flash?

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the cost is a bit of CPU time, which has traditionally been considered cheap....

Well, according to this new data, the cost is a third of your battery life. You can hardly claim that has traditionally been considered cheap.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[tacktick]

So after a suitable length of time we will evolve a better cooling system for the family jewels? Or even better I could invent a sterilization prevention cooling system that water cools the Nads. A Premium upgrade gets you constant temperature monitoring and zero maintenance!

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Evolution never anticipated anything, full stop.

Oh, yeah? How do you explain evolution anticipating wrist watches by providing us with wrists, pal? Or anticipating the infernal earphones from Apple by provided us with convenient bumps and crags on the ear lobe for it to hang on to?

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[Binestar]

More likely: People who choose to use laptops on their 'nads will not breed as much as those who use laptops on tables, thus removing the laptops on 'nads tendencies from the population.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[Vectormatic]

burns your nads while you rewind Lady Gaga videos for the 20th time in a row.

Natural selection at its finest!

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[Stooshie]

Thank you mcrbids. Please mod up.

Some people forget that even images ran as plugins in the very beginning. Name me one other app that does everything that flash does in the browser (incl. 3D, complex web apps, video. vector graphics etc ...) and does it as fast as flash! Incidentally, flash runs on my machine with almost no CPU cost. It's almost un-noticable in task manager

I know this is slashdot where most people think that if it can't be written in 7 lines of perl then it's not worth doing but Flash has evolved into a serious development tool. It had a few security bugs to start with (and still occasionally has a few) but so does every other app that connects to the web. The majority of people who use the internet (and we slashdot users are a very small minority of internet users) don't care or even know if a site is written in flash/html 5/xhtml or not. If it's easy to use, doesn't steal their bank details and looks good, they will come back and use it again.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[Arker]

More likely: People who choose to use laptops on their 'nads will not breed as much as those who use laptops on tables, thus removing the laptops on 'nads tendencies from the population.

Closer, but still off. This would only happen if there was, you know, a genetic controller of the behaviour. But there almost certainly is no such thing. Like most behaviour, it's independent of actual DNA relationships, but learned through social proximity.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[dannys42]

The biggest problem with Flash is it's not an open standard. So it's actually not in any internet user's long term interests to use flash.

Although you are correct, there just isn't any good alternative (HTML5 really isn't the right approach either, and as you say, doesn't even address many of the issues that people who use Flash need).

What I'm surprised about is how Google hasn't seen this and is actually using the whole "we support flash" campaign to compete with Apple.

So yes, I personally agree with Apple and think Flash should die. But, when you need to get something done that HTML just can't do, at least it's better than Java.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[nedlohs]

That was Jesus, obviously.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[Binestar]

Still, you would eventually run out of social stimuli to prompt the behavior...

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[bonch]

Who would stand to benefit? People who care about open standards like HTML5, that's who.

Adobe knows Flash on the Mac sucks. One of their bloggers famously told critics to install a Flash blocker as a solution to the crashing.

Re:Who would stand to benefit from such a study?

[bgspence]

If I don't want to receive "an interactive, graphically rich application delivered via the Internet, what tool do you use?"

I use ABP and Click2Flash

I think this should be read more like...

[MarcoAtWork]

... web ads can rob 2 hours from a macbook air's life, the main reason why the battery lasts longer in the no-flash case is because the ads aren't loaded, once all ads move to HTML5 I don't think there'll be that much of a difference.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least two HTML5 implementations are now indirectly threaded, so it won't stall a core like Flash does when you open 5 heavy tabs.

Also the problem with Flash is its history of inefficiency for even simple operations. The problem here isn't the ads (that's another problem), the problem is their performance. WebGL is currently doing stuff Flash can't dream of, and that will only improve (unlike Flash).

Bad JavaScript sucks nearly as hard as bad ActionScript, but at least we have tools to debug and selectively disable JavaScript, because JS is implemented by the browser and not some external runtime.

There is no reason a browser can't implement actions to assist the user in this area, like to optionally shut down a JS script when it stalls the CPU for 5 seconds, or to disable selected animations by right-clicking on them. Will Adobe ever add assistance like the these examples? Fuck no they won't, they've had 10 years of complete inaction.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Altus]

That depends on how efficent the HTML5 rendering is compared to Flash. Its not likely to be worse at least and I suspect it could be considerably better.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Yes, because decoding H.264 is so much less CPU intensive...

You're trying to be facetious, but in my experience that's actually true - and that shows what a dog Flash is.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[SoftwareArtist]

No doubt that HTML 5 ads would consume some more resources but they would still be an order of magnitude less power hungry.

What makes you believe that? I'm sure advertisers will have no trouble finding ways to suck up power with HTML5. WebGL alone is likely to accelerate global warming by a couple of years...

Personally, I love Flash. I just install FlashBlock, and all those annoying ads go away, yet I still have easy access to Flash content when I actually want it. Once advertisers start moving to HTML5, it will become a lot harder to block only the irritating animations without also blocking the useful ones.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[mmj638]

But with Flash, browser makers have no control over how CPU-hungry the plugin is.

With HTML5, browser makers have the ability to keep improving the efficiency of their engines for greater performance and lower CPU usage. They use it as a point of differentiation from their competitors (look at how it's fuelled improvements in Javascript engines over the last 4 years).

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[GWBasic]

... web ads can rob 2 hours from a macbook air's life, the main reason why the battery lasts longer in the no-flash case is because the ads aren't loaded, once all ads move to HTML5 I don't think there'll be that much of a difference.

Doubtful. The real problem is that Apple can't tweak the Flash runtime to be more CPU efficient. In contrast, they can do whatever they want to their Javascript and HTML engines.

This is also why I love Chrome. It buckets Flash into a separate process, so when Ads start hogging the CPU, I kill the Flash process.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[blueg3]

Decoding H.264 is much less CPU-intensive than Flash -- even non-video Flash.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[LynnwoodRooster]

A factor of 10 difference, as the grandparent posted?

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Anonymous Coward]

H.264 decoding is done in hardware on nearly all platforms, the exception being Flash when it is run on anything except Windows. This is why you get that result. They claim that Flash can use hardware decoding on other platforms but I have yet to see it actually work.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[exomondo]

It's a captain obvious story...if you're displaying animated banners it's obviously using more processing power - and hence battery power - than not displaying them. I can't work out who the bigger moron is, the guy who did the test or the news outlets that ran with it.

Hey look everyone, playing a movie on my laptop uses more battery power than not playing a movie...

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Well, it sure is when you have a dedicated h.264 hardware decoder, like in iOS devices.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[exomondo]

No doubt that HTML 5 ads would consume some more resources but they would still be an order of magnitude less power hungry.

Why would it be less power hungry?

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[DurendalMac]

Wrong. Flash 10.1 on OS X now has hardware decoding on a number of video cards. I believe the 9400M, 9600GT, 320M, and 330M are supported.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[aristotle-dude]

First of all, why was that flamebait and where did I mention video? We are talking about ads which can be animated with HTML5 CSS Animation which will take a lot less CPU usage than flash on platforms like OS X.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[exomondo]

Decoding H.264 is much less CPU-intensive than Flash -- even non-video Flash.

But flash does hardware h.264 decoding.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[zippthorne]

Decoding H.264 is a lot less CPU intensive than decoding H.264 in an inefficient wrapper....

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[blueg3]

No -- some versions of Flash on some systems do hardware-assisted H.264 decoding, which seems almost as processor-intensive as unassisted H.264 without Flash (until you get to large resolutions).

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[exomondo]

No -- some versions of Flash

Specifically the latest version of flash for OSX.

on some systems

Like the macbook air we are talking about here.

do hardware-assisted H.264 decoding, which seems almost as processor-intensive as unassisted H.264 without Flash (until you get to large resolutions).

By large resolutions you mean standard HD resolutions? Apple/nV software unfortunately limits the ability to do hardware decoding of low resolution videos, hopefully this will be fixed in future.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Playing H.264 video via QuickTime on Mac OS X is less CPU intensive than Flash because Apple specifically optimizes their OS and hardware around QuickTime. Not surprisingly, they don't do the same for Flash.

It wasn't until a recent OS update that Mac OS X even offered APIs to allow other software access to hardware H.264 acceleration - but since Flash doesn't only support OS X 10.6.4, instead opting to support Mac OS X from Tiger on up, those APIs are entirely useless. And until Apple bothers supporting their users who haven't upgraded to the latest and most locked-down, will remain useless.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[exomondo]

Will Adobe ever add assistance like the these examples? Fuck no they won't, they've had 10 years of complete inaction.

During more than half of that time they didn't even own Flash.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your experience isn't shared very widely - try one browser on one platform. For the rest, Flash is more efficient than HTML5 for video.

However, that's about to change. Adobe demoed a new video api at Max last week that showed 1080p video running on one of the new MacBook Air notebooks, using 8 to 10% cpu usage. That's WAY more efficient than what you've got right now for either Flash or HTML5.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[timeOday]

once all ads move to HTML5 I don't think there'll be that much of a difference.

It might be even worse. Flash is a separate think you can enable/disable on a case-by-case basis. With HTML5, the fancy resource-hogging stuff will just be part of the page.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Ster]

This is also why I love Chrome. It buckets Flash into a separate process, so when Ads start hogging the CPU, I kill the Flash process.

"Flash Player (Safari Internet plug-in)" is a separate process as of Safari 4 (on OS X at least).

-Ster

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Sockatume]

There are hardware H.264 decoders which are very efficient. There is no such thing as a hardware Flash animation decoder.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[abigsmurf]

Badly coded WebGL will cause graphics chipsets to suck up more power than Flash will. Animation with no frame limiters, spheres with insane numbers of polygons.

It's hard to detect when Javascript is stalling the browser and/or maxing out CPU, if it could be easily implemented, all the major browsers would already do it. The current 'this script is screwing with your PC' halts are unreliable at best, only catching a small percentage of javascript based lock ups. One of the most common lockups for me is when javascript gets stuck in a loop adding HTML elements to a page, especially given that Firefox is one of the worst browsers (in my experience) when it comes to handling insanely large HTML pages.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[TheRaven64]

The ClickToFlash plugin for Safari lets you grab the H.264 video directly from YouTube and play that in a canvas tag, or use the Flash player. Using the Flash player uses 2-3 times as much CPU power on my MacBook Pro.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[ProppaT]

I watch a lot of video online...some of it flash based, some of it h.264 based, and the effect on my laptop battery life is minimal to the point its unnoticeable. I'm sure that H.264 is more efficient, but if I'd say that the net effect would be 5 minutes more battery life. Scaling that up to the battery life of an Air, I might expect a net hit difference of 15-20 minutes less battery life compared to H.264...unless Flash for OSX is just absurdly less efficient than Flash for W7. That's nothing to gawk at, but this is also based on nothing but assumption. I really would be interested in a side by side Flash vs. H.264 battery life test.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Check Anandtech's review of the Macbook Air. Their battery test shows that flash and XviD both chew up about the same amount of battery (130 and 137 minutes battery lost, respectively), basically reinforcing my original statement, and your experience. Video decoding is pretty much the same in terms of processing power and battery consumption for most devices, not "an order of magnitude" different.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Huh, thought flash wasn't an option in the first place, meaning that trying to play back flash on your iOS device would consume LESS power than h.264 through a dedicated hardware decoder... Doesn't take much power to render a black rectangle!

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[greed]

And I saw it crash the other day! It actually worked, Flash crashed out and Safari kept going.

Then I told the guy who owned the computer about ClickToFlash.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

HTML 5 is an option on iOS.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Stooshie]

" ... an order of magnitude less power hungry ... "

I know you are on Slashdot, but I suspect you don't have any stats to back that claim up, do you? HTML5 ads would be doing exactly the same thing as Flash ads.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Stooshie]

Not TRUE. Flash 10.1 does.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Stooshie]

Is that a separate magic chip that runs on no power then? Where can I get one?

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Stooshie]

" ... WebGL is currently doing stuff Flash can't dream of ... "

Like what? The example you gave is rubbish. Most browsers I use give the option to close down a flash object that's running slowly. Although, I don't get the chance to test that very often as it rarely happens.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[farble1670]

http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html

"Overall, it's inaccurate to conclude that Flash is inherently inefficient. Rather, Flash is efficient on platforms where it can access hardware acceleration and less efficient where it can't."

yes, h.264 is significantly more efficient than flash, BUT ONLY ON MAC SAFARAI, where the browser uses hardware acceleration for h.264 and denies hardware acceleration to flash.

big surprise. OSX cripples flash, and guess what? it performs poorly.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Ohio Calvinist]

The issue is that the majority of users care more about their transaction committing or their game not stoping in the middle of running more than they care about their CPU utilization. People use poorly written, crappy web applications to do (subjectively) important things. Browsers that interfere with those applications cause unpredictable application behaviors which cause user frustration. It also causes developer and support frustration if the client is making radical choices (particularly if those choices are obscured to the user.)

