6 ms·

Dropping Adobe Flash boosts Apple's MacBook Air battery life by 2 hours

73 points by sandipc 16y ago

beej71 16y ago
Soon you'll be able to get the same battery life drops just by having JavaScript turned on, as more advertisers move to HTML5.
- ceejayoz 16y ago
  Flash tends to be a bear on Macs - even some basic YouTubing makes my 8-core Mac Pro with 10 GB RAM turn all its fans on. JavaScript, on the other hand, has seen a huge emphasis on performance, with Google's work on V8 and the stuff Apple has been doing with Webkit. I strongly suspect it'll be better performance than Flash.
  - riobard 16y ago
    until ads turn to JS+Canvas+whatever to ruin the whole thing again.
    - ceejayoz 16y ago
      I've loaded Canvas experiments and don't get the same chugging.
      - abstractbill 16y ago
        Canvas experiments are not written by the kind of programmer who usually works for an ad agency.
        ceejayoz 16y ago
        Fair point.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    I strongly suspect it'll be better performance than Flash. There is absolutely no empirical basis for assuming this. In actual comparisons between the two -- at least the tests that I've seen -- Flash take the lead. Removing Flash and being saved the overhead of endless and overbearing ads is good, but as has been said the advertisers will move to HTML5 (they already are), and they're going to do the same full motion video, moving dynamic multimedia, etc, that causes Flash to be such a beast. Worse, it won't be as easily segregatable because to the browser it will be no different than the rest of the web application.
    - pyre 16y ago
      > Worse, it won't be as easily segregatable because to > the browser it will be no different than the rest of > the web application. My hosts file begs to differ.
    - catch23 16y ago
      my adblock still works great on javascript ads!
    - sp4rki 16y ago
      I can have one non-ad flash object on a webpage and it immediately makes my fans spin like mad. What makes Flash be such a beast is not the advertisements with full motion video or moving dynamic multimedia, it's just that Flash completely and utterly sucks on a Mac. On the other point, any website that lets advertisers take over their content or more space than it should because there are no boundaries (as opposed to Flash) is a website I won't visit anymore, and I suspect a great amount of people think the same. We have great advertisement providers as Fusion and Google are which are non intrusive. If you wish to add banners and the such you as a content provider should very well be on top of your ad space and avoid shady advertisement companies.
    - chc 16y ago
      Are the tests you've seen usually done on a Mac?
  - seanalltogether 16y ago
    Flash actionscript runs faster then javascript in pretty much any benchmark, javascript can only go so far before object typing is required to gain parity with other language. As for video, you're trading cpu power for gpu power when running flash vs quicktime, but I'm not sure the gpu will be any less of a drain on battery.
    - epochwolf 16y ago
      > As for video, you're trading cpu power for gpu power when running flash vs quicktime, but I'm not sure the gpu will be any less of a drain on battery. Except that using a cpu to emulate things gpu do natively requires far more power. A gpu is a specialized processor so the tradeoff isn't going to be 1 to 1.
    - Andrewski 16y ago
      Yes, runs faster, but while hogging more of the machine.
  - frou_dh 16y ago
    Am I somehow immune from Flash on Mac being a complete hog? Sure, it uses a decent chunk of CPU, but I rarely if ever get my CPU pegged and fans ramped up as everyone seems to claim.
    - chc 16y ago
      Mac Pro?
      - frou_dh 16y ago
