7 ms·
IPhone Flash prototype got 30 min battery life
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- X0nic 17y agoFor 90% of the sites that I visit, I would prefer no flash. Not to mention the battery, last thing I want is flash chewing through my battery for flash that I dont even want to see. I wouldnt mind the ability to click on a flash movie that isnt youtube, and have it launch a player.
- yumraj 17y ago<sarcasm> - I guess since it's on the Internet it must be true. - All the other smartphones which have Flash must have 30 min battery life. - Apple is saint and Adobe is evil. - iPhone is such an open platform. </sarcasm>
- kwantam 17y agoAgreed, this "story" smells fishy. How is it that flash works acceptably on other platforms but not the iPhone? A much more likely explanation is the one everyone has been assuming, viz., Apple doesn't want any code they haven't approved running on the phone, period.
- veemjeem 17y agoFlash doesn't run "acceptably" on OSX or Linux. It uses around 30% of my cpu on either platform, compared to using only 3% of the cpu on my windows machine. Clearly they have some work to do before they can make flash as efficient as running on their core platform. Adobe should make flash work decently on other platforms before making one for the iphone... Running any flash app on my macbook causes the fan to turn on within 5 minutes -- it's horrible.
- notauser 17y agoPerformance is much improved on Linux these days (at least the x64 version). My Macbook Pro running Ubuntu 9.10 uses about 5-10% CPU at most for flash video, and usually a little less for flash-only sites. The only problem is that when it crashes the browser is sans-flash until you restart it.
- jrockway 17y agoOf course, playing the same flv file full-screen in mplayer uses almost no CPU at all.
- maudineormsby 17y agoSame experience here, although I wouldn't laud flash's performance on Windows either. Silverlight runs better than flash most of the time, and Silverlight is pretty terrible.
- felixmar 17y agoSilverlight is pretty terrible Compared to what? Silverlight uses a bit more CPU time when playing MP4 videos compared to Media Player or VLC but about the same as Google Chrome. It may be different on OS X. How does Silverlight's video performance on OS X compare to native Quicktime for example (which is relatively slow on Windows)?
- nuclear_eclipse 17y agoWow, it only uses 30% cpu? On my Q8400 in Ubuntu, it pegs an entire core the moment flash launches...
- sjs 17y agoPlaying a flash video almost brings my Core Duo macbook to its knees and uses around 40% of each of my 4 cores on my hackintosh (Q9450).
- yurisagalov 17y ago
- easp 17y agoAny code? You mean any code other than JavaScript?
- kwantam 17y agoYou make a good point. While it is useful for web apps, JavaScript in Mobile Safari is not sufficient for creating the vast majority of standalone applications. Flash, while hardly a world-class systems programming language, is a step beyond JavaScript in several respects. Most importantly, it is more consistently cross-platform compatible, meaning that I could actually take advantage of preexisting Flash applets on the iPhone, whereas oftimes when designing a JS app one must consider a far wider range of discrepancies between platforms. In other words, given a randomly-selected JS applet and a randomly-selected Flash applet from all available to me, the probability is greater that the Flash applet will be correct in an officially-supported Flash VM than that the JS applet will be correct in Mobile Safari.
- yardie 17y agoShow me an instance of a modern browser running javascript that doesn't run correctly. I've written a lot of javascript and the only thing that trips me up is the css. Javascript itself works fine on almost all platforms. (Some quirkiness on IE6).
- kwantam 17y agoWow, I'm being downvoted into oblivion for observing that other mobile devices can run flash apps and pointing out that Apple keeps tight control over their platform. Neither of these are particularly controversial, as I see it. I realize that Flash is annoying, and of course I'd expect to be able to turn it off on any reasonable platform---most of the time, I really don't want it. But when I do, let me make a big-boy decision about battery life versus usefulness all by myself. Are you really under the impression that Apple is in a better position to decide whether the tradeoffs are worthwhile than I am? On my phone?
- ynniv 17y ago> Are you really under the impression that Apple is in a better position to decide whether the tradeoffs are worthwhile than I am? On my phone? Yes, I am under that impression. If Apple shipped with Flash, people would constantly complain about the battery life of the phone. I have been working on user interfaces for a couple of years now, and I can tell you that my user interface code is constantly at fault. Every segfault, random pause, incorrect data, data corruption, missing file, and plugin bug gets filed under "user interface" by anyone who is not directly part of the project. Now, its possible that you're the guy who would spend a week testing battery life under various conditions to determine that Flash was at fault. Maybe you would publish all of this to your blog, and 1,000 people would read it and agree. Even if these were both true, the other 21 million iPhone users would be bitching about battery life all day long - and they would not care that Flash is at fault - and they certainly would not be able to live without it now that they spend 29 of their 30 minutes of battery life in FarmVille. Apple has no control over Flash, and Flash sucks on every platform except maybe Windows. If Flash really mattered, one of the other smartphones would support it and make the iPhone obsolete. This is what competition is for. What we need is more diversity and interoperability in this industry. Flash on every device is not diversity.
- kwantam 17y agoFlash on every device is not diversity. And Apple's walled garden does nothing to promote either diversity or interoperability. Separate your dislike of Flash from your reasoning on this subject for just a moment. What if it were Sun wanting to deploy a JVM for the iPhone? How about a .NET CLR? These certainly promote both interoperability and diversity. Now, would Apple allow them? Why not? Because they'd impact battery life? Hardly. They'd disallow them because it would loosen their grip on the iPhone software ecosystem. The bottom line is, Apple's business model with respect to the App Store relies on being the only game in town. Downvote away. No matter that I'm on topic and making reasonable, if contentious, points. My karma isn't so important to me that I'll let y'all's fanboiism gets in the way of actual discussion.