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[Spykk]

Exactly. I mean, imagine if Apple didn't have the source to iTunes. It could have been a bloated piece of crap!

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[beej]

WebGL is currently doing stuff Flash can't dream of, and that will only improve (unlike Flash).

With Molehill, it looks like they're dreaming pretty closely. Care to bet which tech hits 90% market share first?

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[knet99]

Flash is doing more than hogging the CPU. I have one first and one second generation MacBook Air. When the machine gets almost unusable (the Air often does), things like switching to a new space takes forever. Starting a new application takes a very very long time.

When looking at Activity Monitor, Flash is often just at 1-5% CPU. Still, if I kill Flash the machine most often gets back to life, I can instantly switch spaces again.

So Flash is doing "something" more than hogging the CPU, that Mac OS X or MacBook Air doesn't like. I don't know what.

Re:I think this should be read more like...

[GWBasic]

So Flash is doing "something" more than hogging the CPU, that Mac OS X or MacBook Air doesn't like. I don't know what.

Could be poorly-designed garbage collection. When done poorly, instead of cleaning themselves up, garbage collected programs will soak up RAM and swap out all your other programs to disk. I see this problem more on PC then on Mac, but I think it's because Apple tends to discourage developing with garbage collection.

In other news...

[JReykdal]

Using the computer might drain your battery!

Re:In other news...

[Iceykitsune]

I'm surprised they even open word!

Re:In other news...

[Malc]

Lame response! Why were you modded up?

Top processes by CPU time on my XP laptop:
* System Idle - 07:06:27
* Firefox.exe - 01:17:39
* plugin-container - 00:52:01
* svchost.exe - 00:17:52
* System - 00:17:42
* explorer.exe - 00:15:30

I use FlashBlock and AdBlock to minimise Flash usage, but the plugin container (essentially Flash) has still managed to use three times as much CPU as busiest system processes in this session. The fan is kicking in all the time, and the laptop is hot all of the time. It's flipping annoying.

Adobe are just shit at programming. I can't watch the BBC iPlayer (TV catch-up) natively on my Mac as the Flash implementation cannot seem to handle the h.264 based video. I can fire up Windows in VMWare Fusion in the same OS X login session and play it fine from there. Therefore I imagine that Adobe's implementation is even crapper on OS X than it is on Windows. And yes, my MacBook Pro is also always hot with the fan kicking in if I have allowed anything Flash-based to run.

No wonder Steve Jobs is able to make excuses to block Flash on the iPhone.

Re:In other news...

[bonch]

Are you kidding? A single web plug-in can cut your battery life by two hours. That's quite different from normal battery usage and is an important thing to note for a mobile computer mostly intended for web browsing.

This is why I use NoScript

[WillAffleckUW]

Flash is totally a suck monster.

Plus, the giant bug hole in it won't be patched until a week from now anyway.

Flash ads are CPU hogs.

[pushing-robot]

Wow, that's... news.

Re:Flash ads are CPU hogs.

[whiteboy86]

Ironically, this is not because of the Flash technology itself - as many here might believe, the Flash plug-in binary is incredibly well optimized and does many things so well that would otherwise require GPU-like acceleration. The problem here is that the Adobe editing software allows those non-tech educated "artist" (who create that graphics) to do such a mess with the resources, clogged rendering pipeline and a total misuse of every feature imaginable. They have absolutely no clue what is going on technologically underneath their creations and it shows.

Re:Flash ads are CPU hogs.

[mrxak]

I ran into this problem myself recently. While it doesn't surprise me in the least, I was shocked by the magnitude of how badly it killed my battery. I had a browser open with a few tabs, not that many open. My battery life which I normally have at about 10 hours remaining on a full charge dropped suddenly to 4 when I unplugged it and went mobile. Closing just one of those tabs, which had a few flash ads on there, and the battery life went up to 8 hours!

Re:Flash ads are CPU hogs.

[yeshuawatso]

Ditto. For a long time an AT&T flash ad on any system I had would drive up the CPU heat, and often you'd see the same juice sucking ads on the same page running in different threads. The ironic part was the ads were usually advertising the iPhone.

Re:Flash ads are CPU hogs.

[xiando]

The problem here is that the Adobe editing software allows those non-tech educated "artist" (who create that graphics) to do such a mess with the resources, clogged rendering pipeline and a total misuse of every feature imaginable

Most flash on the web are advertisements who show a very short animation. You seriously expect me to believe that it's their fault that these 3 second long "buy our shit" animations require 100% CPU?

Re:Flash ads are CPU hogs.

[cherokee158]

Just a little reminder that those annoying artists are one reason the entire internet doesn't still look like it did in 1990, when the most expressive visual statement programmers could muster was the BLINK tag.

Re:Flash ads are CPU hogs.

[ilsaloving]

And we LIKED it!

Now get off my lawn! Geez, kids today....

Re:Flash ads are CPU hogs.

[Stooshie]

Most of the things you list are already implemented in flash. Code signing, runtime warning, performance measurement(in the dev. environment) etc ...

Why should the barrier to entry be set high? It's good that app desiogn is becoming more accessible. Native browser support is not always superior from a usability perspective. In fact browser user interaction objects suck on the whole. For instance drag and drop is really difficult for a designer to implement in HTML but works really well in flash.

The flash development environment allows the coder and the designer to work together and develop apps that are use-able, nice to look at, efficiently written from a coding point of view and allow loads of functionality (video, 3D etc...).

I know of no other development tool that allows such close working between the developer and the designer. C# hardly takes the designer into account, Silverlight is in it's infancy and HTML 5 is, frankly, a joke.

As developers, we need to learn to work with the designers and not get into the closed way of thinking that because we know how to make a DB query run 0.1 seconds faster that we automatically know how the end user uses their computer.

Re:Flash ads are CPU hogs.

[Stooshie]

Speak for yourself. By today's standards, the 1990's internet sucked big time, even though it was amazing for it's time.

Re:Flash ads are CPU hogs.

[bonch]

The more it's pointed out how much Flash sucks and why Apple is opposed to it, the better for everyone.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Safari works far better than FF on OS X?

Not just the Air

[bsDaemon]

Flash will suck the life out of a battery charge on my MacBook Pro, too, as well as every non-Apple laptop that I've owned recently, too. Interestingly, I don't have that issue if I watch a "raw" mp4 via the QuickTime plugin.

Re:Not just the Air

[Anonymous Coward]

But then you have Quicktime installed, which means you have iTunes installed. No thanks. And people think Adobe software is bloated

Re:Not just the Air

[Darkness404]

Quicktime/iTunes isn't bad when ran on OS X because its pretty much native. Its bloated on Windows because it seems to think that rather than using the things that are already there, you need to install half of OS X to run a program.

Re:Not just the Air

[aristotle-dude]

But then you have Quicktime installed, which means you have iTunes installed. No thanks. And people think Adobe software is bloated

Quicktime is integrated into OS X. Neither Quicktime player or iTunes such on OS X. They are not that bad either on windows unless if you have a crap load of stuff installed and running in the background.

Re:Not just the Air

[Darkness404]

On my laptop's Windows partition (Turion 64 x2, Windows XP pro installed, 2 GB of RAM) iTunes is nearly unusable and no, I don't have a lot of junk installed, the only thing other than essential Windows processes that was running was iTunes and it is close to unusable. VLC runs just fine on there, Foobar 2000 runs just fine on there, heck, Windows Media Player runs just fine on there but iTunes is a bloated piece of crap. The only reason I have it is that when I first bought my iPod touch it was the only way you could sync things to it. When you buy a song it takes longer to "process" the file than it does to download the song. And no, I'm not playing HD videos or anything through it, just syncing and playing some music. There is -no- excuse to why iTunes is such a piece of crap.

Re:Not just the Air

[Tharsman]

But then you have Quicktime installed, which means you have iTunes installed. No thanks. And people think Adobe software is bloated

QuickTime can be installed in a windows machine without installing iTunes. iTunes requires QuickTime but not the other way around.

Re:Not just the Air

[bsDaemon]

Well, I use a Mac for that sort of thing. I avoid it at all costs on Windows because it doesn't work particularly well off of a Mac. It seems to be perfectly well integrated into OS X though, and is quite snappy. However, it makes sense they'd put the effort into it.

Re:Not just the Air

[PitaBred]

Sure there is. You're supposed to buy a Mac so it'll run better.

You just haven't entered fully into the reality distortion field, and the forces of being in the middle are a pain ;)

Re:Not just the Air

[mabhatter654]

search the boards, there are a few very common mis-configurations of Windows that cause iTunes to have horrible performance. Often it's a registry key that needs fixed or other program conflicting. On my Acer netbook it happens every 6 months or so.

Re:Not just the Air

[aristotle-dude]

search the boards, there are a few very common mis-configurations of Windows that cause iTunes to have horrible performance. Often it's a registry key that needs fixed or other program conflicting. On my Acer netbook it happens every 6 months or so.

Yup. While iTunes might not be the most slender program on windows, the architecture of windows is partly to blame for for the poor performance. Storing setting in a monolithic binary tree database is a bad idea. You have to open the database just to get some small settings for one program. OS X handles file type associate on the fly by scanning app packages in the background periodically and storing that in memory instead of a physical file that can become corrupt.

Re:Not just the Air

[shermo]

While we're bashing iTunes, has anyone got a decent Windows alternative?

I've tried:

http://www.musikcube.com/ - Not updated since 2006, worked well on xp, crashes on vista + 7

http://amarok.kde.org/ - I use this on my laptop, but it's not windows compatible.

http://www.atunes.org/?page_id=6 - I currently use this, but it resets the repository occasionally, and I would be interested in other options.

Re:Not just the Air

[Demena]

I don't find it that good on OS X anymore either. It is annoying when I sync my iPhone and the movie I am watching freezes for up to several minutes. I went Apple (from FreeBSD) when Apple brought out Tiger. Was all good for a while but I'm thinking of moving back.

Re:Not just the Air

[Esteanil]

Foobar 2000 is what I use. A lil bit of moseying about to set it up, but it's worth it. Recommend this plugin if you're on Vista+. It helpfully kills all other sounds while your music is playing - oh, and it apparently gives bit-exact output as well, although I'm fairly sure nobody can really hear the difference.

Re:Not just the Air

[fermion]

There was a time when iTunes was the resource hog. Apple seems to have gotten it under control.

OTOH Flash seems to be getting worse. It would seem that a year of work to get Flash on mobile devices would help, but that is not the case. As MS appears to be giving up on Silverlight on mobile, the same energy issue might apply.

Netflix and Hulu seem to be able to get video on the iPhone without it. Given that there are only four major mobile devices, it may be beneficial to write code for each instead of depending on the type of vitalization on the PC. Cycles and energy is expensive on mobile devices.

Re:Not just the Air

[shutdown -p now]

If you don't mind paying for your software J.River Media Center is probably the single most powerful iTunes-like media player/organizer for Windows. They also have a free edition, but that only handles music (and not e.g. video).

Re:Not just the Air

[zippthorne]

But, for some reason, apple decided that iTunes Music store should be a shitty, poorly formatted web page that is incredibly unresponsive to simple commands like scrolling, instead of the very clean native-UI interface they had a couple of generations ago.

And yes, I'm complaining about this from a late 2008 macbook, so I think I have a right to expect it to work well. If their goal is to convince me to get a bigger screen, then they've failed. I'm not buying a 17" notebook, ever. Especially not just to compensate for poor user interface decisions in a music organizer. It defeats the whole point of having a portable computer.

Re:Not just the Air

[klui]

foobar2000 is very light weight but a little heavy on the UI configuration. I got tired of iTunes + Quicktime being close to 100MB. My foobar200 installation is less than 18MB with a bunch of plugins like media streaming, various container (rar, zip, etc.) support, tagger support for Discogs, and some other decoders like AC3, DTS, Monkey's. It even has component update capability.