        Previous gen MBP: Core2Duo 2.8, 9400M. Not that I like Flash, but that's for different reasons.
    - elblanco 16y ago
      I'm always curious at what exactly the hell people are doing to their macs to make something like a single flash widget on a page bring their machine to its knees. My 4 year old MBP runs stuff just about as well as my 4 year old Windows laptop.
- GHFigs 16y ago
  A crucial difference is that browser vendors can actually do something about JavaScript performance.
stevenwei 16y ago
I'm not sure this is particularly significant...as you could say the same thing about many tasks. Not running video encoding on your Macbook Air boosts battery life by 2 hours. Not running 3D games on your Macbook Air boosts battery life by 2 hours. Not watching 1080p movies on your Macbook Air boosts battery life by 2 hours.
- evo_9 16y ago
  Adblock and/or ClickToFlash also would do the trick.
  - protomyth 16y ago
    To a point, but some sites actually serve up different content if your browser can't do Flash.
    - evo_9 16y ago
      If the goal is to remove/control Flashes consumption of resources - aka the original post - then my suggestion stands. We are talking about Flash - not ads per se.
      - protomyth 16y ago
        True (and I wasn't too clear), I was pointing out that some sites actually serve up video in h.264 instead of flash when no flash is detected. The native h.264 is more efficient than flash for videos you actually want to see.
- msbarnett 16y ago
  I'm not sure that "browsing the internet and being shown advertisements on web pages" should be considered a task whose intensiveness is on-par with 3D rendering, 1080p decoding, or encoding. Or rather, I think it isn't a flattering comment on Flash's efficiency that having it display ads on webpages requires that much processing power.
rm-rf 16y ago
Running NoScript and only enabling javascript and flash when needed likely has a similar effect. The advantage, of course is that with Flash installed but disabled, you can enable/disable it as desired and as battery permits.
- geuis 16y ago
  You know, what you say brings to mind an interesting point. Right now most people ~98% I think, have javascript enabled all the time. Its a smaller minority of us that use NoScript. There are no mechanisms that I know of in popular browsers to disable certain html5 features like canvas, video, or audio elements. So while its possible right now to disable Flash by not installing it or using certain browser extensions, if an ad provider loads an ad that uses the video or audio element you really have no way to disable them. Disabling javascript should prevent canvas-based ads from running, but what's to stop video and audio playing if your browser supports autoplay?
  - w1ntermute 16y ago
    No doubt extensions will be created (or more likely, support will be added to the existing Flash- and/or ad-blocking extensions) if this becomes a significant problem.
rickmb 16y ago
No surprises there. Flash on a Mac is a sick joke. People who think Apple is just looking for excuses against Flash have never used a Mac. The only time the fans kick in on any of Macs I've owned in the past decade is when Flash is running. The only time any browser crashes it's because of Flash. Flash eats memory, CPU and anything else it can lay it's hands (okay, it leaves the disk alone) on until your Mac becomes either unusable or it has drained the battery. Flash is the closest thing to malware on a Mac. Anybody who thinks it would have even been possible to have a usable version of Flash on an iPhone or iPad grossly underestimates the incompetence of Adobe.
zmmmmm 16y ago