- icefox 17y agoAfter I installed click2flash on my macbook my average battery time went up.
- X0nic 17y agoYes it would probably be safe to assume that 30mins is a little bit of an exaggeration. It doesnt make it any less true that most flash content are ads, and i dont want ads draining my battery even a little.
- bvttf 17y agoSince iphone safari doesn't unload pages when you leave the app (Multitasking!), flash could've been spinning in the background all the time.
- tjogin 17y agoAdobe can't even make a performant flash plugin for Mac OS X or Linux, why on god's green earth would it be any different for lesser hardware?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- cloudwalking 17y agoApple won't let Adobe make a decent Flash plugin for OS X. Apple restricts APIs that the plugin needs to run well--things like access to hardware video acceleration. A lot of people at Adobe use Macs. A lot of people at Adobe work on Flash player. They don't just sit around screwing off all day; Flash on OS X is lousy but there isn't much they can do about it. I don't know why Apple does it. Stability? Stubbornness? You're right though. If Apple won't let Flash player work well on OS X, they sure as hell aren't going to let it run on iPhone.
- godDLL 17y agoPlease explain how OpenCL fits in with that idea. What Adobe probably means by "restricting tech" is that Apple does not allow alternative code interpreters on their device, as to not facilitate AppStore circumvention.
- cloudwalking 17y agoIn Flash Player 10.1, H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under Linux and Mac OS. Linux currently lacks a developed standard API that supports H.264 hardware video decoding, and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. We will continue to evaluate adding the feature to Linux and Mac OS in future releases. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenotes.pdf http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenote...
- godDLL 17y agoMhm. "We don't want your OpenGL/DirectX, we will interface directly with your video adapter, crashing your OS. We're just that sort of a lovely bunch of hardcore uni-core supporters." http://gizmodo.com/5407204/benchmarked-the-quad+core-i7-imac-is-super-fast http://gizmodo.com/5407204/benchmarked-the-quad+core-i7-imac... > I think Xbench, which hasn't been updated in years, is a solid benchmark for that old program that you depend on but has been long abandoned or at least ignored by its developer.
- icefox 17y agoYou can install click2flash plugins on most browser that wont load the flash until you click on it.
- timdorr 17y agoNo offense, but something you read on Reddit that some random dude heard from "a good friend" is probably complete bullshit. Nonetheless, it's still totally believable. But it probably represents almost no optimization on their end. If I can play a 3d multiplayer game over 3G for an hour without the phone crapping out, a think some vector graphics are surmountable. There just has to be a desire there. And clearly Apple doesn't desire to be supporting a proprietary standard when HTML5 does the same thing in a completely open way. Now, we just need a Flash (the big desktop creation app) equivalent that spits out HTML5 code. Anyone working on that?
- daeken 17y ago> Now, we just need a Flash (the big desktop creation app) equivalent that spits out HTML5 code. Anyone working on that? I was just discussing this exact idea with a friend yesterday (although it's something I personally wouldn't be interested in). If done correctly, you could backend to HTML5+JS+CSS and still emit SWF for legacy support. Would certainly be interesting.
- Rawsock 17y agoGood luck making your own SWF creator or player without stepping on an Adobe patent.
- acdha 17y agoThere's no need to create a player; as far as the creator goes, Adobe's already released the free mxlmlc so you could simply generate ActionScript and let them compile it.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- pronoiac 17y agoI heard about OpenLaszlo - http://www.openlaszlo.org/ http://www.openlaszlo.org/ - a few years ago, but I never got around toworking with it. It emitted Flash & Dynamic HTML.
- joezydeco 17y agoAll I'm seeing here are comments about video performance on Flash on various systems. Nothing about games or website navigation or etc. So why can't we just admit that what we really want is a way to play those other video formats (especially ON2, you porn lovers) on the iPhone?
- amichail 17y agoI have a 2nd generation iPod touch. They could have doubled the thickness to provide a longer battery life.
- PHLITE 17y agoCome on, the real reason flash "can't perform" is because it would open up a competing app delivery vector that would undermine the app store. One with no approval power.
- ahlatimer 17y agoI call bullshit on these conspiracy theories that Apple is blocking Flash because it would compete with the app store. You can make apps in JS that will run in Mobile Safari. Is that a "competing app delivery vector"? If so, then why would Apple allow it, if it's so worried about hanging on to it's app store business? I find it a little dubious that Flash would even be competition for the app store. The whole reason the app store and the iTunes store are so successful is because it's incredibly easy and, much to the chagrin of some people on here, centralized. Joe Schmoe can easily download and install a new app on his shiny new iPhone pretty easily with the app store. He knows where to go for new apps. That won't necessarily be the case with Flash. I bet there's more to the story than performance issues, but I'd imagine it has more to do with Adobe producing a crappy product than it does with any of this nonsense. Apple thrives on the user experience being good, end-to-end, and I'd imagine they'll outright reject anything that sullies that.
- PHLITE 17y agoI don't think it's a matter of comspiracy, but rather of control. It's seen in their app store approval process and it's key to their product's success. Why leave important aspects of a product's perception (3rd Party Software), up to chance and also make money through that control? Sounds like a good way to make a profit.
- hexley 17y agoHow would that be different from HTML5 web apps? (besides being slower, larger to download, uglier, more proprietary, less accessible and more CPU intensive)
- minalecs 17y agoI have a Nokia N800, in terms of hardware is half the performance of the iPhone, and flash runs fine and I've never measured battery life, but seemed fine to me. I have to question the validity of this. Anybody else have the n800 or even the n700