Re:Not just the Air

[Johnno74]

Wow, nice straw man. The registry has nothing to do with itunes suckiness. Itunes is bloated and slow. its a what, 100mb download for a fancy media player and organiser. Winamp, foobar2000, mediamonkey and pretty much every other media player I've used over the years are tons lighter, quicker and just plain work better.

I mean, itunes can't even automatically pick up new media you put in the media folder on your computer.

FWIW, the registry is NOT slow. And you don't have to "open the database" to get each setting. When you log on your registry hive is loaded into memory, and its pretty quick. However, it does suck having a bunch of programs settings stored in one binary file, and file associations on windows do suck.

Re:Not just the Air

[bipbop]

Funny. iTunes is a bloated hog on my mac, too :-)

Re:Not just the Air

[bazorg]

tweaking registry keys?!... that's how we see that Windows is not yet ready for the desktop... ;)

Re:Not just the Air

[CrackedButter]

Don't sync your phone while watching a movie then. It's not like you NEED too is it? I suffer the same problem but just be patient until Apple rewrites iTunes. It will come.

Re:Not just the Air

[Richard_at_work]

iTunes does not have to use the centralised registry - every application can create its own independent registry hive containing just its data within the users Application Data folder. Hell, iTunes could even use pLists if it damn well chose.

So no, the architecture of Windows is not to blame at all here for iTunes, its all Apple all the way.

Re:Not just the Air

[Demena]

Fair enough. But I think it needs more than a rewrite it needs to be fragmented somewhat (in my opinion).

Re:Not just the Air

[MartinSchou]

That's weird, because on my now 3½ year old HP Pavilion laptop (2 GHz Turion 64 x2, 2 GB RAM, Windows 7, 4200 RPM harddrive) I have no issues with iTunes at all.

Doesn't matter if it's just in the background playing music while I'm playing some (admittedly old) game, watching a 720p movie in iTunes or the same movie in VLC while playing music in iTunes. But obviously my anecdote is useless because you know for a fact that it's iTunes that causes your computer to be crap and not something else you've done.

Re:Not just the Air

[Anonymous Coward]

"just don't hold it like that!" lol

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me a dozen times, I must be an Apple customer!

Re:Not just the Air

[jokermatt999]

It's as heavy on the UI configuration as you want it to be. I just used a default configuration and was done with it. Foobar2000 is to music players as Firefox is to web browsers: they can become a timesink or bloated, but it's basically your fault if they do.

Re:Not just the Air

[Bobfrankly1]

Quicktime is integrated into OS X. Neither Quicktime player or iTunes such on OS X. They are not that bad either on windows unless if you have a crap load of stuff installed and running in the background.

Unfortunately, that crap load of stuff comes WITH the iTunes/Quicktime windows installer. I was surprised to find all these little extra apps linked to itunes when I had to troubleshoot a corrupted itunes installation.

Re:Not just the Air

[Bobfrankly1]

Quite snappy provided you have a small catalog of music, and a less then 3 year old machine. Annoyingly sluggish otherwise.

Re:Not just the Air

[farble1670]

that makes sense. blame windows for itunes' terrible performance. it's amazing how so much other software manages to get around this windows bug.

Re:Not just the Air

[Stooshie]

Spotify - Fast, easy to use, very little drain on resources.

Re:Not just the Air

[Richard_at_work]

When my system is blazingly fast for VS2010 usage, Fireworks CS3 usage, video editing and shit like that, but iTunes drags its butt along the floor like an abused puppy, I really do not think that its Windows at fault here.

And I'm a developer with over a decade of experience total, and about 3 years of Windows development experience, along with OSX, iPhone and other experience in the mix.

iTunes has to use the central registry for anything *shared*, but if access to filetype information or mimetype associations is slowing iTunes down then iTunes is badly written, as that is not something that iTunes should be needing to check for each and every action the user takes.

iTunes is at fault here whichever way you try and cut it. Its a poorly written piece of shit.

Re:Not just the Air

[bonch]

Uh, Quicktime is a system framework that comes with OS X. It's not really bloated at all. People complain about the Windows version, which ships with a port of required Carbon components. Hopefully, Apple will implement an internal Cocoa for Windows port for Quicktime and iTunes so that iTunes can finally move to Cocoa on OS X.

What if you don't install anything?!

[Servaas]

Anyone has the saving when you just don't install any software on a Macbook Air? Come on! Either use flash or don't use flash - it's here, it will be so for some time to come - get over it.

Having it installed cuts the Battery?

[drolli]

Not blocking it selectively with noscript, flashblock etc. sucks the Battery.

Re:Having it installed cuts the Battery?

[s0lar]

The tester has not heard of AdBlock and friends? Hello, it's your CPU, your bandwidth, your UI experience while using the site - don't waste any of it by downloading crap.

news?

[bhcompy]

Why is this news? Flash is actively drawn and persistent. It's also known that it is CPU intensive. It's like running a DVD or a videogame. It takes extra CPU cycles and possibly extra components(does Flash utilize a GPU/FPU?) to accomplish these types of things. In a word, duh.

Re:news?

[bhcompy]

How about you blame the ad companies for using Flash rather than blame Adobe for making an interactive product meant to enhance web content(which you admit it does)? Or blame the browser companies for not giving the options and/or making it more obvious that dynamic content is being used? Smith and Wesson makes guns. Are they at fault when some gangbanger kills another with a S&W?

Re:news?

[Un pobre guey]

I agree. Flash on Linux has never been a particularly pleasant experience either. If only the browser could tell the Flash engine to shut the fuck up if the tab isn't visible, things would be much better. Not fixed, mind you, but better.

Re:news?

[blueg3]

The FPU hasn't been separate from the CPU for ages now.

Running a DVD, though, takes something like an order of magnitude less CPU than an equivalent Flash video. Likewise with the simple 2D Flash games.

Re:news?

[outsider007]

Ad companies are just making effective ads. Without ads there would be no content. They are definitely not the bad guys here.

Re:news?

[Fahrvergnuugen]

Everyone knows that flash is CPU intensive. This is news because someone tested it and figured out you can save 33 frigging percent of your battery by disabling it. I would have never guessed that the power savings would be that high, and I'm sure many other's wouldn't have either.

Re:news?

[cherokee158]

Any ad that annoys the viewer so much that they either dismiss the website or install technical solutions to block all ads is not an effective ad. It's like a virus that kills the host before it can spread to another host. That is why diseases evolve to be less lethal over time, and not more lethal. If advertisers want to employ TRUE viral marketing, they should advertise with more restraint.

Re:news?

[owlstead]

You know that Adobe deliberately takes control away from the user. It's like S&W making guns without a safety. Earlier Adobe flash for instance had a pause option, but the advertisers did not like that one bit. This is true of all Adobe product. It's like that Adobe reader that has millions of settings but does have all kinds of issues with searching, selecting text or placing bookmarks.

The biggest problem with Adobe products is that they are all about Adobe, instead of the user.

Re:news?

[bhcompy]

I have an Inspiron 8600 Centrino laptop. 6 hour batterylife just fuckin around. 4 hour battery life with DVD use. Less than 2 hour battery life playing videogames(which forces the system not to underclock itself and utilizes the Radeon GPU). If the article claims 33% loss of battery with Flash, that's what I'm getting with the DVD in use. So the impact is the same in that case

Re:news?

[farble1670]

does Flash utilize a GPU/FPU

yes, on all platforms other than mac. and surprise, it performs as well as h.264 on those other platforms as well. in other words, it's hardware acceleration that makes the difference, not h.264 vs. flash.

Friends don't let friends run flash

[dtjohnson]

It's great that someone is finally recognizing this sort of stuff. Think of the millions of kwh wasted all over the world every day running flash on laptops and desktops...not to mention the security issues involved with the 'active' content that the flash player brings to the system. All of this comes from an unlovely company that does not seem to shoulder any responsibility for the software that it looses upon the user community. Okay Adobe, mod this troll, but you can't stop everyone from eventually seeing the light.

Re:Friends don't let friends run flash

[dudpixel]

there is nothing about flash (the format) that is all that bad. sure the implementation could be a LOT better, including the plugin, but I think for what it is and considering how long it has been around, its not all bad. Until now, there hasn't been an equivalent on the web, at least not with the same market share. Up until recently, if you wrote a website using flash, you could deliver a rich multimedia experience to a very wide audience. What other choices did you have? not all websites are just about information and plain text.

I think flash is now reaching end of life, sure, but I also think it has served a purpose, while we wait for web standards to catch up and fully support rich content online.

One day the web will be an extension of what our desktops can already do...but that day is still a way off...and no HTML5 isn't going to fix this overnight.

Re:Friends don't let friends run flash

[indi0144]

It's great that someone is finally recognizing this sort of stuff. Think of the millions of kwh wasted all over the world every day running PORN on laptops and desktops...not to mention the security issues involved with the 'active' content that the PORN SITES brings to the system. All of this comes from an unlovely company that does not seem to shoulder any responsibility for the MEDIA that it looses upon the user community. Okay PORN INDUSTRY, mod this troll, but you can't stop everyone from eventually seeing the light.

tl:dr

Thank god Mr Jobs is protecting against porn TOO :)

Re:He said she said?

[WrongSizeGlass]

"According to Wired's report (citing Ars Technica) passed on by an anonymous reader," According to Wired's report (citing Ars Technica) passed on by an anonymous reader who talked to his cousin who found out from his baby's mama who saw this girl at 7-11 talking to her brother who said...

You *almost* got it right. The girl at 7-11 talking to her brother who saw it in an ad on the internet - you know, one of those fancy moving ads that are all spiffy 'n stuff.

And, predictably...

[colenski]

...viewing TFA caused a Flash popover ad to appear over the article text. Just sayin'.

Re:And, predictably...

[The Wild Norseman]

...viewing TFA caused a Flash popover ad to appear over the article text. Just sayin'.

Yeah, that's okay, I still have just enough battery left to fini

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[Bassman59]

Why would ANYONE use Safari on Mac when you have FF? ABP and NoScript for the win!

Ummm, AdBlock is now available for Safari, and Click2Flash neatly dispenses with Flash.

But, the battery-sucking aspect of Flash is old news.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[Rewind]

You can get AB and a flash blocker for Safari, among other things. https://extensions.apple.com/

No flash here

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Almost a year on this pc with no flash loaded.

So far I couldn't see a menards ad since the online ad is flash only. So I went to Home Depot instead.

Flash blocking

[mr100percent]

That's why I'm gonna go install ClickToFlash so I don't have it running when I don't want it to.

Sigh

[sexconker]

If you're going to report one uptime as being "6:02", don't just report the other as being "4 hours". Tell us if it was 4:01 or 4:00 or whatever.

When your difference is on the order of 120 minutes, 1 or 2 minutes difference either way is indeed notable.

And if this test was done over wireless, I wonder how much the browser cache played a role. No need to refetch content, right? Did he even make sure all pages served him the same ads?

This is Mythbusters-levels of bad science.

Re:Sigh

[outsider007]

How about the "handful" of websites? I can fit a nearly infinite number of websites in my hand.

Re:Sigh

[dwightk]

The pages didn't serve the same ads because the ads were flash-based

Flash isn't the problem...

[Zouden]

Reinstall Flash and install adblock. Then the story changes to "Ads Can Rob 2 Hours From MacBook Air's Battery Life". But not many ad-supported websites would run with that title, would they?

This is a complete non-story. It's no surprise that replacing animated content with a static image improves battery life. I would prefer more websites used static content for their ads rather than Flash content. Then maybe I wouldn't block them so much. With AdBlock, having Flash installed makes no difference to how long my battery lasts - but it does make a difference to what I can do on the web.

Re:Flash isn't the problem...

[mattack2]

Yeah, I certainly don't want to defend Flash, but wouldn't animated GIFs have much the same effect?

Re:Flash isn't the problem...

[Dahamma]

Then the story changes to "Ads Can Rob 2 Hours From MacBook Air's Battery Life".

It's really more like "Flash Ads Can Rob 2 Hours From MacBook Air's Battery Life". The non-Flash ads don't, and that's what makes the story vaguely (but barely) interesting...

Re:Flash isn't the problem...

[izomiac]

Well, even static image ads require more power. First, there's the extra network overhead. Second, the extra rendering. Third, the user has to scroll around the ads. Fourth, websites are formatted/paginated to make the user look at as many ads as possible, so more page loads and more time wasted.