<sarcasm>Even more significantly, it was found that not turning on the MacBook Air increased its battery life by 36 hours! Using this amazing data we are able to infer that not using your computer saves battery life. The less you use it, the more you save!</sarcasm> This is more an argument for tools like Flashblock to be built into browsers (like they are on Android) than it is an argument against Flash itself. You can argue that Flash its inefficient but it's just as true that the tasks Flash is used to do are intrinsically complex and power consuming.
- cma 16y ago
  "it's just as true that the tasks Flash is used to do are intrinsically complex and power consuming" Spinning, blinking, scaled moving sprite advertisements. I don't think those are intrinsically power consuming; the GPU on most phones/laptops could handle them (blind guess) 50x more power-efficiently than flash.
  - widgetycrank 16y ago
    Isn't Flash 10.1 GPU-accelerated? Maybe that was just for videos. Though I recall the Mac version using one of the Core libraries for vector graphics.
    - metageek 16y ago
      I think only Windows gets the GPU acceleration, so far.
- wtallis 16y ago
  You should be careful how you use the term "flashblock". For desktop web browsers, most "flashblock" tools only hide the flash objects. They do this to not break compatibility as thoroughly, but it unfortunately means that browsers running flashblock are still generally 100% compatible with flash-based security exploits. It seems reasonable to expect that such tools can hardly improve the battery life over unrestricted Flash. I don't know if this applies to Android, but on a MacBook Air, you're best off using Adblock and/or NoScript to ensure that flash objects and advertising scripts never even get fetched over the network.
swah 16y ago
Its just the Mac Flash implementation, no? Many tabs with Flash content don't make Windows slow IIRC.
swah 16y ago
Its just the Mac Flash implementation, no? Many tabs with Flash content don't make Windows slow IIRC.
mkramlich 16y ago
I suspect that many Flash apps have a loop running at a certain frequency, which can have about the same performance impact of polling. Compared to an event-driven architecture, a loop is always running, with each iteration consuming CPU even if there is no real work to do that iteration. I had a brief foray as a Flash programmer and noticed this pattern in some of the codebases I saw, and in what the Flash IDE seems to push. Not sure how widely spread it is, or done any measurements on impact, however. But it has the potential to contribute to the CPU sponging the Flash browser plugin is notorious for. Take this effect, multiple it by many little Flash apps per tab, many tabs, many windows, and it can add up.
- kreek 16y ago
  While it is true that some Flash apps have loop (games must have a loop) it's a bit ignorant to compare it to an event-driven architecture. Flash's ActionScript, which is based on ECMAScript (as is JavaScript), is an event driven-architecture. Events are first class citizens of the framework and bubble up through the display list. Even the loop that gets abused by so many is firing off events.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    > While it is true that some Flash apps have loop (games must have a loop) it's a bit ignorant to compare it to an event-driven architecture. not sure if you meant it, but that comes off as pretty rude. loops and EDA's are different things, and there is value in comparing and considering them. also, the Flash API's may have first-class support for the notion of events, but that does not mean that every glorified loop involves events, or vice versa. in a pure EDA, no task is performed unless an event of interest occurs. mindless polling and housekeeping loops are one anti-pattern contributing to unnecessary CPU use. also, while we're being pedantic, technically not all games require loops. I've built plenty myself that had no loops in the application code.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

