Adobe Responds to Battery Complaints

[tuanmai]

Adobe's CTO tells Fast Company that Flash draining batteries is a "False argument to make"...

Adobe Responds to Battery Complaints : Read more

 

[AMW1011]

Although Lynch has a point here, it looks like his solution to the battery problem would be turning your display off. He continued to state that several studies have confirmed Flash's higher battery life and argued that HTML5 was much less reliable. Unfortunately for all of the battery concerned flash users, Lynch didn't discuss any sort of solution to the problem shown with the Macbook Air.

Solution: Don't buy a Macbook Air.

 

[drapple]

News FLASH: "Cars use less petrol when you don't drive them"

 

[bdcrlsn]

I wonder that if Macromedia hadn't been bought out by Adobe, if Apple would still feel the same about Flash.

 

[buddhav1]

This just in, no matter how spiffy your LED backlit display is, it'll still consume power.

 

[nforce4max]

Any thing that is a cpu hog on a mobile or laptop is going to be a battery sucker too not just flash -.-

 

[freename]

He has a point.. The problem isn't really flash. The problem is that it's everywhere, with little ads displaying when you don't want them to and draining your battery life.
I wonder if Adobe could release a mobile version of flash that doesn't actually run up a flash object until the user approves it.

 

[drapple]

[citation][nom]freename[/nom]He has a point.. The problem isn't really flash. The problem is that it's everywhere, with little ads displaying when you don't want them to and draining your battery life.I wonder if Adobe could release a mobile version of flash that doesn't actually run up a flash object until the user approves it.[/citation]
Use Flashblock plugin for Firefox. Just because advertisers abuse flash doesn't meean flash is bad. I only allow flash on websites that I give OK to run flash. Once HTML5 is established advertisers will abuse HTML5 and it may not be as easy to block as Flash is.

Apple's real beef with Flash is that it directly competes with their App store business and they don't want the competition oh and flash practically killing QuickTime is probably another sore point.

 

[matt87_50]

yeah, a macbook air without an operating system installed could save hours of battery life too...

(probably more useful for me too, me and OSX just don't work...)

 

[dEAne]

Well they should find another workaround.

 

[matt87_50]

[citation][nom]freename[/nom]He has a point.. The problem isn't really flash. The problem is that it's everywhere, with little ads displaying when you don't want them to and draining your battery life.I wonder if Adobe could release a mobile version of flash that doesn't actually run up a flash object until the user approves it.[/citation]

good idea. advertisers might not like that though (less advert rev, less free content on the web).

I think a better solution would be 'flash lite', give people an intensive to use it if they can (perhaps by implementing your above idea, but not for 'flash lite' content) then just make 'flash lite' stripped of all things advertisers don't need, that causes the bloat.

 

[hellwig]

In other news, the latest video games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops and Fallout: New Vegas also drain the new Macbook Air battery faster than without these games installed. Luckily though, you would first have to install Windows, clear enough space on the limited, non-upgradeable flash drive, and reduce quality settings to such an extent that you wouldn't really want to play the games anyway, not on your Macbook Air anyway.

 

[mayne92]

[citation][nom]freename[/nom]He has a point.. The problem isn't really flash. The problem is that it's everywhere, with little ads displaying when you don't want them to and draining your battery life.I wonder if Adobe could release a mobile version of flash that doesn't actually run up a flash object until the user approves it.[/citation]
...then block it. That's like saying that you "wished" that JavaScript would let you know beforehand when it would run...there are tools that do this...go find them...I have no problem blocking flash until I actually need it...

 

[Pyroflea]

[citation][nom]drapple[/nom]News FLASH: "Cars use less petrol when you don't drive them"[/citation]

Since when!?

 

[amster]

playin video == playin video

be it flash, ht5, mp4. Mov etc.

videos will always consume power. No brainer

 

[thrust2night]

He has a point.. The problem isn't really flash. The problem is that it's everywhere, with little ads displaying when you don't want them to and draining your battery life.
I wonder if Adobe could release a mobile version of flash that doesn't actually run up a flash object until the user approves it.

I agree. By his logic I could say Quicktime drains battery life. Of course it does. You're watching movies. Anything you do that can consume more resources will drain the battery faster.

 

[onyx_64]

I cant believe if anyone is seriously considering busting a thousand bucks to buy something that doesnt even have a DVD ROM!

Are Netbooks a good Macbook-Air replacement?

 

[randomizer]

Once HTML5 is established advertisers will abuse HTML5 and it may not be as easy to block as Flash is.

It's still going to be third-party content, so ad blockers will work fine with it.

 

[sailfish]

This just in, Macbook Air without graphics browser could save hours of battery life.

Solution:

Lynx Lives!

 

[IzzyCraft]

[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]It's still going to be third-party content, so ad blockers will work fine with it.[/citation]
As long as it's not originally from the websites own address ie first-party content it will always be easy to block yup yup, anyways first thing i do when i use a browser is turn off the acceptance of 3rd party cookies, if google and ms didn't make money from tracking us this probably would have been the default.

 

[eddieroolz]

I'm not sure if they should be in denial about this. Everyone knows that Flash drains battery.

Excessive Flash causes heavy CPU usage > CPU running at higher loads than usual > consumes more power > battery drains faster. Can't be simpler than that.

Instead of being in denial they should be striving to make Flash better.

 

[r0x0r]

[citation][nom]onyx_64[/nom]I cant believe if anyone is seriously considering busting a thousand bucks to buy something that doesnt even have a DVD ROM!Are Netbooks a good Macbook-Air replacement?[/citation]

Alienware M11x doesn't have an optical drive either. They're becoming more of a convenience item than a must-have nowdays anyway.

 

[cookoy]

wish there are more tech reporters who report news more intelligently and add value to their articles, pointing out these flawed arguments to readers

 

[randomizer]

As long as it's not originally from the websites own address ie first-party content it will always be easy to block yup yup

Even 1st party content can be blocked at the page element level, but it's a manual process.

anyways first thing i do when i use a browser is turn off the acceptance of 3rd party cookies, if google and ms didn't make money from tracking us this probably would have been the default.

This is a very good idea even if just to save a few hundred kB of space from the hundreds of tracking cookies you get from advertising companies. I also use the Firefox Ghostery addon to block tracking and analytics services. NoScript can do this but seemingly only for "Untrusted" domains. I have this domain as trusted but I don't necessarily trust the 9-10 analytics services tracing my movements

 

[mauller07]

to be honest flash and html5 would drain the battery equally when watching streaming video with hardware acceleration, its just a no brainer.