In other words, if a site takes 3 seconds to load without ads, and 30 seconds to read the content, then your wireless adapter is running for ~3 seconds, and the screen is on for 33 seconds. With ads the site might take 4.5 seconds to load each of two pages and the user might spend 60 seconds on each scrolling around the 900 pixel header + ads on the top of the page, and scrolling to read the text squeezed between vertical ads. So the wireless adapter is going for three times as long, and the screen for four times as long. The CPU will need to render for two page loads plus a lot of scrolling as well.

Re:Flash isn't the problem...

[Dahamma]

Um, nice superfluous use of too many unsupported numbers ;) But that wasn't what the article was about at ALL.

These web sites are FREE and AD SUPPORTED, and without ads they would not exist. That isn't the issue. It's that Flash versions reduced the battery life by 30% vs the same ad supported sites with static ads.

Re:Flash isn't the problem...

[izomiac]

Well, the numbers are arbitrary but I think they are reasonable and explain the point well enough. I'm comparing ad-free websites to ad-supported websites regarding battery life, not whether the sites would exist without ads or not. My goal is to point out that websites often sacrifice great amounts of energy and time efficiency for marginal improvements in ad delivery, which designers should at least be conscious of when designing them in such a way.

Also, it's pedantic, but the word free means "costing nothing", which categorically excludes ad-supported content that has non-monetary costs (namely attention). The spelling of the marketing requires exclamation points and an asterisk in addition to being in all caps. =P

Re:Flash isn't the problem...

[Dahamma]

Also, it's pedantic, but the word free means "costing nothing", which categorically excludes ad-supported content that has non-monetary costs (namely attention). The spelling of the marketing requires exclamation points and an asterisk in addition to being in all caps. =P

Are you saying "time is money"? Then technically *nothing* is free, because there is always the opportunity cost of time. But that's a little beyond standard pedantism ;)

With cane in hand...

[geekoid]

"I've be trying to stop Flash for years!" - The Shade

Ads coming in html5?

[Grubar]

I think we should keep quiet about this. Soon the ad companies will move to html5 to get past our no-flash motion adblock method.

Wow

[WillyWanker]

You mean running animations in the background on multiple pages eats CPU cycles??? Oh noes! Geez, I wonder how Jobs' little darling, HTML5, will manage to do animations without using any CPU power?

I swear every day it's another retarded "report" about something equally as retarded.

Re:Wow

[RogL]

Geez, I wonder how Jobs' little darling, HTML5, will manage to do animations without using any CPU power?

My guess is, by using GPU acceleration.

Even better would be not rendering animations in non-visible tabs...

Re:Wow

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Given the amount of work both the Safari team and its competitors are doing trying to improve the efficiency of all aspects of the browser, I'd say HTML5 will be much more efficient that Flash for the kind of animation that is often used in Flash adds.

Re:Wow

[WillyWanker]

Or, Adobe could add a switch to Flash that stops it from rendering video/animations not in the current visible tab.

Of course the whole point is moot if you're using a Flash blocker app. And really, who isn't?

Re:Wow

[shermo]

You mean driving this hummer to work every day uses lots of gas? I wonder how that fuel efficient small diesel will provide transportation without using any gas.

Key-word highlighted. No one is arguing absolutes here.

Re:Wow

[exomondo]

Geez, I wonder how Jobs' little darling, HTML5, will manage to do animations without using any CPU power?

My guess is, by using GPU acceleration.

Which, as we all know, uses no battery power.

Re:Wow

[ibwolf]

You mean running animations in the background on multiple pages eats CPU cycles??? Oh noes! Geez, I wonder how Jobs' little darling, HTML5, will manage to do animations without using any CPU power?

Just off the top of my head, I would imagine that browsers will be smart enough not to run HTML5 animations on pages that aren't visible to the user. That should help, right there.

I'd also imagine that with engineers at multiple companies fighting to make their browser the best, further refinements would be discovered and implemented. Adobe has had very little incentive to improve Flash since they are in a dominant position.

Re:Wow

[oreaq]

Decoding h264 on the dedicated hardwar uses far less power than decoding it in software on the CPU. Orders of magnitude less power.

Re:Wow

[farble1670]

I would imagine that browsers will be smart enough not to run HTML5 animations on pages that aren't visible to the user ... I'd also imagine that with engineers at multiple companies fighting to make their browser the best, further refinements would be discovered and implemented.

it's meaningless to compare something that doesn't exist with something that does. software that doesn't exist will always perform and act better than real software. after all, it doesn't exist so it can potentially do everything right.

you can *imagine" how great the world will be with HTML5 all you want. i'd suggest you hold off posting until some of your premonitions hold true.

Re:Wow

[exomondo]

Because of course all forms of animation are h264 video.

Rick Romero here with Breaking News

[h4rr4r]

Rick Romero here with Breaking News:
Water is wet, Flash eats CPU power and bears do in fact shit in the woods.

Re:Branding

[h4rr4r]

I would think they are just letting some of the light leak through from the panel backlight, if not then a tiny amount as it would just be an LED or two.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[Graff]

Why would ANYONE use Safari on Mac when you have FF? ABP and NoScript for the win!

ClickToFlash works very nicely and there are several other extensions that let you block stuff. It even replaces flash videos with the H.264 stream if it is available.

I'm really loving GlimmerBlocker, which sets up a http proxy so any web browser you use will have ads blocked, you don't need to install an ad blocker extension on every browser you have. It'll even allow other computers on your network to use the proxy and gain the same benefits. Pretty nifty.

Re:Branding

[LSDelirious]

Everyone knows the glowing Apple logo is powered by a Mac user's smug sense of superiority!

Kill Manually

[crf00]

Every time I have used Flash on my Ubuntu, mostly for playing videos, I must manually use the `top` and `kill` command or Chrome's task manager to manually kill the npviewer.bin process. Flash always eats more than 50% of my CPU even long after I have closed all web pages using Flash, only killing it will bring my CPU back to idle and shuts off the noisy laptop fan. There is huge difference in power consumption between an idle CPU and running CPU, that's why for laptop it is best to keep the CPU idle most of the time to save power.

Now having to kill the Flash process manually is not user friendly at all. I'd imagine that average joes can't do anything on it and have no idea that Flash is the one that causing their laptop fan spinning, heating up, and soaking battery powers.

Re:Kill Manually

[Un pobre guey]

Yes! Flash on Linux sucks beyond belief! Beyond measure! Beyond any reasonable criterion of practicality! Sucks, sucks, SUCKS!

Surely at least one Adobe geek is reading this. Please tell someone at Adobe, please! I know your development cycles are about 40 years long, but please, at least get it on the change request list! Please!

Re:Kill Manually

[MacGyver2210]

That's similar to FF's new 'IPC Plugin Container' thing. It launches a second process to run Flash, Silverlight, and other web-media. It's poorly implemented, so it was a relief that you can disable it entirely in about:config. I haven't seen any performance or battery issues on my PC since.

Re:Kill Manually

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I have used Flash on my Ubuntu, mostly for playing videos, I must manually use the `top` and `kill` command or Chrome's task manager to manually kill the npviewer.bin process. Flash always eats more than 50% of my CPU even long after I have closed all web pages using Flash, only killing it will bring my CPU back to idle and shuts off the noisy laptop fan. There is huge difference in power consumption between an idle CPU and running CPU, that's why for laptop it is best to keep the CPU idle most of the time to save power.

Now having to kill the Flash process manually is not user friendly at all. I'd imagine that average joes can't do anything on it and have no idea that Flash is the one that causing their laptop fan spinning, heating up, and soaking battery powers.

If you use Google Chome on Ubuntu, you can turn it off with an addon. Ubuntu is as user friendly as you want it....

Re:Those savages

[LSDelirious]

Seriously imagine how much thinner the Macbook Air could be without a screen!

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because firefox is slow and doesn't use the native interface.

Just blame apple

[nurb432]

Its what all the kids are doing.

I don't even have it installed on my laptop, i don't miss it a bit.

Re:Those savages

[h4rr4r]

Introducing:
The Macbook Shuffle: This Changes Everything Including the Magic!

I use that setup

[arcite]

Safari, adblock + click2flash, and I get 7 1/2 hours of run time on my Macbook pro with wifi. Pretty sweet ;)

Re:I use that setup

[linzeal]

When are you seriously away from a plug for almost 8 hours at a time? The max I personally have found myself using a computer without being within walking distance of an electrical outlet, is when I'm watching movies in coach class on Amtrak, maybe 3 hours at a time before I have to go plug it in.

Re:I use that setup

[MichaelKristopeit162]

seriously, your claims are idiotic.

there is no correlation between battery life and computer necessity relative to time.

Re:I use that setup

[zach_the_lizard]

There are some long, long flights you can take, and there are some long, long road trips you can make. To get from where I live to my grandparents, it takes about 7-8 hours of driving time. I'm sure a passenger would appreciate a battery that can last that long.

Re:I use that setup

[vijayiyer]

Ask yourself the flip question - at what point can you stop carrying your AC adapter (assuming you're not on a multi-day trip)? I've stopped carrying mine, which means I've stopped carrying the laptop bag and associated weight. Now a 3lb laptop really is 3lb, and you can use it more like a notebook.

Re:I use that setup

[Celarnor]

A day of classes at a university where there curiously often aren't electrical outlets in CS classrooms.

Re:I use that setup

[obarthelemy]

also, most laptops still have removable batteries. if those 4+ hours days are scarce enough, I'd prefer smaller, lighter, and a second battery for those rare days I need more juice.

Re:I use that setup

[Joe Tie.]

Yep, travel is the big one. I used to do it constantly, and battery life was my god. Because when you're stuck sitting in one place for long enough to drain a laptop, you're going to get damn bored with nothing to do.

Re:I use that setup

[jprescott12]

And Amtrak, at least in the NorthEast, has AC power in its cars.

Re:I use that setup

[MichaelKristopeit140]

logic proves that you're an idiot.

you're missing the point... EFFICIENCY RELATIVE TO "MORE COMPUTER" RELATIVE TO TIME.

there is absolutely NO indication of necessity relative to computer relative to the user.

Re:I use that setup

[arivanov]

One does not fly everyday transatlantic in economy where there are no power outlets. Ditto for traveling London to Scotland, Wales or Cornwall on a train second class in the UK (the power plugs are a first class and disabled privilege).

If you do that for a living the Air will be the last in the notebook lineup of your choice. The small MacBook Pro (13"), Vaios, some of the more battery endowed Lenovos are the right choice of a notebook for such a job. They have better battery life and are most importantly more sturdy. The Air is too flimsy for regular travel on public transport. It looks nice on a boardroom or meeting room table. Its sturdines and on-the road functionality however leaves a lot to be desired.

In any case, the article is from the article is from the realm of the bleeding obvious. I browse the web in Konq will _ALL_ plugins disabled and switch to Firefox with working flash only when I need it and only on sites I trust. As a result I can happily get by on a Pentium M or G4 class machine where people need a Core i3 or even Core i5. For example I am typing this on a 2004 vintage G4 mini (stuffed with RAM to the gills) running Debian in Konq at the moment.

Re:I use that setup

[AtomicJake]

Lynx only and I get 9 hours.

Re:I use that setup

[Custard Horse]

My cousin borrows my laptop (without asking) all the time hence a dead battery every time I use it. I can therefore state that battery state is relative to relative.

Perhaps the next macbook can use e-ink to dispense with battery killing flash and this new-fangled 'colour' that the press is harping on about.

Re:I use that setup

[hairyfeet]

Actually there is MR Sockpuppet (you're up to 140 now? Geez, don't you EVER sleep?) and it is actually VERY simple: OEM makes laptop A, with a high end dual. Places like Walmart demand they put an average run time, so customers don't get pissy. Since run time is something the customers WILL be looking at, nobody wants to be the "lucky if you get 30 minutes" guy, so they make sure they average 4 hours under usage, which most define at about 50% CPU or so. Since the average user isn't actually hitting anywhere near 50% of a dual, guess what? They get MORE battery life! The user is happy, Walmart is happy, the OEM is happy. It really is very simple.

I have even seen this effect in my own home, with the new Turion X2 laptop I got my oldest. The card said it would average 5.5 hours, and on his "normal" usage, which is note taking and other basic class usage he is averaging around 8. That is a pretty big difference, and as a consequence of that he is quite happy with the laptop, and would be happy to buy from the store again. The store wins, the OEM wins, and the customer is happy. See? Simple.

