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The recent announcement of the iPad, and revelation that it would not support Adobe Flash, revived debate on the plug-in’s future. If you take Steve Jobs’ word for it, Flash is a CPU hog now and always. Video encoding expert Jan Ozer decided to look into it himself, and the results may surprise you.
On both Mac and Windows platforms, Ozer tested Safari, Chrome, and Firefox (additionally IE was tested on Windows). Safari on the Mac showed HTML5 besting Flash by a wide margin with only 12.39% CPU utilization versus 37.41% for Flash 10.0 and 32.07% for 10.1. Chrome saw HTML5 and both version of Flash with almost 50% CPU usage. Firefox doesn’t support the HTML5 encoding used, but Flash results were similar to Safari.
On Windows, it’s a different story. Safari’s CPU utilization on Flash 10.0 was 23.22%, but 10.1 showed only 7.43% used. Chrome was the only Windows browser that both Flash and HTML5 could be tested in. On Google’s browser, HTML5 used a sizable 25.66% of the CPU. Flash 10.0 was up at 22.00%, but 10.1 used only 6%. Firefox and IE showed similar huge gains from the 10.1 version of Adobe Flash.
Clearly, the GPU acceleration on Windows makes a huge difference and means Flash is more efficient than HTML5 most of the time. The Mac, however, does not expose the necessary APIs for Adobe to do GPU acceleration. Adobe has said the "the ball is in Apple's court". So Apple does not allow Flash to run efficiently on OSX by denying the plug-in access to the graphics hardware? Given these Windows test results, we think that’s kind of unacceptable . Where do you come down in the streaming standards battle?
Make sure you check out Jan Ozer's full rundown here.
Comments are closed on this article
lien_meat
March 11, 2010 at 2:26pm
This benchmark is pointless for a couple of reasons:
1. GPU accelleration doesn't make flash more efficient, it only lessens it's use of the CPU...it's still using a good chunk of power either way...even if you have a good, efficient gpu.2. Webkit AND gecko both now have webgl in their beta builds. This means that very soon now, the browsers using webkit or gecko (chrome, safari, firefox) will be able to utilize the opengl libraries on their systems for hardware acceleration. This means that as time goes on, html5 will get faster and faster, as the opengl and webgl specs get better and as browsers continue to make html5 features better.
3. Flash is old news, which doesn't discredit it, but we are comparing apples to oranges here. Html 5 is beta in browsers at best in lots of cases with many features (for instance: canvas, svg, server-sent events)...flash is tried and true. Html5 will ONLY get better and more efficient as the spec is improved upon and adopted more. It's STILL in infancy. Flash has been around for many years now. The fact that html5 utilizes about the same or less cpu as flash when gpu acceleration is not being used is a good sign of better things to come. It makes flash look bad by comparison in that reguard.
4. And finally, HTML5 provides a open standards based, natively cross platform, more driver supported solution (when webgl picks up steam) to the problem of how render rich media on the web. Flash gets close. It's not open standards based(which is OK as long as the company does their job right), and your video driver on your particular OS depends on if it runs well on your platform or not(able to do gpu acceleration), and it's not natively compatable on any OS, as it requires a plugin and libraries not included with your OS. I should explain that better. yes opengl requires an opengl capable driver, but for instance, I can't do hardware accelerated flash in linux on my intel chipset, but I CAN do opengl stuff just fine. Opengl is more widely supported than flash hardware acceleration.
Flash is good, it isn't ideal, however it's the best we have right now...nobody should deny that...but this benchmark isn't apples to apples at all. It's crap.
Also, html5 video works just fine for me in firefox3.5 or ff3.6 in both windows or linux...I don't understand why he didn't test it anyway, even if ff doesn't use h.264 and instead uses ogg-theora...it still would have been better to have it. And OPERA...hello! It works on both platforms two, and it's quick, but it wasn't even tested! It probably better shows html5's potential than ANY other browser.
majorsuave
March 11, 2010 at 11:04am
What will come out of this is either Apple wising up or Adobe stop supporting Apple with its whole product line.
With no Photoshop all Mac users I know would have no more reason to stick to mac. (Yes they are all artists or web designers).
nekollx
March 11, 2010 at 10:23am
I'm more impressed with the fact flash is doing GPU acceleration already on windows, last i heard they were talking just mobile phones. So if i update flash to 10.1 on all our XP through 7 boxes will we beable to use GPU acceleration or am i missing something still?
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CSR
March 10, 2010 at 7:36pm
Given Adobe's history of security flaws, is it so unwise to limit its access to these APIs?
