First it was heat waves, then earthquakes, then storms, then Steve Jobs resigns, then a hurricane; natural disasters all. Now I notice that Adobe’s Flash Player actually works better on my Mac than a year ago. Are these not sure signs of an apocalypse, a world wide catastrophe of epic proportions? What’s next? Free Kindles?
Is Flash Really Better?
This is not a scientific observation. But it’s an observation. The latest Flash plugin hasn’t crashed Safari on my Mac. Not once. That’s after opening half a dozen windows, each with half a dozen web sites, each site with more than a few Flash ads floating around?
What’s up, Tiger Lily? Is Adobe trying to build a better product? Maybe that public scolding Steve Jobs gave Adobe a few years ago had some positive impact. The new Flash is still a plugin, but resides as a Preference Pane, so controls are accessed in your Mac’s System Preferences.
Flash allows local Storage of files. And, there’s a Camera and Mic option.
Camera and Mic? I have visions of advertisers watching me use my Mac while I’m at home in my underwear.
Advanced settings are straightforward, too, including a version check for Flash updates. It only checks. It doesn’t download and install an update.
Without question, Flash is the utility I love to hate. Unfortunately, much of web video remains available only to those with a Flash player, so it’s a necessary evil. Adobe has worked on Flash to improve performance on a Mac. CPU usage is down from previous versions. So are crashes, even with many open web pages running Flash ads.
If this kind of performance improvement continues, how long will it be before we see Flash running on an iPhone or iPad?