73 points by sandipc 16y ago

Soon you'll be able to get the same battery life drops just by having JavaScript turned on, as more advertisers move to HTML5.

ceejayoz 16y ago
Flash tends to be a bear on Macs - even some basic YouTubing makes my 8-core Mac Pro with 10 GB RAM turn all its fans on. JavaScript, on the other hand, has seen a huge emphasis on performance, with Google's work on V8 and the stuff Apple has been doing with Webkit. I strongly suspect it'll be better performance than Flash.
- riobard 16y ago
  until ads turn to JS+Canvas+whatever to ruin the whole thing again.
  - ceejayoz 16y ago
    I've loaded Canvas experiments and don't get the same chugging.
    - abstractbill 16y ago
      Canvas experiments are not written by the kind of programmer who usually works for an ad agency.
      - ceejayoz 16y ago
        Fair point.
- ergo98 16y ago
  I strongly suspect it'll be better performance than Flash. There is absolutely no empirical basis for assuming this. In actual comparisons between the two -- at least the tests that I've seen -- Flash take the lead. Removing Flash and being saved the overhead of endless and overbearing ads is good, but as has been said the advertisers will move to HTML5 (they already are), and they're going to do the same full motion video, moving dynamic multimedia, etc, that causes Flash to be such a beast. Worse, it won't be as easily segregatable because to the browser it will be no different than the rest of the web application.
  - pyre 16y ago
    > Worse, it won't be as easily segregatable because to > the browser it will be no different than the rest of > the web application. My hosts file begs to differ.
  - catch23 16y ago
    my adblock still works great on javascript ads!
  - sp4rki 16y ago
    I can have one non-ad flash object on a webpage and it immediately makes my fans spin like mad. What makes Flash be such a beast is not the advertisements with full motion video or moving dynamic multimedia, it's just that Flash completely and utterly sucks on a Mac. On the other point, any website that lets advertisers take over their content or more space than it should because there are no boundaries (as opposed to Flash) is a website I won't visit anymore, and I suspect a great amount of people think the same. We have great advertisement providers as Fusion and Google are which are non intrusive. If you wish to add banners and the such you as a content provider should very well be on top of your ad space and avoid shady advertisement companies.
  - chc 16y ago
    Are the tests you've seen usually done on a Mac?
- seanalltogether 16y ago
  Flash actionscript runs faster then javascript in pretty much any benchmark, javascript can only go so far before object typing is required to gain parity with other language. As for video, you're trading cpu power for gpu power when running flash vs quicktime, but I'm not sure the gpu will be any less of a drain on battery.
  - epochwolf 16y ago
    > As for video, you're trading cpu power for gpu power when running flash vs quicktime, but I'm not sure the gpu will be any less of a drain on battery. Except that using a cpu to emulate things gpu do natively requires far more power. A gpu is a specialized processor so the tradeoff isn't going to be 1 to 1.
  - Andrewski 16y ago
    Yes, runs faster, but while hogging more of the machine.
- frou_dh 16y ago
  Am I somehow immune from Flash on Mac being a complete hog? Sure, it uses a decent chunk of CPU, but I rarely if ever get my CPU pegged and fans ramped up as everyone seems to claim.
  - chc 16y ago
    Mac Pro?
    - frou_dh 16y ago
      Previous gen MBP: Core2Duo 2.8, 9400M. Not that I like Flash, but that's for different reasons.
  - elblanco 16y ago
    I'm always curious at what exactly the hell people are doing to their macs to make something like a single flash widget on a page bring their machine to its knees. My 4 year old MBP runs stuff just about as well as my 4 year old Windows laptop.
GHFigs 16y ago
A crucial difference is that browser vendors can actually do something about JavaScript performance.

stevenwei 16y ago

I'm not sure this is particularly significant...as you could say the same thing about many tasks. Not running video encoding on your Macbook Air boosts battery life by 2 hours. Not running 3D games on your Macbook Air boosts battery life by 2 hours. Not watching 1080p movies on your Macbook Air boosts battery life by 2 hours.

evo_9 16y ago
Adblock and/or ClickToFlash also would do the trick.
- protomyth 16y ago
  To a point, but some sites actually serve up different content if your browser can't do Flash.
  - evo_9 16y ago
    If the goal is to remove/control Flashes consumption of resources - aka the original post - then my suggestion stands. We are talking about Flash - not ads per se.
    - protomyth 16y ago
      True (and I wasn't too clear), I was pointing out that some sites actually serve up video in h.264 instead of flash when no flash is detected. The native h.264 is more efficient than flash for videos you actually want to see.
msbarnett 16y ago
I'm not sure that "browsing the internet and being shown advertisements on web pages" should be considered a task whose intensiveness is on-par with 3D rendering, 1080p decoding, or encoding. Or rather, I think it isn't a flattering comment on Flash's efficiency that having it display ads on webpages requires that much processing power.

rm-rf 16y ago

Running NoScript and only enabling javascript and flash when needed likely has a similar effect. The advantage, of course is that with Flash installed but disabled, you can enable/disable it as desired and as battery permits.

geuis 16y ago
You know, what you say brings to mind an interesting point. Right now most people ~98% I think, have javascript enabled all the time. Its a smaller minority of us that use NoScript. There are no mechanisms that I know of in popular browsers to disable certain html5 features like canvas, video, or audio elements. So while its possible right now to disable Flash by not installing it or using certain browser extensions, if an ad provider loads an ad that uses the video or audio element you really have no way to disable them. Disabling javascript should prevent canvas-based ads from running, but what's to stop video and audio playing if your browser supports autoplay?
- w1ntermute 16y ago
  No doubt extensions will be created (or more likely, support will be added to the existing Flash- and/or ad-blocking extensions) if this becomes a significant problem.

