Our Unscientific Look at the Latest Flash for Mac Build

Let's try to make something positive of this oil leak/spill/disaster, shall we? While watching footage from the leak, and simultaneously having Activity Monitor open, I thought it would be a good time to check the CPU usage decrease promised in Flash 10.1 

Here's what we go on a 2007 MacBook Pro:

First, with the last version of Flash (10.0):

And then, with the latest release candidate of 10.1:

It is indeed a noticeable difference, with the bigger notice being the lack of the MacBook Pro fans that usually kick on in the first few minutes of watching a stream, as you longtime TDL viewers can attest.  

2010: The Year Flash Dies.

Adobe Flash, you've had a good run. You've humored us through the years with various updates. You've made our workday a little slower with buffering, and CPU overload. And in all seriousness, without you, we may have never known the words "embed code" on websites. Alas, like all good things, this too must end.

When Apple released the iPhone, and it didn't support flash, we scoffed. How dare they turn their back on the predominant 3rd party content delivery platform! This will be the Achille's heel of the iPhone! Instead, in the latest in a string of events showing just how mighty Apple has become, in announcing their support for html 5, the rest of the industry slowly started to follow suit.

And now this week, the site with the largest amount of flash-encoded content in the world, YouTube, has started making its videos available without Flash. Vimeo has announced they will follow suit, and thus begins a sudden, dizzying spiral. It will still take a few months for the death certificate to be signed. After all, we have to still rely on Flash for our live video stream, but that will all change soon enough. What YouTube(google) and Apple do, the rest of the industry surely follows.

Let's meet back at this post in a year, and see if our dear, CPU-hogging friend is still with us...

What's in Store For The Future of QuickTime?

Image: TheLogoFactory.comWhen you're as big as Apple, with hit products like the iPhone and iPod, inevitably, some smaller, less sexier projects are going to fall through the cracks. But does QuickTime (the technology, not the player) deserve to be in this category?

Once upon a time, QuickTime led the horse race for online video playback, not to mention bringing video to the desktop in the first place. And, more people use QuickTime today than ever before thanks to it being the underlying engine for iTunes. However, QuickTime has certainly fallen far behind Flash as a delivery method for online video. Is Apple content to let Flash be king? It might simply be a matter of having to many other major projects right now.

Beyond use as a simple video plug-in, (and in theory, Flash and QT should be equal here as more and more video is h.264/mp4 and therefore playable by both) QuickTime has had several interactive hooks/calls that could create a more immersive, interactive experience. Unfortunately, compared to Flash, the effort and difficulty (and end-user numbers) have all tilted strongly to Flash.

It would make sense that the format that powers the largest online music retailer in the world would dominate online streaming and video playback. Perhaps with the iPhone 3Gs and Snow Leopard out the door, some time can be spent on this key Apple technology. That is, if a tablet doesn't get in the way.

What do you think? Should Apple be content using QuickTime as the engine for iTunes, or should they give Flash a run for its money? Or, do new standards make the whole argument moot?

Apple and Adobe, say you're sorry, and shake hands

Apple, I want you to look at Adobe. Adobe, look at Apple. Now both of you have been misbehaving lately. Adobe, there's no need to upset the Apple faithful by claiming there won't be 64bit support in most Adobe apps anytime soon. Apple, shame on you for pinning Safari quits on Adobe (see image above)
Apple: "But he does! Adobe always crashes Safari!"
Adobe: "I do not! You just need to let users disable/enable plugins."

Stop it both of you. Now let's talk about the iPhone for a minute.
Adobe: "I don't wanna!"
Apple: "I'm not allowed to speculate!"

Ok, ok. Adobe, you said you have Flash working on a jailbroken iPhone, right?
Adobe: "Yeah, and we'd release it too, if Apple would let us!"
Apple: "Your app is nothing but a battery-draining, web clogging, poopy head."
Adobe: "Oh yeah, you're just scared people will prefer Flash and it will become a mobile standard just like on the web!"
Apple: "Am not!"
Adobe: "Are too!"
Apple: "People prefer QuickTime anyhow."
Adobe: "Oh yeah, then why do I have an installed base of nearly 98% of all computers?"
Apple: "Oh yeah, well QuickTime powers iTunes, the world's biggest online music store!"
Adobe: "Yeah, and you have to use Photoshop to make the graphics because Aperture's stinky!"
Apple: "Aperture isn't for making graphics, stupid."
Adobe: "Fine. I'll just develop my apps for the PC only!"
Apple: "Fine. and I'll make the iPhone Microsoft Silverlight friendly."
Adobe: "Fin-- oh wait. you don't mean that do you?"
Apple: "No... I guess not. It just came out.

There, now see, you both have something in common. I'm going to go back inside. Why don't you two play in the sandbox for a bit and see if you can come up with a solution...

Both of you, stop it. Seriously.

April Apple Fantasy Merger: Adobe

(Each month we weigh the pros and cons of a particular potential merger for Apple. Please note the "fantasy" part of this speculation: Many times the mergers mentioned couldn't or wouldn't be realistically possible. But put all that aside and enjoy this month's edition of Fantasy Merger.)

For this month's edition of Apple fantasy merger, I went with an old standby: Adobe. Why? well, because frankly time may be running out on this merger rumor. There was a time when controlling Photoshop may have seen like a golden ticket to allow Apple to grow an even larger share of the creative community. However, with the release of Aperture, and most recently the 2.1 Aperture update supporting 3rd party plugins, the feature gap between the two programs continues to shrink.

However, there is one other Adobe property that might just make it all worth it for Apple: Flash. Flash has been widely accepted as the standard for internet media. Sure QuickTime (and Windows Media) provides a far superior picture, Flash, thanks to it's near-100% install base has become the streaming media format of choice for Youtube, Metacafe, and just about every other online video site.

And if you follow iPhone news, it would be hard to miss the back and forth struggle of bringing Flash to the phone. Some people think it's the missing piece to completing the feature set of the phone, while others see it as a nuisance. Yes, the code can seem bloated. But imagine what Apple could do under the hood... While all web video is slowly migrating to the h.264 open standard, think of the interactive possibilities if Flash and QuickTime became one. You could create interactive slide shows with iPhoto, giving people the ability to add their own features. You could make the full feature set of Photoshop available online for manipulation and adjustment of the pictures. As we move past disc-based media, the winner in online content might be the first format that allows for stunning playback and ease of purchase, as iTunes and QuickTime already do, coupled with the authoring tools, and universal install base Flash provides.

There would still be a big "get" for Apple in the creative market as well. While they would acquire Premiere, a Final Cut Pro competitor, they would also get After Effect, which is far and away the most popular/most used effects software for video production.

Apple could make even greater in-roads in the consumer market with the Flash/QuickTime combination, while simultaneously bringing another important product into their pro software portfolio.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments,