Apple Technical Note TN2267: an opening for GPU-accelerated Flash?
By Donald Melanson 
posted April 22nd 2010 2:32PM
posted April 22nd 2010 2:32PM
Now, we're not exactly "advanced developers," but it seems pretty clear that this is designed to give developers access to some inner workings of OS X that have previously been restricted to Apple itself -- access that has been evident in Flash tests that show it performs much better in instances where it can access a computer's GPU. No word from Adobe on this just yet, but we've got to guess they've already taken notice.The Video Decode Acceleration framework is a C programming interface providing low-level access to the H.264 decoding capabilities of compatible GPUs such as the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M. It is intended for use by advanced developers who specifically need hardware accelerated decode of video frames.
@Kwame Nkrumah Btw, I tested those links you put up earlier. You can view them here
http://img46.imageshack.us/i/sample1s.jpg/
http://img710.imageshack.us/i/sample2l.jpg/
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/4741/sample3f.jpg
@Kwame Nkrumah
well let's see, my 2000 Thinkpad with a pentium 3 running xp plays flash videos just fine. But my 05 Powerbook skips at least half the frames on an sd YouTube video, so I'd say flash performance on windows is pretty good if a 10 year old pc can play videos better than a mac half it's age.
That's great and all, but until they bring back technical note 31, I could care less.
@MarcusMaximus What's note 31?
@N900 Dogcow.
@N900, MarcusMaximus
note 34: if it exists, there is porn of it... but only on android.
@skyblaze
Dog treats for Adobe! :P
If you like flash you've failed
@FrankDTank
im a web developer. Flash is 100 times more functional/versatile than any html5 crap.
@OSXsucks
And i am 100 times more functional/versatile than you
@FrankDTank
They should lock them back out and call them "lazy." That's what I would do.
@OSXsucks
Maybe so. But a lot of the content currently delivered via Flash could just as easily be delivered by HTML5. I also think HTML5, while it certainly can't do everything Flash can, will be able to do a lot more than we think once developers get familiar with it. Those iAd demos Steve showed were a lot more than just streaming video, which is all most people seem to think HTML5 can handle.
@OSXsucks The name says it all. -1
@John H Oh sure, eventually html5 will be able to do what flash does now, but realize it's two years from an accepted draft stage and 12 years from completion. Also, benchmarks have shown that flash is way better at some things right now, so far as eating up processor time and the like.
@bingster
wrong
@adokimus
Is that not what Apple has done? They, and their fans, yell that Adobe developers are lazy, that they cause the CPU utilization to go to 100%, that they ruin the Apple experience, and they would ruin the battery on the iPhone.
Adobe says that it is because Apple has kept APIs private (remember, that thing that people used to criticize MS for with Office?)
Apple says that Adobe are liars, that it is because Adobe are just lazy, and I am sure they probably called Adobe some other childish names, stinky face, doo-doo heads, etc. Then, Apple releases the documents that Adobe has been asking for all along.
Sounds like Apple was knowingly and purposely comitting a bit of slander to me.
@OSXsucks
Your not a web developer. You must be one of those people who build websites using only flash.
I hate you people. As a true web developer I often have to fix companies fuck ups because they went with someone like you that built there entire site is built using flash.
A true web developer knows that flash is crap it has always been crap, and that there is nothing Flash can do that HTML5/JS/CSS can't.
Right now there are things HTML5/JS/CSS can't do because its 1. not finshed and 2 not all the support is in browsers yet.
In 2 - 3 years when HTML5 is fully supported, and browser JS engines are fast enough. Flash will be completely dead. Because there will be things it can't do.
@dlewis23 Well put. I do professional web design and have never made a pure Flash page (and people who do are, quite frankly, not web developers). I often go out of my way to make sure the non-Flash page does EVERYTHING the Flash-enabled version does.
@FrankDTank: If you hated Flash, you run Mac OS X.
@tsoul: "I do professional web design and have never made a pure Flash page (and people who do are, quite frankly, not web developers)."
What about those of us who do both pure Flash only websites AND 100% Flash-free websites, depending on client demands? I've steered a number of clients away from Flash, because they mainly want it for superfluous reasons.
Flash is LSD. And like Sangamon Taylor once said "Sometimes it's the only thing that will let you get something done".
@OSXsucks
dude, you and your name sucks. Lick windows, much?
@dlewis23
And you are not a real developer. Putting together a little HTML, CSS, etc. is not real development, that is what script kiddies do. I only develop in C++ creating highly performant scientific applications to cure disease, not your little toy HTML files.
Apologies to web developers not named dlewis23 - this was only to shame him the way that he thought he should be entitled to shame those that he feels beneath him. There is plenty of room for all developers, unless you go by the name dlewis23.
You know, at the end of the day, websites that depend on user experience to bring in money will use whatever framework provides that better user experience to all of its users.
Adobe may have the playing field covered now, but their ubiquity has quickly fallen away to flash based advertisements that just distract from the user experience. I more frequently read the news on my iPhone BECAUSE it doesn't have flash than on my computer, because it's just easier to read without things flashing.
It may not be immediately apparent, but Apple has a very strong showing in many fields, especially now with their Intel and Unix base. If Hulu wants everyone to have the best access to their $10/mo service plan, they'll use the framework that provides that access with the best ease of use to as many potential customers as possible. Right now that may be Flash. In a year's time ... who's to say? I think Apple is a much more powerful force than some of us might believe, and that's because Apple provides consumer devices, and usually to the hip, younger crowd or young professional which are technically proficient. When these consumers, which might make up the majority of some websites' customers, express interest in, for instance, watching Hulu on an iPad, the website is going to cater to its customers.
Websites do not want to get into a standards war, they'll just move to the best common denominator. That common denominator can quickly shift against Adobe.