rickmb 16y ago

No surprises there. Flash on a Mac is a sick joke. People who think Apple is just looking for excuses against Flash have never used a Mac. The only time the fans kick in on any of Macs I've owned in the past decade is when Flash is running. The only time any browser crashes it's because of Flash. Flash eats memory, CPU and anything else it can lay it's hands (okay, it leaves the disk alone) on until your Mac becomes either unusable or it has drained the battery. Flash is the closest thing to malware on a Mac. Anybody who thinks it would have even been possible to have a usable version of Flash on an iPhone or iPad grossly underestimates the incompetence of Adobe.

zmmmmm 16y ago

<sarcasm>Even more significantly, it was found that not turning on the MacBook Air increased its battery life by 36 hours! Using this amazing data we are able to infer that not using your computer saves battery life. The less you use it, the more you save!</sarcasm> This is more an argument for tools like Flashblock to be built into browsers (like they are on Android) than it is an argument against Flash itself. You can argue that Flash its inefficient but it's just as true that the tasks Flash is used to do are intrinsically complex and power consuming.

cma 16y ago
"it's just as true that the tasks Flash is used to do are intrinsically complex and power consuming" Spinning, blinking, scaled moving sprite advertisements. I don't think those are intrinsically power consuming; the GPU on most phones/laptops could handle them (blind guess) 50x more power-efficiently than flash.
- widgetycrank 16y ago
  Isn't Flash 10.1 GPU-accelerated? Maybe that was just for videos. Though I recall the Mac version using one of the Core libraries for vector graphics.
  - metageek 16y ago
    I think only Windows gets the GPU acceleration, so far.
wtallis 16y ago
You should be careful how you use the term "flashblock". For desktop web browsers, most "flashblock" tools only hide the flash objects. They do this to not break compatibility as thoroughly, but it unfortunately means that browsers running flashblock are still generally 100% compatible with flash-based security exploits. It seems reasonable to expect that such tools can hardly improve the battery life over unrestricted Flash. I don't know if this applies to Android, but on a MacBook Air, you're best off using Adblock and/or NoScript to ensure that flash objects and advertising scripts never even get fetched over the network.

swah 16y ago

Its just the Mac Flash implementation, no? Many tabs with Flash content don't make Windows slow IIRC.

swah 16y ago

Its just the Mac Flash implementation, no? Many tabs with Flash content don't make Windows slow IIRC.

mkramlich 16y ago

I suspect that many Flash apps have a loop running at a certain frequency, which can have about the same performance impact of polling. Compared to an event-driven architecture, a loop is always running, with each iteration consuming CPU even if there is no real work to do that iteration. I had a brief foray as a Flash programmer and noticed this pattern in some of the codebases I saw, and in what the Flash IDE seems to push. Not sure how widely spread it is, or done any measurements on impact, however. But it has the potential to contribute to the CPU sponging the Flash browser plugin is notorious for. Take this effect, multiple it by many little Flash apps per tab, many tabs, many windows, and it can add up.

kreek 16y ago
While it is true that some Flash apps have loop (games must have a loop) it's a bit ignorant to compare it to an event-driven architecture. Flash's ActionScript, which is based on ECMAScript (as is JavaScript), is an event driven-architecture. Events are first class citizens of the framework and bubble up through the display list. Even the loop that gets abused by so many is firing off events.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  > While it is true that some Flash apps have loop (games must have a loop) it's a bit ignorant to compare it to an event-driven architecture. not sure if you meant it, but that comes off as pretty rude. loops and EDA's are different things, and there is value in comparing and considering them. also, the Flash API's may have first-class support for the notion of events, but that does not mean that every glorified loop involves events, or vice versa. in a pure EDA, no task is performed unless an event of interest occurs. mindless polling and housekeeping loops are one anti-pattern contributing to unnecessary CPU use. also, while we're being pedantic, technically not all games require loops. I've built plenty myself that had no loops in the application code.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]