Technology Running Flash apps on Mac OSX is bad times

[airplanes]

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I recently noticed running flash apps on my Macbook significantly heats my it up and gets the fan spinning like crazy at which point I freak out and shut it down. Playing a flash game also drains my battery pretty quick too. I looked up some stuff and it seems like flash isn't designed well for mac osx at all. My girlfriend just bought a new white macbook and it can barely run 5 minutes of a flash app without extreme heat and loud fan noise.

I use click to flash but a lot of things use flash these day...facebook videos, youtube videos, flash based games, etc. This sucks!

 

[TMP-SMX]

If you are using Clicktoflash just set it up to use h.264 on youtube. You may also want to use adblock for safari.

Other than that yes flash is going to make your CPU heat up. There isn't anything to stop it just make sure you have plenty of space for ventilation around your computer. You don't need to shut down as if there is actually a problem with heat the computer will shut down before any damage is done.

If you are really worrying about the temps download iStat Pro and monitor your fan speeds and temps. The fans are supposed to turn on so things are working fine.

 

[airplanes]

Thanks for the tips. I guess what irks me in general is that PC's don't have this problem with flash. You would think Apple or Adobe would come up with a solution to this by now. Its really annoying for to see my battery last for an hour or less when I'm running a flash app in class.

 

[16846]

Thanks for the tips. I guess what irks me in general is that PC's don't have this problem with flash. You would think Apple or Adobe would come up with a solution to this by now. Its really annoying for to see my battery last for an hour or less when I'm running a flash app in class.

My brother is a flash developer and he says there isn't much Adobe can do, apparently it has to do with the way OS X handles Flash. He says Flash developers are just as frustrated as Mac users on this issue.

 

[airplanes]

If that's the case I guess the brunt of the blame goes to Apple developers. While not really a fatal flaw...it definitely would have been something to think twice about before switching over.

 

[TMP-SMX]

Lol. What are you doing in class that requires flash? Shouldn't you be paying attention? 😛

Anyway, as a general recommendation you should have the machine plugged in as much as possible to save your battery longevity. Try to keep the full battery cycles (the combination of multiple charges and discharges equaling one full charge-discharge) to three or less. As for a general tip to increase battery life, turn off bluetooth, IR (security prefs), wireless when not in use, and keep the screen backlight down.

 

[Slevin]

I really don't blame it on Apple, I mean Adobe is not a quality company and their mac apps generally suck. I eschew anything having to do with them and only have flash player installed because everyone uses it. Their installers are backwards, if you install the photoshop suite it installs the Opera browser (hidden in one of their apps BTW) without telling you. Acrobat takes over automatically displaying PDFs even if you don't want it to. The list goes on and on but don't take my word for it... just check out this site and do a search for adobe, this guy really hates them http://www.bynkii.com/

But to the OP I have a unibody macbook and flash never heats my system up to where it's running the fans, and it hasn't in any of my other Apple notebooks. You might want to open up activity monitor and see if there is anything else eating up processor cycles, or better yet do something in flash and see if it turns on the fans, then reboot in single user mode and preventing anything but the core OS to load on start up (no extensions, additional programs, etc just the basics) and then run the same thing and see if it hits the fan.(I believe you hold down shift as you reboot to get into single user mode) Report back let us know what happened.

 

[airplanes]

I really don't blame it on Apple, I mean Adobe is not a quality company and their mac apps generally suck. I eschew anything having to do with them and only have flash player installed because everyone uses it. Their installers are backwards, if you install the photoshop suite it installs the Opera browser (hidden in one of their apps BTW) without telling you. Acrobat takes over automatically displaying PDFs even if you don't want it to. The list goes on and on but don't take my word for it... just check out this site and do a search for adobe, this guy really hates them http://www.bynkii.com/

But to the OP I have a unibody macbook and flash never heats my system up to where it's running the fans, and it hasn't in any of my other Apple notebooks. You might want to open up activity monitor and see if there is anything else eating up processor cycles, or better yet do something in flash and see if it turns on the fans, then reboot in single user mode and preventing anything but the core OS to load on start up (no extensions, additional programs, etc just the basics) and then run the same thing and see if it hits the fan.(I believe you hold down shift as you reboot to get into single user mode) Report back let us know what happened.

Alright so I opened up the activity monitor. I have safari, adium, word and stickies open. Says I'm using about 5-10% of the CPU, the system is using around 4-5. My CPU temp is steady at 47-48 degree C. I open up bubblespinner, a simple flash game. CPU temp hits 70 within two minutes, the unibody mac feels noticeably hot underneath and the activity monitor says I'm using nearly 40% of the CPU and the system is using another 20%.

When I'm in class or at home and playing a flash game for 10-15 minutes, the bottom of the book does heat up quite a bit, whether its on the desk or in my lap. It triggers the fan occasionally...I think my original post may have been misleading, so I apologize for that.

I'll try rebooting in single user mode.

 

[airplanes]

Lol. What are you doing in class that requires flash? Shouldn't you be paying attention? 😛

Anyway, as a general recommendation you should have the machine plugged in as much as possible to save your battery longevity. Try to keep the full battery cycles (the combination of multiple charges and discharges equaling one full charge-discharge) to three or less. As for a general tip to increase battery life, turn off bluetooth, IR (security prefs), wireless when not in use, and keep the screen backlight down.

Hey come on...it's senior year, i have three weeks left in a boring class and a hot room, I'm accepted to my top choice school...I earned this! 😉
I just want to sit play flash games like everyone else in class.

I'm worried about my girlfriends new white macbook though. The fan on her macbook fires up 100% of the time after doing anything flash related for more than 5 minutes. It also gets awfully hot.

Thanks for the tips, did you mean to try to keep the full battery cycle to three or less...per week?

 

[16846]

Alright so I opened up the activity monitor. I have safari, adium, word and stickies open. Says I'm using about 5-10% of the CPU, the system is using around 4-5. My CPU temp is steady at 47-48 degree C. I open up bubblespinner, a simple flash game. CPU temp hits 70 within two minutes, the unibody mac feels noticeably hot underneath and the activity monitor says I'm using nearly 40% of the CPU and the system is using another 20%.

When I'm in class or at home and playing a flash game for 10-15 minutes, the bottom of the book does heat up quite a bit, whether its on the desk or in my lap. It triggers the fan occasionally...I think my original post may have been misleading, so I apologize for that.

My system has to have the CPU at 75% on both cores and 100% on my GPU for my fan to turn on. It sounds like the thermal design leaves a lot to be desired. It reminds me of my old Netburst Pentium 4 I had 5 years ago.

 

[TMP-SMX]

Yes three cycles a week.

 

[SDN2013]

My system has to have the CPU at 75% on both cores and 100% on my GPU for my fan to turn on. It sounds like the thermal design leaves a lot to be desired. It sounds like my old Netburst Pentium 4 I had 5 years ago.

haha better to call it netbust. After pentium 3 I jumped to thunderbird and a64 venice before switching back to core2quad