Tenhawk
March 10, 2010 at 8:34pm
Any widely used system will be subject to MASSIVE security attacks, which will naturally expose all kinds of flaws. The only, and I do mean ONLY, reason that Mac is relatively virus free is because only a tiny percentage of the population is stupid... erm, I mean *fashionable* enough to buy the things.
Internet Explorer? Huge audience, huge security holes. Firefox? It's proven that there are huge holes in it, but mostly they lay fallow and untrodden by malware. Why? Because it isn't time efficient to spend weeks writing malware for a product that only a small portion of your target group uses.
The same thing holds true here. You can NOT tell me that HTML 5 isn't going to be proven full of security flaws. it's a standard written by freaking committee.
Is Flash perfect? No. It's the best that's out there, however, and it's what we HAVE so I take exception to some prick telling me that I'm not allowed to use it.
I'm a PC owner, and I like my freedom to choose. Mac owners may feel free to indulge in their freedom to be told what to do.
lien_meat
March 11, 2010 at 3:52pm
You aren't wrong, but I want to point one thing out:
HTML5 is a spec...nothing more.
There will be serveral different implementations of it. You can view this as a bad or a good thing depending on perspective.It's good because:
You can choose to use the browser who's implementation suites you best. If one has security issues then use a more secure implemenation if you so choose. If you prefer speed, and don't care about security at the time being, use the browser that implements html5 with better speed. You get what I'm saying...It's bad because:
The implementations aren't all going to work the same way exactly, which makes it a bit tricker to develop for than flash, which only has one implementation.HTML5 doesn't most likely have many security flaws in the spec. What is likely is that serveral browsers may introduce security flaws in their implementation of the spec.
Web programming isn't easy to do security (I would know). There are quite a few attack vectors. Choosing a standard, open specification for development (html5 and javascript) makes it possible to knock out any vulnerability you find with your code, possibly even using a different technology or workaround in addition if you need to. If you develop with flash, and there is a vulnerability that affects your flash application, you are stuck with it if you need to use that feature until adobe fixes the bug, unless possibly you manage to figure out some workaround. Also, vulnerabilities with javascript and html are more than likely not harmful to the computer itself, rather a data privacy issue more often than not. With flash, it can actually be a vulnerability to the computer itself, much like active x vulnerabilites that we used to see more of.
Just my 2 cents.
CSR
March 11, 2010 at 9:51am
The reason why Flash has a history of security vulnerabliites is irrelevent to the discussion of whether or not it makes sense to limit its access to system APIs. The fact remains that it has had vulnerabilities in the past and will in the future, because, as you said, it's the target of a large number of malware writers. As such, it makes sense to reduce its security footprint by limiting its access to system hardware.
Tenhawk
March 11, 2010 at 1:53pm
I think you've pretty much ignored the point of the post.
HTML 5 is going to be just as flawed as Flash, that's basically a given. So what Jobs is doing is demanding that Mac users give up the freedom to choose what they want to use in exchange for the TEMPORARY and FALSE security he's offering. So let's be candid here, Jobs is running a game with an ulterior motive that almost certainly has nothing to do with the best interests of the customers. The irony that he's backstabbing Adobe, of all companies, when they are the one single company that BUILT Mac's rep as a good artistic and design system is, well it's amusing to say the least. I'd love to see Mac's reaction if Adobe pulled support for Photoshop, Indesign, and so on from the Mac platform. Hell, even if they released the next version 6 months to a year in advance on the PC... Won't happen, of course, would be a bad move for Adobe... but I'd still love to see it. lol
Anyway, Just to be VERY clear here, this specific scenario has a lot of historical irony attached to it, especially for you americans out there.
When someone *demands* that you sacrifice your freedom in exchange for temporary and/or false security, I believe you better start watching your BACK.
tri8gman
March 10, 2010 at 9:59pm
Don't forget that Firefox and other browsers tend to have much shorter update cycles than Internet Explorer.
enegma
March 10, 2010 at 7:35pm
Ok thats all good but we all know if you leave a webpage with a Flash advertisment open for a while, the browser will sit and eat memory.
Caboose
March 10, 2010 at 7:10pm
But really, it's not Apple's fault that they haven't allowed Flash access to the API's, it's that Flash is a CPU hog! That's what it is.. honest! truely and really!
-= I don't want to be dead, I want to be alive! Or... a cowboy! =-
gendoikari1
March 10, 2010 at 7:39pm
Or that they determined Flash to be a CPU hog based on the average Mac specs. Since an extra 100MHz costs another limb, Mac users are stuck with either a slow CPU or three mortgages.
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gendoikari1
March 10, 2010 at 6:33pm
I think I know why Apple won't allow the famed GPU acceleration on a Mac: the only thing a Mac GPU can accelerate is itself, out a window.
Honorary Family Member:
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