Re:I use that setup

[hairyfeet]

Funny but I'm typing this on a circa 2004 1.8GHz Sempron, just 3/4ths loaded to the gills with RAM, and flash runs just fine on XP. Maybe it is true that flash just sucks on Linux, haven't used it regularly since 9.04 so I wouldn't know. I DO know that flash makes me look like a hero when I add a HD4xxx AGP card to a customer's late model P4 and thanks to hardware acceleration it is just as smooth as a nice dual core. Makes all those Farmville playing girls VERY happy!

But I have to agree that it is silly to even argue when flash can be easily turned on and off. Makes me wonder if OSX is gonna be getting the walled garden approach soon and they are building PR so it'll look like a good thing. I'm sure when they look at how much $$$ the app store is raking in that walled garden is looking pretty good right now. And aren't they looking at an app store for lion? Yeah, I smell fishy fishy fish.

Re:I use that setup

[aclarke]

I take it you've played with the new Macbook Air? I'm making this presumption because you're calling it "flimsy", despite the original article stating that the aluminum unibody is extremely solid despite its thinness.

Does it need to make sense to you how regularly someone else needs extra battery life to make it a worthwhile consideration? I don't fly that much so I get by with the 2 or so hours of my 3 year old Macbook Pro. However, if I flew a bit more I'd consider a laptop upgrade to be a worthy purchase, just from the standpoint of being able to get a couple more billable hours in when otherwise I can't. It doesn't take a whole lot of that to pay for a new laptop.

My biggest use for it though would be for the occasional day when I go to a client's office and forget my power adapter at home. Fortunately it doesn't happen much any more since I'm fairly paranoid about it. Plus of course, almost all offices have someone with an Apple laptop these days.

Re:I use that setup

[TheRaven64]

train second class in the UK (the power plugs are a first class and disabled privilege)

Depends on the operator. First and Virgin (both names that inspire confidence in the operator's experience) both provide power sockets in the cheap seats. Unfortunately, the tables are so narrow that two people with laptops can't sit facing each other. When you book the ticket, you can request a seat next to a socket - they're not on all of the seats.

Re:I use that setup

[delinear]

I can't possibly imagine why getting the same amount of run time as the standard working day would ever be useful, can you? </sarcasm>

Re:I use that setup

[delinear]

Anyone who has ever worked as a contractor, when you get "hot desked" around a lot and never know if you're going to be stuck in a meeting room for the day with 9 other developers sharing 4 plugs, instantly understands the benefit of a ridiculously long charge time.

Re:I use that setup

[delinear]

Those extra batteries can be expensive whereas the adapter comes for free. Not to mention you then have to remember to charge up two batteries when you get home, and the disruption when it's time to change batteries and you're in the middle of something important (I know you can just hibernate what you're doing, but it still breaks the flow). Give me battery life that's so long it's practically redundant on any given work day (assuming reasonable cost, of course).

Re:I use that setup

[Eunuchswear]

Seats on TGV class trains often have power sockets now. (Pretty easy for them to do since the train is plugged into a big extension cord).

Re:I use that setup

[xouumalperxe]

How about this: If I have a full blown laptop that lasts 7 hours on battery power under light usage, then I have a laptop that will work both when I need it for long periods of light usage AND will still have the horsepower to do some serious number crunching when I have it connected to a power outlet. And I only have to carry around one single device.

Re:I use that setup

[MichaelKristopeit140]

because it's obvious, moron.

Re:I use that setup

[Stooshie]

Thats all very well but I can get 10 times that if I switch my laptop off.

Re:I use that setup

[MysteriousPreacher]

Yeah, multiple batteries were a hassle - even with a charger that accepts multiple batteries. Much nicer to get a full day of work, and then plug my machine in when I head down for dinner. I don't miss the days of carrying 2-3 batteries for my PowerBook G3 Series. Lovely machines at the time, and being able to hot swap batteries was useful, but I'd rather have the integrated battery with a decent life.

Re:I use that setup

[RocketRabbit]

Intel is wasting money making laptop friendly processors?

Typed from my 8 core Xeon laptop. Gotta keep it plugged in all the time, and my lap is getting sore.

Re:I use that setup

[RocketRabbit]

I see you understand rhetoric, not logic. That is, when your logical quiver is full, you shoot out insults instead of sensible statements.

It is also clear that you have no idea what you are talking about when you try to make a point about computing. If I had to apply Lewis Carrol's Game of Logic to you, I'd arrive at the conclusion that you are full of shit and are not worth my time. However, I didn't need any tools to realize this.

Let me rephrase, and give you a chance to redeem your sorry ass. First, remember we are talking about actual computers and their actual battery life, not the Platonic ideal of a computer enshrined in an imaginary laptop of the mind. Once you have that premise firmly in mind, and if you can understand it, answer these simple queries:

1. With modern processors, which draw dynamic amounts of power proportionate to the load on the system, how could a high load imposed by an inefficient program like the Flash runtime NOT cause the battery to drain faster?

2. If you took two light bulbs, one 100w Edison threaded household bulb, and one very small typical christmas tree bulb, and hooked both to identically sized and charged batteries, which battery would exhaust its power supply first?

Re:I use that setup

[RocketRabbit]

Not only are you having difficulties spelling and making sense, you are having difficulties with attitude.

It's OK to admit your mind is bankrupt. In fact, you just did with your post here, along with all the other posts you have made today.

Your argument is not coherently stated, your premise has holes, and your rudeness belies your childish nature.

Processors already scale their power consumption to the load, and the load is extreme when Flash is running. Cutting off Flash makes the battery last much longer. Computational necessity is what we are talking about here, and when a person's machine is running Flash for the usual purposes, ie, video, web games, and advertising spam, the computer is working harder. Again, you want to talk about a logical model of a computer, that exists in your mind. Everybody else here is talking about actual computers.

You can not apply logic to a problem if your premises and preambles are not adequate. Yours, sadly, are not. Your childish sense of humor is refreshing, though. Especially ironic upon review of this little Slashdot sock puppet account you created, is that you berate others for doing what you are guilty of yourself. If I had to bet money, I would guess you are left of center on the political spectrum, have been involved in minor misdemeanors, and have never had any contact with the opposite sex.

Re:I use that setup

[RocketRabbit]

Listen, the obvious lie here is your original post. Not only does it indicate you are a liar, it also shows that you lack sense and hide behind a banner of logic, all the while your posts are devoid of anything resembling logic.

You are quick to poison the well with your childish, error-ridden poorly spelled and typed posts. A I suggested before, it helps to actually learn a bit about logic before you attempt to QED somebody.

Additionally, your sock puppeting antics are laughable, as I pointed out before, because you're condemning that very behavior in other people. You have a bad case of Internet tough guy syndrome, a slight case of mental retardation, a bad grasp of grammar and logic (and probably all the liberal arts and sciences) and you are childish beyond imagination. I know six year olds that are not only smarter than you, but they type better as well.

So, I guess my point is that you should get the fuck off the Internet now.

Re:I use that setup

[MichaelKristopeit173]

i claimed only that you FELT rage where none was present.

you're an idiot.

why do you cower? what are you afraid of?

you're completely pathetic.

Re:I use that setup

[MichaelKristopeit193]

you feel rage?

ur mum's face is faggot.

why do you cower? what are you afraid of?

you're completely pathetic. cower more, feeb.

Re:Those savages

[LSDelirious]

thinner than air.... Introducing the MacBook Vacuum

Flash is past its sell by date

[Alimony Pakhdan]

Flash was fine back in the days when users kept only one or two browser windows open but now that everyone has tens or hundreds of tabs/windows open at any one time the CPU cost for Flash is too much to pay. Partly this is a problem with the way browsers work where every tab/window executes all plugins whether or not the tab/window has focus, but partly this is a design problem because even though the day of one or two windows/tabs are long gone, web designers still populate every page with as much bouncy, blinky annoying bullshit as possible as if they and only they had any right to my CPU.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[sribe]

Seriously, the only people who think having Flash installed *at all* is a good idea are people who have no brains, namely Adobe and a handful of lazy web developers.

Well of course that's flamebait. There's a huge number of lazy web developers who think Flash is a good idea.

Re:and i care

[TheKidWho]

Yes here you are posting in this thread.

In other news...

[The Living Fractal]

I've written a program that constantly finds different permutations of Steve Jobs experiencing self-awareness. However, while running the program, my Macbook Air's battery life drops by nearly 50%. So I suppose I should write an article titled "Steve Jobs cuts Macbook Air battery by half." or some such drivel.

Or I could just turn off the program when I don't need it. But then I couldn't make inflammatory headlines, and that wouldn't be nearly as fun.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[wygit]

You think saying the people who have the software installed that is necessary to view half the video on the web have no brains might be flamebait?

Gee, really?

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/html5_video_market_penetration.php

and you've been saying it since a long time ago?

So you just don't believe in online video at all, then.

not really

[SpiceWare]

once all ads move to HTML5 I don't think there'll be that much of a difference

unlike Flash, the browser makers can actually address HTML5 performance issues.

Re:not really

[dkf]

once all ads move to HTML5 I don't think there'll be that much of a difference

unlike Flash, the browser makers can actually address HTML5 performance issues.

Don't worry! That'll just spur on advertisers to load up even more complex battery-sapping code!

Ad agencies do not care about your battery life. They just want to make you look, make you click. The collateral damage they inflict is something that they simply don't give a rat's testicle about. The only way to deal with them right now is to block Flash and crappy Javascript (I'm not opposed to ads, I just hate the blinky, CPU-intensive ones) and let the smarter ad agencies figure it out for themselves. (Clue: plain text ads delivered without butt-loads of JS and Flash are going to actually get to my eyes in the first place...)

But what does HTML5 offer? Woo! Unblockable obnoxious battery-sapping ads. <sarcasm> Thanks a whole bunch, W3C! Just what I always wanted. </sarcasm>

Re:not really

[tlhIngan]

But what does HTML5 offer? Woo! Unblockable obnoxious battery-sapping ads. Thanks a whole bunch, W3C! Just what I always wanted. </sarcasm>

Actually, ads can be removed quite easily in HTML - there are lots of DOM editor extensions. In firefox, the one I use is called "Nuke Anything Extended" - right-click on the offending thing, "Remove this object". Even has undo in case you nuke something useful.

It's great to remove the ads that show in print view when actually... printing.

Not to mention very few HTML ads are actually inline - most are brought in via a little javascript, which NoScript blocks quite handily.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[Quixotic Raindrop]

QuickTime, H.264, WMV, all work fine without flash. Why is flash necessary for online video, exactly?

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[Quixotic Raindrop]

Touché.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[MacGyver2210]

Those who have it are the majority, those who don't are the minority. I'm sorry Big Steve was so butthurt that he couldn't get an agreement working with Adobe for his iToys and Flash. The fact is that if you want to reach the most people possible with rich web content, Flash is the current solution. HTML5 is iffy and buggy, and JavaScript is slow and old.

Jobs and Apple want to decry Flash and say "It's a hog, it's inferior!" but they have yet to propose one acceptable substitute. "Turn it off and browse with static images only, 90s-style!" is not the answer I'm looking for.

Ad block?

[antdude]

Well, then install an ad blocker. :P

Symptoms of poor design

[AnonymousClown]

It sounds like it's more of a problem with the implementation of the Adobe Flash Player than anything. Let's put the blame where it belongs.

FYI: Updated Flash released today.

[antdude]

V10.1.102.64 to fix security bugs and not the battery life and CPU issue. ;)

Re:FYI: Updated Flash released today.

[Cyberllama]

There's no issue to fix. This article is like saying "Hey, if you leave the lights in your house on, they'll use electricity. Really? I mean, honestly, did we need to be told that? If you want to avoid this problem, just download ClicktoFlash so that Flash isn't loaded when you're not using it. Problem solved.

If you want browser addons to not use CPU cycles when the page element is not being looked at, that's going to be something implemented at the browser level -- in this case by Apple. I'm not sure that's really something you can look to Adobe to implement.

Seeing things

[zooblethorpe]

Cripes, I must be getting tired -- I originally read your post as:

Because its not an option in firefox or safari by default. Its handled by penguins.

Gah! They're everywhere!

Re:Seeing things

[Macgrrl]

You know what, I kinda prefer your version. Huge space penguins with lazors. :)

Re:Seeing things

[1s44c]

lazors

lasers - Light Amplification though Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

And they go on sharks, not penguins.

Re:Seeing things

[Macgrrl]

If a huge space penguin wants a lazer (or lazor [1]), who's going to stop them?

[1] Oddly enough, my spell checker doesn't recognise either spelling.

