Adobe Flash on Mac OS X

[roger767]

how about windows-laptops, do they get hot when watching flashvideo?

[SirPayne]

More than 3 years later Adobe Flash Player still suck balls on Mac OS.

[Scioneer]

@SirPayne

It sucks on ANY Unix derivative, not just OS X.

[WoahSalmo]

And I'm typing this from my iPad. So here's to html5: the 'google chrome' of object renders

[WoahSalmo]

And this is different from ANY other computer how? You saw for yourself, it's not the browser, and I can testify it's NOT the computer either. It's stupid ass flash for supreme resource hogging eating up your processor time.

[Chris242tt]

NOT HOT ON MY CLAMSHELL IBOOK!!!!

[powerphillg5]

You don't have to worry about flash for a very long time... it's on its way out the door. HELLO HTML5!!

[Philawockeez]

@powerphillg5 not really..... The only country that "maximize" HTML5 is US, half of it, and certain European country. while content are flash game, and over 80% percentage of excessive web uses are filled with flash... html5 is not going to replace flash

[AppleSoldier]

its not osx, its flash

[mabaker]

Did you install the latest 10.1 flash player beta? It helps reduce the load by about 20%.

[domnicgomes007]

hey adobe need apple total support, to fix this problem. windows run smooth as they gv adobe full excess to their API. So it is apple fault.

[iben07]

just installed the latest Flash Player 10.1 beta for Mac

NO CHANGE AT ALL ... still 60-70% CPU usage, Fan starts running to max with watching a simple small Video on Youtube.

Why can't you fix this Adobe, WHY?

[iben07]

this problem still exists, even the latest MB Pros do suffer from this bug in Adobe's Flash. I am  sure this is connected with the fact that iPhone does not support Flash, because its CPU would get way too hot.

What should we as Apple users expect/do?! I am surprised how this issue is well known to all Mac users somehow, but Adobe just does not do anything to solve it?

What you can do is google "flash mac adobe bug fp890". This needs to be more public to increase the public pressure on Adobe

[MoeBT]

Hi it's 2009 and the Flash performance on OS X STILL sucks

[jemminger]

Have you considered that it's a bug in Flash, and not with OSX? Apple doesn't write Flash, Adobe does. A quick Google search will tell you that Adobe's performance on any platform other than Windows ranges from poor to abysmal.

[JegXIII]

You think Snow Leopard will fix this?

[iben07]

No. I thought so too, but I upgraded to SL just after it came out and the effect is the same, sadly.

[Sugartalker]

I have been to the Apple store to look into a MacBook Pro and I watched a few YouTube videos on 4 different machines and they all had this problem. The video played very choppy which seeems like it should be impossible. That alone is making me re-think MacBook Pro. BUt on the other hand, I'm in the market because for video editing, it is the industry standard. It's a tough call.

[dontwalkhand]

This is more of an adobe problem, and poor coding on Adobe's part. Adobe sucks!

[bobbyworld]

I am not the best to test this out on my Mac. I have a 2004 Powerbook G4 and notice how intensive video playback can be these days. Podcasts, h264 and Flash Video all seem to be using the GPU these days.  It is time for me to upgrade :)

[bobbyworld]

The most recent versions of Flash Player 9 added GPU support for Full Screen Video. You can also view H.264 standard movies which can be very CPU intensive. Go to the Flash Player context menu and click on settings. There should be a setting with hardware acceleration check mark.

[dell1032]

True, I do see the check box on my version of Flash. It might just be the integrated GPU on all current MacBooks that have this problem. Just curious what kind of system are you running? I'll agree that h.264 playback can be demanding, but typically I only run into CPU strain when playing back HD movie trailers from Apple's website.

[bobbyworld]

The latest versions of Flash does take advantage of the GPU.

[dell1032]

Are you talking about Flash 10 Beta? Hopefully this is true, but normally I don't like to run beta software on my systems. If the situation changes in Flash 10, I'll make another video.

[konesarekool]

@dell1032 Just run HTML5. YouTube has a trial in HTML5 now. Just google it! I love it! No flash on my system!

[marksis]

When it came time to upgrade, I shied away from a laptop as I suspected I'd wish later on that I had more than 2 CPU cores. So, I went with a Pro tower with 8 cores. Not an answer for your problem, of course... We'll just have to wait for a better flash player that passes off control to Apple core video routines so that the GPU can be used instead. Quicktime played full screen would be an interesting comparison test... Are you interested in making another video with this other full screen setup?

[dell1032]

For the most part I have no problem with QuickTime h.264 playback on my MacBook. The cooling fans only kick in when playing back an HD movie trailer from Apple's website. Adobe really needs to fix Flash.

[ad4m]

Im on a MacBook (2,1) - 2 GHz Core 2 Duo and have exactly the same problem, so no luck with the new(ish) chips.

