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Adobe is testing optimized Flash Player beta for the MacBook Air
Today Engadget sat down with Adobe's Shantanu Narayen and asked him what the MacBook Air's increased battery life -- sans Flash installed -- meant for the future of Flash in the wake of HTML5. Narayen kinda dodged the question with this stay-on-message answer: "When we have access to hardware acceleration, we've proven that Flash has equal or better performance on every platform," but then went on to say that Adobe is currently testing a beta version of Flash specifically designed for the MacBook Air. When Apple introduced the new MacBook Air, news quickly spread when it was discovered the company had left Adobe's Flash Player off the system. You could still run Flash content on the Air just fine -- you just had to download the plugin and install it yourself. Apple said they left Flash Player off the Air so users would be sure to download the latest version. After the new MacBook Airs dropped, however, Ars Technica ran some tests and discovered that having Flash on the MacBook Air could reduce its battery run time by as much as a third. This led me to speculate that the real reason Apple left Flash off the Air is so it could advertise higher real-world wireless usage battery numbers. Shortly after that, Adobe's CTO said the reduced battery time would be the same if the Air was running web pages with HTML5 video. With today's acknowledgment from Narayen, it's nice to see that Adobe is still trying to make Flash Player a contender. It still seems like Flash has its work cut out for it, given that virtually every major tech company has decided to throw their support behind HTML5.
Having Flash installed on your MacBook can reduce battery runtime by 33%
As if Adobe Flash didn't have enough going against it already. Now it appears that, according to tests done by Ars Technica, having Flash installed on your laptop can reduce your battery runtime by a third. Ars Technica was running battery tests on the new 11-inch MacBook Air. With the Flash player plug-in installed, the 11-inch Air got just 4 hours of battery life. Once they deleted Flash, the Air's battery life rose to a whopping 6 hours. Ars Technica speculates that this is another reason that Apple decided to leave Flash off MacBook Airs (instead of just to make sure that users would download the latest version). It's important to note that Ars Technica isn't saying simply having the Flash plug-in installed on the Air reduces battery time, but that when visiting the same websites in Safari with Flash installed and then with Flash uninstalled, Flash ads became static ads, thus resulting in the higher battery life. In the end, Ars found that "Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary." While Ars only tested the Flash battery drainage on a MacBook Air, it seems logical to assume that similar battery runtime results would be seen on other MacBooks and PC laptops. I'm about to test this out myself by removing Flash from my 15-inch MacBook Pro and seeing if my wireless web surfing time increases. Besides uninstalling Flash completely from your machine, there are a number of Safari extensions that allow you to disable or enable Flash with a click.