2 hours for flash is one thing

[mysidia]

But web surfing can easily burn all 6 hours of a MacBook air's Battery life. A slow internet connection can also rob runtime hours and battery life, since you spend more time with your monitor and wireless radios fully powered waiting for pages to load. I think ATT should reimb me for lost battery time, every time I don't get the full advertised speed :)

Hell, just running OS X can do that, if you are keeping the CPU out of sleep mode, OS X can suck all the battery.

What's more scary about Flash ads and website advertising is how much they can rob from YOUR life.. laptop batteries can always be charged, but humans have finite lifetime... reduced in the form of annoyance/stress and time consumed wasted looking at stupid ads.

The Ads can grab your attention which can ultimately be expensive. Maybe each time isn't much a footprint -- but it happens so often, especially with d*****'ed annoying BLINK tags, Animated GIFs, Flash, Javascript/DHTML, Web 2.0 stuff, Java, and other similar effects.

Flash itself begins to seem darn benign.

And we haven't even talked about spam, popups, and web pages that convince gullible people to read articles, and waste their energy trying to sign up for some scammer's Nigerian "money windfall", make-money-fast, pyramid scheme, ponzi scheme, or Work-at-Home-for-massive-$ scam.

Imagine how much laptop battery time web-based flash (and not flash-based) advertisement cause users to drain. And how many years of "human run-time" are drained, esp. net over all humans who use the internet, as a result of that junk.

Lazy

[Coolhand2120]

In other news: Staying on the menu screen in quake II significantly improves frame rates and battery life over entering into the game and actually playing.

Trivial

[ls671]

The more your CPU or/and GPU work, the more they consume power. As a side note, some of it is wasted through heat dissipation.

Rendering any kind of compressed video, including ads, has a tendency to make both work more thus consuming more power thus making battery life shorter.

Hello Captain Obvious...

[trboyden]

What do you mean playing videos will run down your battery?! Now that's just absurd. Adobe needs to redesign Flash so that it charges up your battery.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[jedidiah]

No it doesn't.

This little benchmark even proves it.

Flash is a confirmed power hog

[Anonymous Coward]

I wrote about this on my blog. Using my Watt's Up? meter I measured my computer's power usage at about 100W. But then I noticed that it was running at 160W for some reason. I eventually found the problem was flash player - and the only thing it was doing was a single ad on the travelocity web site. The ad was for - you guessed it - travelocity. And 15 years ago it would have been a 4 frame GIF because it simply flipped between 4 static images with no user interaction at all. Hooray Web 2.0

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[sootman]

/etc/hosts and FlashBlock are all I need. Plenty of ads get through, but very few that bother me. And I don't feel like going into detail but I just prefer Safari to FF. There is no dispute concerning taste.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[capnkr]

So - FFox and Flashblock for the win...

I use both on my AO751h (+ABP), and a 9 cell battery gets me ~10 hours of use, streaming video or whatever. And no damned "Punch the Monkey" ads. Don't see why the same wouldn't work on/for Macs...

Uh duh!

[m509272]

I heard turning your MacBook on can drain your battery, is there any truth to that? Also once on, running things drain it even faster. Wow!

Re:Uh duh! update

[m509272]

I just read elsewhere that plugging your laptop into an AC outlet eliminates all battery drain, cool!

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[metamatic]

Because Firefox is slow and crash-prone on Mac and Linux in my experience. I switched to Chrome so I could run the same browser everywhere, but Mac-only people tend to switch to Safari. I had to use Firefox on Linux for a particular web site last week, and it crashed within 10 minutes. I have to assume Firefox is a lot better on Windows.

Well...

[Demena]

Since I prefer my eggs unfertilised, go flash, go.....

Re:Well...

[Mr.No]

Nice one :-).

Yeah, I got the best of both worlds here.

[Arker]

I use NoScript. All Flash is blocked by default. I temporarily whitelist sites where I want something to play, and otherwise it doesnt run. I save the battery, skip the annoying ads, and still get to use YouTube. I paid a lot less for this laptop than I would for a MacBook Air to boot.

Not that they arent nice. But I think this study, while bringing up a definite truth, is an after-the-fact justification/spin for Apple, who blocked Flash for entirely different reasons.

Re:Branding

[mabhatter654]

Ives adds the Magical, that's what makes it glow.

Viewing Apple keynotes also helps recharge the magical RDF powers... it makes the apple glow brighter!

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[DurendalMac]

Tinfoil hats don't work, you know. You need a copper faraday cage hat.

I dont use Flashblock so tell me

[Arker]

I dont use Flashblock so tell me, how exactly does it break hulu.com?

I do use NoScript, which does NOT break hulu.com. It simply improves the interface, allowing me to browse without a bunch of unwanted stuff starting inappropriately and grabbing control of my computer against my will. When I *want* to watch a video I temporarily whitelist it, the page reloads, and the video plays.

Re:I dont use Flashblock so tell me

[poena.dare]

I just realized... Google made my browser... Google makes money selling web ads... What's the chance that Google's going to let me have a STOP PLAYING THAT ANNOYING FLASH button?

Damn. Damn. Damn. :(

Re:I dont use Flashblock so tell me

[TheRaven64]

Pretty high. Google makes money selling smallish text ads. Hiding everything on the page that might distract your attention away from Google ads is good business sense. The only problem might be antitrust concerns; they would basically be blocking their competitors' ads in their browser, which regulators might not like.

Re:I dont use Flashblock so tell me

[samoanbiscuit]

Chrome already has a "click to flash" setting, you just have to go to the preferences window and enable it... Both Chrome's setting and the safari addon look heaps classier than the flashblock addon in firefox... Although I'll always love firefox and flashblock, looks and speed matter, and the more addons safari gets, the closer it gets to becoming my primary browser...

More than that

[Demena]

Remember that the life of these batteries is limited by the amount of charge passing through them. Thus it isn't just the few hours less usability it is that the battery itself will have a shorter usable lifetime and have to be replaced much, much earlier.

It is not just inconvenience, it is a major financial cost. New batteries are not cheap.

Caveman say

[TRRosen]

Flash BAD. ClickToFlash GOOD !!!!!!

No, it won't.

[Demena]

Click2Flash does this for h.264 already.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[jimfrost]

I've been using Firefox on the Mac for years without issues (other than rampant memory growth, but relatively recent versions aren't so bad). It used to crash a lot in the early 2.x days, but that was awhile ago. I typically use FlashBlock, though, so maybe it's not FireFox that gives you the trouble.

The plural of anecdote...

[MoxFulder]

... is not data. The singular of anecdote is also not data.

Basically, one guy used one computer with flash on a few times, and with flash off a few times. What web sites was he looking at? How many did he have open at once? Why couldn't he just use an ad blocker rather than kill Flash altogether?

I think Adobe Flash sucks as much as the next FLOSS fanboy, but this is just an insubstantial anecdote. Couldn't the author at least run PowerTOP or some Mac equivalent, and try to figure out how much the processor is waking up with/without flash, how much disk is being used, etc?

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[SirThe]

Or, y'know, Chromium/Chrome, go to Settings -> Under the Hood -> Content Settings -> Plug-ins and choose click to play. Oh yea.

Two Hours? That's Nothing.

[Scorch_Mechanic]

At least, compared the number of hours of my life that Flash games and other doohickies waste.

On a more serious note, I think this is a good thing. I find that I'm more inclined to get work done on my lappy if I'm threatened with a low battery, my lappy's inability to effectively run flash anything nonwithstanding.

Dreamer?

[Demena]

No. I don't think so. Asleep I might agree with. Apple is the only commercial system I know of with which I get a free development environment just as I have on the BSDs (and Linux if I bothered with it). I even get one for the iPhone and iPad too.

Re:Dreamer?

[bhcompy]

What's not free about VSE?

Re:Dreamer?

[Demena]

I think you miss the point. The point was that "...everyone knows that apple computers are stupid toys that can't do anything that you would expect a real computer..." is a stupid and ignorant remark made by a cowardly troll.

Re:Dreamer?

[Rockoon]

I think you missed the point that "...Apple is the only commercial system I know of with which I get a free development environment..." shows that you dont know shit about anything but Apple and BSD.

VSE stands for Visual Studio Express.

Now answer his fucking question! Whats not free about VSE?

Re:Dreamer?

[Demena]

If you call that a development environment. Last time I used a MS environment I had to pay for it and they obsoleted it in six months. I didn't go back. So keep your hostility to yourself please.

Re:Dreamer?

[Demena]

You are right. I do not like Microsoft. For very good and forty year old reasons. I've made nothing up. I have been acquainted with the fact (if it is) that VSE is now free. You can keep it. I retired a decade ago and most certainly don't want it. I did not make stuff up. Read my original comment. "That I know of" was what I said. So absolutely nothing I said was false.

Flash Kills Batteries?

[ZappedSparky]

Well I guess if there's even the slightest manufacturing fault with the batteries the high current drain could result in fire. Your browsing session is pretty much over then.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[Ash-Fox]

QuickTime, H.264, WMV, all work fine without flash. Why is flash necessary for online video, exactly?

42.

It is a sin...

[perdelucena]

... because every time you run Flash a kitten dies.

Signed: The Pope

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[pknoll]

Alternatively, just uninstall Flash. You really don't need it for most of the web these days. (On OSX, it lives in /Library/Internet Plug-ins; you'll want to remove Flash Player.plugin, flashplayer.xpt, and the Shockwave file, I don't remember the name.)

Click2Flash is a great plugin, I used it for months. The problem with it is that it tells sites you have Flash installed; it just takes over for Flash and then releases content to the real plugin when you click on the box. The downside to that is that you prevent the site from sending alternate content which can be sent if your browser reports no Flash plugin.

For those sites that won't work any other way, load them in Chrome, which has an internal Flash renderer. When you're done you can quit Chrome and go back to your regular browser, with which you can write a note to the admin of the site you just visited asking them to get their head our of their ass and provide alternate content.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[mr_mischief]

What does replacing Flash with HTML 5 canvas animations or HTML video elements do to the battery life? Saying "We have moving ads with sound stealing battery life compared to still banner ads" and blaming Flash specifically for it seems a bit premature.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[Hylandr]

So if it uses that much less power on laptops then PC's must experience the same reduction in power consumption. It sounds to me like banning flash altogether might help in reducing carbon emissions.

This wasn't a troll, but I know I just stomped on an anthill...

- Dan.

Obligatory XKCD

[abednegoyulo]

http://xkcd.com/676/

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[dwightk]

because they/I like Safari's UI better than Firefox's

Prefer ClickToFlash

[SuperKendall]

Why would ANYONE use Safari on Mac when you have FF?

Because I find Safari slightly more pleasant to use (though I have Firefox installed of course for some very useful web development tools).

Safari has extensions now as well, and has had ClickToFlash for some time, which I like a lot as a Flash blocking solution.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[mrxak]

How was this marked insightful? It's just a rambling conspiracy theory with no basis in fact. Guess what, folks, computers aren't phones, and browsers can download stuff from the internets if you're not on a phone! Even if Apple wanted to create a walled garden, they'll never be able to, if for no other reason than developers don't want to give up 30% of their software price, and never will.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[fruitbane]

So long as the walled garden remains optional, simply one option of many, I'm perfectly fine with it. If the entire OS becomes walled off, then I have a problem. In the meanwhile, however, it's an excellent OS.

This does neatly skirt the Flash issue, though, and that issue is that Flash uses a bit too much juice for the results. I have a modern desktop PC no web page should casually drag down, and yet a particular combination flash ad on one site I visit brings it to its knees.

Re:Shroedinger's Laptop Battery

[mrxak]

My Apple laptop has a little button, and if I press it, even when it's off, a strip of lights come on to tell me how much power capacity I have on it. Maybe you should turn in your Schrodinger's Laptop for a better one.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[rsborg]

The problem with it is that it tells sites you have Flash installed; it just takes over for Flash and then releases content to the real plugin when you click on the box. The downside to that is that you prevent the site from sending alternate content which can be sent if your browser reports no Flash plugin.

The upside to ClickToFlash is precisely that; I don't want "alternative" content (read: advertisements) if it's some flashy/jumpy animated gif or jpg. Sure some pages may look like ass but the black boxes are just peachy for my purposes. I do agree that it's more bandwidth to DL the flash content and then have C2F just interdict it.

Before anybody extrapolates this to phones

[Cyberllama]

Do keep in mind that the Android Flash implementation has "Tap-to-Flash" meaning ads are not loaded as flash unless you explicitly tap them to see what they are. As such, Flash content drains battery cycles when it's not being actively used/seen.