[monkfg]

Oh noooo... Why would you wana buy a Mac?

[bs1de]

Same problems on SR C2D here, except the max cpu usage I've reached is 60% or so. Also, firefox seems to handle flash better than Safari.

[MarcBookPro]

I've got a 2.4 GHz (Core 2 Duo) MacBook Pro. It's running Leopard and a 20" Cinema Display. When in full screen, CPU usage hovered around 75%. Computer got warm, but the fans did not kick in. The computer gets much hotter when playing graphic-intensive games, or using design software, etc.

Does the MacBook's fan(s) have a minimum RPM? Cause the Pro's are set to 2000 RPM minimum, which could affect the heat issue.

[dell1032]

I'm not sure what the minimum RPM setting on a MacBook would be. It's good to hear that your MBP can handle full-screen flash playback without the fans spinning up, but at the same time it's somewhat disconcerting that one has to use the latest MacBook Pro to be able to watch Flash full-screen without the fans spinning up. If this is the case then most Mac users out there are going to have continue with this until flash gets fixed.

[MarcBookPro]

Do you think this has to do with the MacBook's integrated video vs. the MacBook Pros dedicated video?

[dell1032]

Well I remember the same thing happening on my friend's 1st gen. MBP with 2 GHz Core Duo and to my knowledge Flash doesn't take advantage of the GPU or any of the Core Image frameworks.

[MacOSXrulez]

You should look up smcFanControl on Google and download that app. What that app will do is let you set the minimum RPM that you want the fan to be in.

[miknos2]

It really sucks. My macbook (2.16ghz C2D) get really hot and goes like 80c temperature. The battery last more than 5 hours surfing the net and listening to music. When I use flash, goes to less than half! This problem is probably for bad code from Adobe. Just look at Adobe Flex. There is some "simple" soft that uses more than 500MB of RAM! This is nonsense. It's worst than JAVA! Adobe (flash and flex) and JAVA SUX BAD!

[nighty5]

I have the same problem. I've tried re-installing flash and shockwave but it goes to 100% very easy on some websites. Try shockwave applications and you'll see the problem again, I think it must be shoddy programming from Adobe? I'm tempted to format my hard disk and see if it still happens. I'm surprised there isn't much information on Google, I'm running a 1.67ghz powerbook.

[delunahugoren]

It doesn't have to do with the hardware or the browser, it has to do with the codec used by the SWF player in Youtube to watch the FLV videos.

I have a PC with WinXP SP2 and before I troubleshot the problem, whenever I was on a session of Youtube watchin', the machine shut down because of the heat (at full screen, also worked at a 100%).

I watch the same videos (FLV) from Youtube with the FDDShow codec, and the CPU doesn't have an overload.

It is the SWF player!

[halfdogjury]

This doesn't happen on my similar macbook (only 1.8ghz) using firefox instead of safari.

[dell1032]

I downloaded the official 2.0.0.7 release (normally I build my FF from source), cleared the cache, did a reboot, and I still was running into the same problems. I suppose maybe you just got lucky.

[macminiman01]

yeah its true, adobe really needs to look at this... my ubuntu linux PIII 128mb ram runs youtube better than my powermac...

[extraunlucky]

It's a bug in Safari.

[dell1032]

If it's a bug in Safari, then how do you explain the same behavior occuring in Firefox and Camino? Does the same thing happen to your system when you use Firefox or Camino? Maybe it's a fluke for me because I compile my web browsers from source, so I'm open to trying something different.

[dell1032]

elwood58,

That's an awesome machine, but just to clarify, is the 55-60% CPU the average of the 2 CPU cores, or is it only 60% load running on one core? If I averaged the 2 cores on my Mac when running full screen then I too would have about 60 - 65% CPU use, so further info would be helpful. Thanks for the comment.

[dell1032]

viciousdave119:

What kind of Mac (RAM, Processor, OS version) do you have and how well does it work on watching YouTube videos? Is it a Core 2 Duo and does it perform any better than what I have in my MacBook?

[viciousdave119]

I don't have a Mac right now, I'm getting one next year. But I don't have any problem running videos on my Windows PC, and I only have 256MB of Ram. But I've looked at my processes panel, and it is also running at 100% CPU usage.

[elwood58]

I am using the Core 2 Duo (2.16 ghz) with 2 GB RAM. My CPU load was at 16-22% running small screen and 55-60% running full screen. In full screen, my processor temp jumped from 52 to 62 c, and my fan speed went from 1805 to 4800.

[viciousdave119]

That's really odd. You have 2 Whole GB of Ram memory in that thing, that's enough to run that video, but the Mac says it's running 100% on the computer of the video. 2 GB of Ram and a 2Ghz PCU should be fast enough for anyone today, that's really odd of the Mac to use 100% of PCU time.