Flash 10.2b: Better performance, reduced resource usage
Flash on the iPhone? Dead on arrival. Flash on notebooks? Sucks the life right out. Adobe has taken a lot of grief for the many failings of its multimedia middleware. Whereas it took years for them to deliver v10.1, they’re getting to v10.2 in a matter of months and it promises much of the stuff they’ve been saying has been there all along.
Adobe has shipped Flash 10.2 beta and the spin seems promising. Here’s a slice.
• Stage Video hardware acceleration — Developers can leverage complete hardware acceleration of the video rendering pipeline, which can decrease processor usage and enable higher frame rates, reduced memory usage with better fidelity and quality.
• Native custom mouse cursors — Developers can define custom native mouse cursors, enabling user experience enhancements and improving performance.
• Full screen mode with multiple monitors — Full screen content will remain in full-screen on secondary monitors, allowing users to watch full-screen content while working on another display.
One of the downsides right from the get go is that Flash 10.2 beta is only available in 32-bit code, which makes me wonder a bit about the 64-bit version of 10.2 they shipped back in September that has since disappeared.
Nevertheless, you can download the plug-in for 32-bit Mac OS X.
What’s your take?
At this point and after so many years of poor performance on the Mac, I’ve become used to not using Flash (Thanks, Click2Flash!) that I’m unable to know if the latest is better. I did recently try turning on Flash so it loaded as normal, but the slow down on any page containing ads (eg – ESPN.com) was immediate and impacting…I’m sorry, but I don’t really want to see those ads anyway, but I’m certainly not going to allow them to grind my browser (Safari or Firefox) to a halt!
So as far as I’m concerned, Adobe has to do more than improve the performance on Flash…they’ve got to make it the “killer app” it was years ago…and I ain’t holding my breath on that!!
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I certainly do use ClickToFlash on my Macs so I don’t have to see Flash banners. I’ve personally got nothing against Flash on my desktop Mac. I don’t hate Adobe or anything like that. As long as Flash doesn’t suck too much processing time or doesn’t crash, then it’s fine with me. I’m not bothering to download the 10.2 beta yet. I’ll just wait for the final version. If it really uses less than 5% processor load and is boosted by the GPU then they’ve really done a good job. I’ll use it in an instant. I don’t usually watch 1080p videos but if it works well with even 720p, I’ll be more than satisfied.
My only complaint is that there should be both Flash and HTML5 available for mobile devices. If Adobe can prove to me that Flash is no more power-hungry than HTML5 and if they can make it so it runs videos fast and without crashing, then I congratulate Adobe for improving Flash. I’d use it willingly if it has been improved. I think that if Adobe can prove to Apple that Flash is greatly improved then hopefully they will allow Flash on the iOS platform. If not, it’s still not going to upset me to any degree and I’ll just continue along as I do now. I hope Apple will approach a new version of Flash with an open mind and weigh it fairly.
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