The same could easily be done with a Macbook by installing ClicktoFlash. With that done, the effect of having Flash installed on your device would be minimal to your battery life unless you're constantly and intentionally using Flash.

Re:Before anybody extrapolates this to phones

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

No, but the Flash infrastructure means that implementing a battery draining technology rather than force content providers to move on with the future.

Conspiracy I Say!

[hydromike2]

Im playing a flash on my laptop right now and its running just fine, TFA is a conspiracy by Steve Jo

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[Cyberllama]

You were right, when you said this was an obvious issue, and then totally wrong with your solution. This isn't a Flash problem, man. I don't care if Apple installs it by default or not, but this in no way reflects poorly on Adobe or Flash.

If you run a program, ANY PROGRAM, in the background while you're not actaully using it, it's going to use CPU and drain your battery. Simple solution: Just don't do that, stupid. In the case of Flash, just install ClicktoFlash -- or hell, just close Safari when you're not using it. Either way works great and solves this issue easily.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[popo]

Let's be clear: It's not Flash that's the problem, per se. It's client-side animation.

I'm looking forward to the "oops" moment, when we kill Flash and replace it with HTML 5 -- only to realize that HTML 5 ends up sucking just as much juice as Flash did.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[Cyberllama]

How is that a better solution? A lot of flash sites don't have "alternate content" for non-flash users -- the only ones that reliably do are the ad-servers, and that's why you're using Ad-Block too.

I mean, at the end of the day, you've got flash installed so you can have non-static content when you want it. Flash is only a battery drain when it's running constantly and you're not actually using/watching it. The drain you experience when using it INTENTIONALLY is minimal enough to not matter.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[TheLink]

It might help, but more efficient cars and driving, plus efficient heating/cooling (including insulation) for houses would help a lot more.

Typical non-gaming laptops nowadays consume not more than 60W. Non game desktops including monitor = 150W. Let's just assume 100W average for simplicity.
Running for 10 hours a day (work + home) = 1 kilowatt hour. Flash would contribute to only a fraction of that - say 33%. So banning flash would save you 0.333kWh.

A 2 kilowatt electric heater running for just 10 minutes would use 0.333kWh of energy.

Ovens, dryers, heaters, air-conditioners all consume power in the kilowatts. Washing machines use kilowatts on hot/warm cycles. So if you run these for hours they very quickly surpass PC energy consumption.

40 litres of petrol is about 380 kilowatt hours. So if you use 40 litres per week, that's 54 kilowatt hours per day. Of course that's directly as fossil fuel not electricity, so that's just more for perspective.

Assuming conversion of fossil fuel to electricity is at 33% efficiency, multiply the electricity consumption figures by 3 to compare fossil fuel consumption with the petrol car (of course normally coal is used not petroleum).

Just drive 10% more efficiently (or drive 10% less) per day and save more than an entire PC's daily power consumption.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have heard this argument about HTML5 being buggy before. Describing a "standard" as being buggy shows a complete lack of understanding of what it actually is. Maybe the Internet Explorer implementation is buggy...

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[4phun]

So - FFox and Flashblock for the win...

I use both on my AO751h (+ABP), and a 9 cell battery gets me ~10 hours of use, streaming video or whatever. And no damned "Punch the Monkey" ads. Don't see why the same wouldn't work on/for Macs...

I can hook up a heavy Marine Battery to any laptop and stream video using Flash longer than any light Mac Book Air can stream video.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[MisterSquid]

John Gruber wrote a 1,000-word article that says much of what you're saying.

Wrong title !

[herve_masson]

"Flash Can Rob 2 Hours From MacBook Air's Battery Life" should be "Ads can rob 2 hours from macbook air's (and anything else) battery life", I presume.

Re:Wrong title !

[googlesmith123]

I first read "Flash Can", and thought: what is a Flash Can? Some sort of can with a flash inside it? They really shouldn't capitalize every word in the title, just the important ones.

So anyway. Have you ever met this Flash C. Rob?

Re:It's all about freedom ...

[shellbeach]

Because all movies and games, everywhere, for all time, are only available in flash. Yup. Got it.

No, you really didn't.

I know you think you're being funny, but really you're just being dumb. Apple isn't prohibiting a single thing on the new MacBook Air. They don't ship it with Flash preinstalled, but you're completely free to install it should you desire to be bombarded with horrible popover ads and lose 1/3 of your battery life.

I think you're missing the point. This is part of a coordinated attack on Flash by Apple, and a tacit justification for not including Flash-enabled browsers on the iPhone/iPad. Note that I'm not making any comment as to whether Flash is Good or Bad; only that I find Apple's attack on Flash bizarre and concerning.

Clearly I'm not in the /. Apple-worshiping majority here. Ooops, silly dumb me.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[repapetilto]

This one?:
http://now.sprint.com/nownetwork/

Running software uses power, Film at 11!

[ChaosDiscord]

So... running software uses power. This is news, somehow? Other things that will shorten your battery life: Playing games, running poorly written software that spin-waits on input, video encoding, that stupid dancing tree USB thing. Yes, Flash is an inefficient pig. Lots of software is. Get FlashBlock or NoScript so you can run it when you want it (to see, say, a video or play a game) while avoiding it otherwise (99% of the crap on the web).

Re:Running software uses power, Film at 11!

[EricX2]

I hope the film @ 11 is not in flash format, my battery is about to die!

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[RocketRabbit]

Because Firefox is just horrifically ugly and slow?

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[RocketRabbit]

Nice screed. How does your doomsaying prediction square with Apple being a large contributor to open source projects?

Apple doesn't want granny's iPad infected with malware bloat shit apps. This is fine by me.

Walled garden, and uhh, freedoms and uhh, etc. Fuck off with your tired shit.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[KDR_11k]

Just ban Flash ads. I've got Flash disabled unless I need it, most sites use it only to annoy the user with animated ads that distract from the text. There are some legitimate uses for it but ads outnumber them.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[KDR_11k]

Animated GIFs? You mean you don't disable those? There's almost zero legitimate usage of those out there.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[RocketRabbit]

An. "agreement?". The reason that Apple does not allow flash on iOS is because it sucks.

The acceptable substitute is HTML5 and this is just a fact. Go cry hot yr momma and learn how to use new tools, you flashtard.

Re:How much battery is lost playing Apples.mov fil

[iamacat]

if you want multimedia on your whatever device

You got to be kidding. How much of multimedia delivered by flash do people actually "want"? For that too an optimized video decoder using platform's GPU and vector processing capabilities got to be better than interpreted ActionScript.

.. More of a problem than you think.

[DMFH]

I recently came across this issue using a utility called "App Tamer" from St. Clair Software (not going to provide a link, look it up, I don't work for the company & this is not a product plug), that revealed itself to me via what I thought was a misconfiguration. I use BOINC, and noticed that my MacBook Pro was high-fan'ing even though I was on battery, thought maybe I'd misconfigured BOINIC. Checking the process table by hand via top & ps from the CLI, no BOINIC, but "WebKit" was consuming 93% of one of my cores! -- After some digging with lsof and the process table? It was a single Flash advert in Safari running a bit of a movie and animation. This is more than horrid - it quite pissed me off considering that at any time, my page can refresh, my battery life decreases, usage goes up and I burn CPU & create BTU so someone can run a power-hungry advert *on my hardware*. -- To me, this borders on theft of my computer resources! So, before this, I have Safari open, and how much longer did I wait for Mathematica to complete a calculation run so Bozo Corporation could show me a product I'll never buy anyway? In years prior (look up "time sharing") - you got charged for usage. -- Maybe we all ought to bill the source advertiser back for CPU time and charge them some kind of bizarre carbon tax for creating heat, just like we get annoyed at the paper waste from advertising.

Here follows a heavily sarcastic post.

[Alistair Hutton]

Doing stuff uses battery power.

News at 11.

Doing graphical stuff with a plugin that Apple won't let access hardware acceleration that would make a lot of what it's doing trivial uses large amount of CPU. Special report to come.

Re:Here follows a heavily sarcastic post.

[foo12]

Doing stuff uses battery power.

Doing graphical stuff with a plugin that Apple won't let access hardware acceleration that would make a lot of what it's doing trivial uses large amount of CPU. Special report to come.

Flash on OS X has been able to use hardware H.264 decoding since March.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[Xamataca]

Yes it does. Firefox seriously sucks on Mac OS X, no matter what you OSS fanboys want to believe.

but, but, I don't have a Mac, can't test FF in OS X!!! damn, I can't counteract this fallacy!!!!

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[igb]

. The fact is that if you want to reach the most people possible with rich web content,

Irrespective of whether they want to be reached, usually.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[mr_lizard13]

I was a happy Firefox user for years, before finally switching to Safari when FF became more than unresponsive.

The problem, according to the many help forums, was I had "too many extensions" installed, and that I should "create a new profile".

I resented being punished for using the extensions system that Mozilla so heavily promoted, so I switched.

And now I've got AdBlock back, and use ClickToFlash, 2 extensions which installed right from the web page with no restart required. Now I'm a happy Safari user.

Hihglight

[shakov]

Using Vim instead of OpenOffice significantly increased the battery life of my notebook. I have repeated the tests with Toshiba, Sony and Lenovo notebooks. Do you know a good tech site where I could sell my benchmarks?

No NOT WoW

[SmallFurryCreature]

These are FLASH ads, the kind of animation early computers operating at mhz were capable of. For god sakes, we are talking banners that flash 2 small images. How can this require 100% CPU power on what is by alrights a super-super-computer.

Most of the time my computer busy running even such hogs as java and opera with tab icons 1 pixel in width barely reaches 4% cpu. But flash can bring the same machine to its knees.

It is the same with PDF. I can play a game that renders an entire world with super high textures made by fans for Fallout at break neck speed. But open a PDF and each page takes seconds to render and when browsing you constantly have to wait... WTF is wrong with the code?

Flash AND PDF either are the most horrible code ever written or they invite designers to make such horrendous choices that the most simple things take more computation then moddeling a nuclear explosion. ANd yes, nuclear explosions WERE modelled on machines far less powerful then your current desktop.

Just having flash banners during web browsing eats 1/3 of the battery power and you think that is just fine. My god, how wipped can you get. Would you accept the radio in your car sucking 1/3 of the fuel to give you ads as well?

Re:No NOT WoW

[WillyWanker]

Wait, I'm WHIPPED because I have a brain and can distinguish between truth and hyperbolic fiction??? Oh that's a good laugh.

I don't have any issues with Flash cause I use a Flash blocker, so it doesn't matter to me at all.

The point of the article is that having *multiple* Flash-heavy pages open in your browser for *multiple* hours is going to eat up battery life. And I say, well DUH.

Other tests have shown that Flash is not significantly more resource-intensive than HTML5 or Silverlight, so at best this article is nothing more than a Flash-bash, which of course is typical from the Cult of Jobs. Now while things with HTML5 *might* change as coders get more efficient blah blah blah blah blah, the fact is that right NOW that's not the case.

Anytime you have multiple videos/animations running in multiple tabs for long periods of time you're going to see a drop in battery life, whether they're using Flash or not.

Re:Branding

[Hodapp]

Well, on basically all Apple notebooks the glowing Apple logo is simply a transparent section that the already-lit backlight illuminates. Are there other glowing Apple logos I missed?

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[icebraining]

Apple contributes to OSS projects and then uses them in proprietary products. They don't distribute finished OSS products, as far as I know. The prediction may or not be true, but that's not an argument against it.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[TheRaven64]

It's partially a Flash problem. Flash offloads very little to the GPU, which means it's using the more power-expensive CPU to run stuff. It does compositing entirely in software, for example. Compositing (scaling / alpha blending) half a dozen layers barely wakes up the GPU, but uses a big chunk of the CPU time. SVG and canvas stuff in Safari uses a lot less CPU. So does decoding video with a QuickTime.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[programmerar]

What is extra nice with the click2flash Flash blocker is that is blocks on Webkit level (i assume) which means other apps eg Spotify is saved from Flash as well!

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[TheRaven64]

Don't forget user CSS (specify the file in preferences). With CSS selectors pattern matching, you can add warnings after links containing certain domain names that you might occasionally want to go to but probably won't. For example, InfoWorld links have a big red [TROLL WARNING] after them. PDFs have a little superscript [pdf]. If I see a [TROLL WARNING] in a Slashdot article, I don't RTFA, but if someone links in a comment I might. If I see a [pdf], I know it's probably a long document. If I see [ppt] or [doc], then I avoid the link.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[icebraining]

Or maybe your experience doesn't match the majority. Firefox crash&hang rate per active daily user on Linux is about 0.02%. Data.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[cerberusss]

Alternatively, just uninstall Flash. You really don't need it for most of the web these days. (On OSX, it lives in /Library/Internet Plug-ins; you'll want to remove Flash Player.plugin, flashplayer.xpt, and the Shockwave file, I don't remember the name.)

Here are the official instructions from Adobe, which include a little uninstall utility: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/865/cpsid_86551.html#prob1=uninst,os=m10.6

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[arivanov]

This is not on MacBook Air, but on a ancient (circa 2001) Dual P3/733 HP professional workstation which I use as a desktop from time to time.

Power consumption browsing the Register in Konq with flash disabled: 71W. Load Averag sub-4%.

Power consumption browsing the Register in Firefox with flash enabled 110W. Load Average 60%+ (all of one CPU and encroaching on the second one). All it does are a couple of animated adverts in flash.

Similar test on an Pentium M HP notebook - 40W vs 65W. Similar test on an Atom 230 Lenovo netbook - 20W vs 37W. In all cases one CPU (or the one in the Pentium M case) is flat out.

That pretty much says it all. Anyone who has not turned off Flash on a portable device should not complain about battery life. I do not agree with Steve Jobs very often, but he is bloody right on this one. Flash should be prohibited until Adobe learns how to use video acceleration, sleep on select instead of doing idle loops and so on. Browsers do this natively. It has all been coded in them long ago so they eat virtually 0 CPU for such tasks in HTML5 or not.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[Richard_at_work]

Except that HTML5 currently doesn't cover a significant proportion of Flash functionality, even if you limit yourself to just video playback, with some significant parts even being dropped from the spec (video cue points being one of them) and some not even mentioned (progressive stream bitrate adaptation).

HTML5 might be 'the future', but its not 'the now', or even 'the tomorrow' with regard to being a Flash replacement.

Oh, and there are no 'tools' to learn to use, only a language - heres a hint, a significant proportion of Flash is not created by straight coding.

*I* have huge issues with people proclaiming HTML5 is the Flash replacement of choice, although I have never developed in Flash (although I sit next to a Flash developer), and I do a lot of HTML5 stuff for the iPhone - but I think you are going to try and spin my response as a fanboi or shill post anyway.

Thieves All of them!

[corvax]

when you see the ads you are paying for the content. This means apple users who don't install flash are thieves. And in iOS powered devices Apple is condoning piracy!!!! :O

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[Fahrvergnuugen]

You could have just linked to the daringfireball post... or at least cited it :P

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[delinear]

At least when that happens the speed gains and efficiencies become the domain of the browser developer and not some abitrary third party. If HTML5 animations are a drain, I'm sure someone will find ways to optimise them in their browser, and if they don't one of the others will and we can just switch. At the moment, no matter which browser we use we're dependent upon one company to make all the improvements (or not, as the case may be).

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[PopeRatzo]

Guess what, folks, computers aren't phone

Either are iPads, but they made it "inside the wall".

mrxak, yours was the response I was looking for.

and browsers can download stuff from the internets if you're not on a phone!

And if the queen had balls, she'd be king. So "browsers can download stuff" but not the browsers on a phone, or ipod. And that's your reason why Apple will never put its desktops behind a wall? Do you think Apple likes that people can "download stuff"? Do you think Apple's strategic partners like that you can "download stuff"?

So let me add a new one to the list: "Computers aren't phones". I guess that also means "Computers aren't iPads and iPhones". And then it will mean "Computers aren't Mac Airs and iMacs and iPads and iPhones".

Son, you are in denial about the direction Apple is going.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[EraserMouseMan]

I bet the battery would last several hours longer if you banned all video too. Netflix, DVDs, all of it. After all, it's not that important of a feature. If you knew what was good for you, anyway. Goodness, think about the upsides.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[EraserMouseMan]

Shoot. I've never used FF. But why does Steve Jobs always start shame campaigns against any technology that reveals areas of Apple OS weakness?

Seriously... People using non-Apple products don't bitch half as much as Jobs.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[John Betonschaar]

Holy crap, that's insane! If I open that and move the mouse my whole desktop freezes and I get 130% CPU load under Linux :-S

Is this some kind of sick joke by Sprint or did they seriously think people would enjoy 'using' this abomination??

Advertising is the problem

[Peeteriz]

As the article says - the cause of the problem is advertising.

If the user wants to watch flash videos in youtube, it drains the battery just as much as watching downloaded videos on the video playe of his choice.

But if the user doesn't want the "content", then the system shouldn't spend valuable, scarce resources (such as battery life) on them - the solution is not disabling flash, the solution is to ship computers with AdBlock preinstalled and preconfigured. The computer vendors can and should do that, to improve the value of their product to consumers.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[oji-sama]

You just reminded me of the time I had to have Apple QuickTime installed to watch videos from the web. I'll take flash every time, thank you very much. Although I did join HTML5 beta on YouTube, hopefully that will also be an improvement.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[Rysc]

Care to cite any kind of evidence at all?

I'll go first: My father, a Mac fan since the mid 80s, has recently switched back to Firefox on the Mac after a three-month flirtation with Safari. Therefore, I conclude, it is clear that there is a trend of people ditching Safari on the Mac in favor of Firefox, Firefox is superior to Safari on the Mac in the opinion of die-hard Apple fans, and Safari Is Dying, just to be traditional.

Okay, AC, now it's YOUR turn. Go go gadget anecdotal evidence! Real facts would be nice, too.

This just in

[mldi]

More applications running uses more juice? IT CAN'T BE!?!?!

Give me a break. "Oh, don't install that Office software. Running it might use more battery!!! ZOMG!11!!11!!1!"

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[Applekid]

Exactly. This is less about Flash + MacBook = Less Life and more about advertisers exploiting the computing resources of others to get their [not-so] important message across. Advertisers and the web site owners that permit such anti-reader advertising on their site.

Recently I went online using a computer belonging to someone else to check something out on a whim and after running ad and script blockers for so long, I'm amazed at how user-hostile the entire web has become.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[fruitbane]

Oddly, I'm fine facing down that one. No, the one that gets me is a combination banner and sidebar ad from IBM that shows up on Ars Technica. And it only gets me at a particular point.

Not Trolling, dual platform user.

[aristotle-dude]

Please, I have used iTunes on both OS X and windows and although my primary OS at home is currently OS X, I was a windows user exclusively form 1996 until 2002 and I have an actual "paid" job as a software developer on the windows platform.

Based on my "REAL LIFE" experience with windows over the years including in the Windows XP beta program, I have noticed that the overall performance including boot times does tend to deteriorate over time regardless if you have iTunes installed. iTunes is not the culprit but rather a canary in the coal mine when your registry is corrupt or about to become corrupt. I have been able to improve the performance of my workstation at work by removing cached login profiles as it not only removed the directories but removes the registry trees for those users from your local workstation speeding up boot time and program loading.

Every time you boot up or every time you load program, windows has to scan the user settings for the currently logged in/logging in user in addition to program specific settings if you are running a program.

The Registry HIVE is a binary tree (Btrieve) database. Why you might think that it is magic and fairy dust that only loads in a small amount of information, the HIVE database has to be mounted and scanned and it will take considerably more memory and time to perform when you add new programs and/or users to the system.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[hondo77]

Because Firefox blows.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[pknoll]

I didn't say it was a better solution, I said it was an alternative solution. Obviously you're free to do whatever you like, but living without Flash is easier than you might think.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[pknoll]

Yeah, I didn't see it until you linked it. =) But he, like me, missed that Adobe has an official uninstaller for Flash, linked by cerberusss here. That's a better way to go.

Also, if you were worried about things that use Air like Pandora One (I was), you needn't. They all work just fine in the absence of Flash.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[pknoll]

True. I hadn't considered that aspect, but if you don't have Flash installed at all I suspect that saves a lot of other apps from it. =)

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[pknoll]

It's just an alternative suggestion. You're obviously free to approach the problem however you like, and as I indicated, I think Click2Flash is a great plugin.

I think you might be surprised, however, how many sites will provide working versions of their sites that don't have Flash elements. Looking at the browser share of all the iOS devices, it's not hard to see why.

Increasing the number of Flash-less browsers will only encourage more web developers to produce sites that don't require Flash, or at minimum, will gracefully degrade when it isn't present.

It's true

[elfazerino]

I just picked up an 11" MBA this past weekend, and the battery life is pretty impressive. I resisted installing flash for several days, just to experience life without it. Unfortunately, many if not most multimedia content that you might want to see on the web appears to be only available in flash format, so I broke down and installed it. Flash does seem to run the battery down faster than without, though not as bad as trying to run a game (find an outlet for that!), so I am going to try Click2Flash...

New product ideas for Gillette

[zooblethorpe]

Maybe lazors are like razors, only they use lasers instead of blades?

Cheers,

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[sarahbau]

Flash is ridiculously poorly written for Mac OS. HTML 5 video typically uses 15% of one core on my Mac Pro, while Flash often uses 100%. It's so poorly written for Mac OS that running flash in Windows in VMWare Fusion can sometimes take less total CPU than running the Mac version.

Just saying...

[PortHaven]

So what are the details of the test. How many times was the browser re-launched. How long was it running? Both can affect battery life significantly. (ie: Browser launches usually involved some writing to disk, which consumes battery life).

Okay, so what did the Flash do. Did it just sit there and display a static page, or did it provide a rich user experience or even a multimedia experience.

Do you think playing video and rich interactive applications might just require more processing power. Did the control group do the same activities. If not, then it's really a comparison of Apples to Oranges. For example, how long would the battery last if you were doing CAD versus letting your laptop just sit there.

I mean, granted if I left my computer on a simple black screen saver, the battery would last much longer than if I had it playing movies. But watching the screen saver for hours sure would be boring.

--

This sounds like a great case study for poor scientific practice.

Real Web Pages

[PortHaven]

Web pages that use JavaScript are NOT real web pages.

If you want to be purist and elitist. Then the only real web pages are those that use standardized HTML to create text based documents viewable on multiple devices. Anything requiring additional scripting languages is a hybrid site.

--

As a user interface and rich application environment, Java cannot compare to Flash/AVM.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[mr_mischief]

Wow. Thanks for clearing that up. It's no wonder Steve Jobs thinks so little of Flash then. It's not just the fact that it's a clunky third-party plugin, but also that Adobe has treated Mac users piss poorly with it.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[RocketRabbit]

HTML5 does most of what Flash does. Have a look around, people are doing some pretty amazing stuff with it.

Flash is turdware and was jet getting worse with each release. If Adobe had their say, everything would be in Flash and that is not acceptable.

Time to clean house, and this bloated Flash monster is the first thing to go.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[Richard_at_work]

No, HTML5 does not do most of what Flash does, it currently does a subset - a very nice subset, but a subset none-the-less.

Lets see a HTML equivilent of Desktop Tower Defence. Oh, wait, no ones written one yet, despite there being hundreds of Flash versions.

You also seem to mistake me for someone that hasn't written anything in HTML5 - well, I have, quite a bit actually, so I'm in a damn good position to have an opinion on the matter.

Its currently no Flash replacement.

Re:Branding

[bonch]

The same amount of battery life used by the backlit screen, since that's what you're seeing through the cutout.

Flash can rob many hours from YOUR life

[jgreco]

But anyone who's ever used it already knows that, of course.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[RocketRabbit]

I think probably as time goes on the flash games will get competition from HTML5. There may not be a version of Dsktop Tower Adaefense yet, but there will be sooner or later.

The lack of a particular game does not prove that Flash is better than HTML5.

You know what would save even more power?

[cheesybagel]

Shutting down the operating system and doing absolutely nothing at all.

Re:I know I'm going to get "Flamebait" ....

[RocketRabbit]

http://pivotfinland.com/frozendefence/

Here you go, tower defense on HTML5.

NEXT!

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[RocketRabbit]

You realize your cock is in your mouth. It's making you sound retarded.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[beej]

Since Apple only recently allowed access the access to the hardware video decoder that Adobe needed, it's probably fair to cut Adobe some slack in that department. As I recall, it took about 5 business days for Adobe to put out a dev build that supported hardware video decoding.

Re:No ABP in OSX?

[beej]

Switching to HTML5 canvas animations actually *increases* battery life up to 37%!