@John H Oh please - html 5 video is buggy. Watch a clip in firefox, click pause - guess what - you can't unpause without reloading the video.
Reason Flash beat Real, Microsoft, and Apple Quicktime is because unlike all those examples it actually worked over the net and scaled well.
@Angelworks
Firefox or Youtube is buggy, then, and if recent history is any example, it's probably Firefox. Watch the same clip in Safari or Chrome--no problem.
"HTML5" can't be "buggy"--it's literally a video file and a CSS-prettified JS play button. A website can have poorly written Javascript or a browser can poorly execute it, or some combination of the two, but you can no more blame HTML5 for that than you can blame HTML4 for websites that suck.
On the other hand, Flash players can very much suck, because it's a compiled runtime--in fact, Youtube's Flash player often ignores the play button, requiring several clicks to play/pause.
@dan828 True but if everyone keeps supporting flash because HTML5 is two years away then HTML5 will NEVER come!
@FrancisL4D
I agree that Flash is like LDS. I believe if you have to use Flash (or Silverlight) for that matter, use it sparingly and make it easily replaceable on the site in the future for yourself and future developers of the site.
@EtSchmit
You *only* code in C++ for algorithms? There are other languages better suited to your human genome calculations than C++. Like C++ is a "difficult" language as it is. Hell, anyone can learn it with a couple of courses at the local community college. Your respose to his entitlement is just as deplorable.
And yes, I'm a web developer.
No way!
@Dahis
I know!! How gracious of Apple...
@Dahis
Good sportsmanship on Apple's part, throwing Adobe a bone like that.
@zeroinfinity2
It looks to me like Jobs blinked first.
OMFG, does this mean flash is coming soon..!
@AppleNerd1 Flash on OS X? Are you serious? It is already here lol this is not an article on the iPhone or iPad.
@angermeans
LOL good job guys.. maybe this means I can go back to using Chrome on OS X without 5 browser crashes a day
Maybe now OpenGL performance will be halfway decent.
@dubg
And maybe now my fans will stop screaming when I watch an HD video on youtube on my MBP.....
@Kevin6432
You have a fan club?
@dubg I am guessing that was Apple's goal here. The recent iPhone decisions basically put Adobe on a leash, and now they're throwing them a bone.
They want to keep Flash from spreading to their new platform (iPhone/iPad), but this seems like an effort to at least keep customers from getting upset about Flash performance on the platform where it is nearly unavoidable.
Maybe Mac owners can stop complaining that 'OMG Adobe is just teh lazies!"
I've never had Flash crash on me at all. Never, not even with 10.1.
@Dr Blight If Adobe doesn't take advantage of this framework in the next (not 10.1) release of Flash, can we still call them lazy then?
(I don't expect Adobe to leap on this for 10.1 and won't berate them for not implementing it for this release... there's likely way too much work involved to make that happen in something that's already in late beta. 10.2/10.5/11/whatever they call it had better at least have the beginnings of this implementation done though.)
@Dr Blight
The rest of their software, as necessary as it is due to the absence of competition, is such a gigantic clusterf*ck that it's incredibly difficult to imagine them being anything BUT lazy. It's collectively like the Internet Explorer 6 of design software, except without the Firefox and Safari to get it moving again. (I mean, there's Opera/GIMP, but...even thinking about them fills me with such overwhelming apathy that I can't think of a good way to finish this sente)
What are you talking about Core Animation (which provides hardware acceleration) has been there for a long time. If they want some more advanced hardware acceleration they can dig into OpenCL.
@Ben64
Don't mind them, instead of Adobe looking ways to improve flash, they look to blame others for their problems and rally up fanboys. This is the same Adobe who said they would release flash for webOS in 2009, we are now in 2010 and still no flash for webOS and they keep pushing back the date even though Palm has done everything on their side.
oh Apple.... hypocrisy of the day.
I wonder how Apple fanboys will react to this news. Now Flash will go from "lazy, out-dated, useless" to... "the next greatest thing"
@kingofwale
No they will respond that it's still crappy.
@Kwame Nkrumah
3 posts in 5 minutes on the same article coming from someone who doesn't know jack about what they are talking about, in a blog article they shouldn't be posting in.
@kingofwale No, it will go from big lumbering slow unstable CPU-hogging security nightmare to just a big unstable security nightmare. Flash 10 isn't GPU-accelerated on *any* platform and Windows is the only platform it performs well on. This just means that the future of Flash on OS X has the potential to keep up with Flash on Windows. But Adobe has some catching up to do on the Mac and Linux versions.
@(Unverified)
Damn Mr. Flash developer if flash works for you good for you, it doesn't work good for everyone. Flash is the biggest reason most browsers crash, why do you think browsers are now coming out with built in flash protection so that if a flash site crashes, it doesn't crash the broswer.
@kingofwale My reaction is one of cautious optimism. If Adobe actually goes for implementing hardware acceleration through this framework, then kudos to them for doing the "right" thing (they get no kudos for continuing to ignore the benefits of leveraging OS X-specific technologies like CoreVideo and CoreImaging in the Mac versions of their products to improve performance before this point).
I still hate Flash though. If Flash died tomorrow and were replaced by HTML5 video, the only things I'd seriously miss are Homestar Runner and Bitey Castle, neither of which are among the oft-promoted "awesome" or "important" uses of Flash on the web, despite clinging so closely to the product's original purpose. As a vector animation tool, Flash is (or at least, can be) awesome. As a way to build simple time-waste-y games, it's pretty decent. As a way to build truly great websites, accessible web applications, and video streaming... it kinda sucks balls. Sure they're glitzy, but they're bloated, perform terribly, are next to impossible to maintain (especially if you don't have access to the source Flash project), and destroy predictable user interaction with content.