there is... no hope... for flash on the Mac

[solrac149]

Let us first examine the atrocities of using flash on mac os 9.

1) The flash player (and / or plugin)
on netscape, some sites instantly freeze the entire computer. take balthaser.com. Balthaser:fx instantly crashes the whole computer forcing a reboot. Since there is no way to use explorer for :fx, mac users under os 9 essentially cannot log in to :fx. Random sites instantly freeze the whole OS.

On all browsers, playback of flash sites is staggeringly slower than on PCs. The framerate drops get worse and worse with more images and alpha transparencies. At some points, it is just horrible, and flash sites no longer are appealing, or fun, or engaging. Just slow.

2) The flash development platform (Flash 5)
Sometimes you cannot drag items from the library to the stage, making symbol swaps the only way to populate the stage with new library items. This makes working in Flash almost ridiculous. This error is rare, although present.

Worse though, are the random, constant freezes. Even with constant saving, who wants to work in such an unstable environment?

What about Mac OS X? Although the new OS shines brightly and is almost undefeatable, flash still stinks a hell-hole.

1) The player / plugin
It is still slow as ****, even slower than OS 9. Flash movies play back just so slow it's sad. This is using the plugins in classic mode, of course. Using quicktime improves speed but is not a viable option because actionscript does not work and sub-movieclips do not play. The internet sucks on Mac OS X, because there's no flash. There is no native OS X internet browser that works. IE 5.1 is a buggy pile of crap, delete it now. Omniweb doesn't display frameset sites correctly sometimes. Javascript is limited. You can't do online banking or log into a site such as junum.com. iCab has no plugins and even worse javascript. There is no OS X browser available, only explorer or netscape running in classic mode. Explorer 5 in classic is almost perfection, but no flash/javascript compatability. Netscape works too but who likes netscape? At least when you log in to balthaser:fx in OSX running OS 9 in classic mode, it works! (weird...)

2) The development platform (Flash 5)
Launching Flash 5 under classic mode in OS X is not an option. My beautiful G4 Cube with my beautfiul Cinema Studio Display with 584 MB of RAM is crap. I get more work done using a 3 year old toshiba satellite PC laptop 200 mhz with 800x600 max resolution, dark 10 inch screen. It plays back flash much faster than the G4 and Flash never crashes. Trying to use Flash 5 on OS X means you will crash every 5 - 10 minutes and usually needs a restart of Classic mode, which takes several minutes.

And to seal mac's fate, PC supports tons of 3rd party flash tools! Burak's actionscript viewer, swiffer-text, flash importer, and tons of other little tools. The only good tool that made it to mac is Swift 3D, and barely.

Therefore, there is no hope for mac, and flash.
Or is there? There is possibly a dim, very dim fading black star of hope....

1) Omniweb has its own flash plugin. It's not any "version", it's a proprietary omniweb plugin, only 80k. It cannot play back complex flash or heavy actionscript, and cannot load movies into different levels or targets. However, when it DOES play flash (simple movies), no matter how heavy the graphics, it keeps UP with PC speeds. This thing plays flash as good as any PC. Amazing!!! Too bad it's not a real flash plugin, and Omni Group has no documentation on plugins especially not for flash... who knows what will happen with this......

2) Macromedia may release Flash 5 native for OS X? Will this happen?

What if Flash 5 for OS X is released, and doesn't crash, and Omniweb makes a full version of their flash plugin. Well then the mac will have just catapulted from being absolute ****, and unusable with flash, to just as good as ANY PC, minus the lack of 3rd party tools, which is a minor thing really, especially now that swift 3d is going to make a plugin 2.0 version of their software for Lightwave!!!

I honestly don't see macromedia releasing a solid Flash 5 product for OS X, and I REALLY don't see the flash omniweb plugin going any further.

I really hope these two predictions of mine are proved wrong, because they are the ONLY 2 things that can save flash on the mac.

-solrac-

[Yavstr]

Can we end this debate? I'm so sick of hearing about PC's.

I've worked in the graphics field for over 7 years and all that time I've worked on a Mac. From the IIsi to the G4.

Recently I took a job for a large corporation and was forced to use a PC running Windoze NT. My work PC is a 300mhz with 96 megs of ram. I'm constantly restarting and restarting Flash 5. Playback sucks because the built in video sucks. The operating system sucks and is unstable. Try rendering a 3840x2880 image in 3D Max....s l o w!

My iMac is a 233 with 96megs and it kicks the PC's ass. I can have Flash, Fireworks and Dreamweaver open and never crash.

During shutdown Techtool runs and I never have issues with my iMac.

I have done work for large companies all over the US and can honestly say that I have never used a PC that amazed me. They are slow and the operating system is just a poor ripoff of the Mac OS.

I payed $899 for my iMac and the ram was dirt cheap. Now to get the same computer out of a PC I'm looking at $900 just for the tower & monitor not to mention a graphics card, more ram and a good sound card. Not to mention the lack of eithernet in a PC. (needed for a cable modem)

I have acheived better Flash projectors on a Mac than my PC and my employeer has noticed this and requested that I work from home until they can get the PO through.

I would suggest you learn some maintenance skills before you ripp Flash on a Mac.

[Coffee Cat]

I have worked on computers off and on for 6 or 7 years, on both PCs and MACs the whole time. I currently own both a PC and a MAC.... flash does have some problems. I haven't noticed TOO much of a difference with flash5 in creating a flash movie, nec. and MAC's freehand is so much better than PC that there is a toss up.... but on web distribution I've run into some oddities.

I recently made some flash banners for a site that used "engage" to serve the ads. On one MAC I tested it on, the engage engine pulled up TWO ads, one in the correct spot and one sort of displaced in position. Then on an iMAC I tested it on, it only pulled one banner up, but plopped some odd code infront of it, with a carriage return that pushed the banner below its designated area.... this off course didn't push the page, it just chopped off the bottom of the banners.

Certainly this deals more with engage that with flash... however I point out that engage serves gif banners and jpgs fine. And on PCs both the gif ads and the flash ads served without a hitch.

The banners did use FS commands- so I am not sure if this was the culprit or not. We're still trying to resolve this problem, so if anyone has any input, ideas, or engage-flash-mac experience, please let me know.

Thanks

[me2222]

Solrac149 seems to be a very pessimistic person.

The situation is definately not as bad as he describes it!

Markus

[agallisa]

Library items cannot be dragged to the stage on Macintosh
http://www.macromedia.com/support/fl...s/cantdrag.htm


Macromedia Flash crashes on Power Mac G4 Cube

http://www.macromedia.com/support/fl...cube_crash.htm


Also make sure to disable processor cycling in the energy control panel. This causes FLASH to run horribly slow because the processor decides to run at a lower voltage when you are not moving the mouse, thus no processor speed, crappy frame rate.

My G3/300 with a Voodoo 3 2000 seems to work just fine on many of these sites and rarely do I feel like its lacking, even with a 2 year old computer.

Those who are comparing OS9 to Win2000 is not a fair comparison. 90$ OS vs. a 300$ OS

OS X is set to level the playing field in this respect. Win98 can not hold a candle to OS9.


[Edited by agallisa on 04-26-2001 at 02:38 PM]

[greenplasticcup]

-solrac- said:
I honestly don't see macromedia releasing a solid Flash 5 product for OS X, and I REALLY don't see the flash omniweb plugin going any further.

---

So I say:
I really don't see any reason that Macromedia wouldn't release Flash 5 for OS X. Macromedia isn't going to just abandon the Mac platform. They already announced FreeHand 10 for X. That's preposterous to think that out of their whole line up of graphics and web development programs they would develop only one program for OS X. Not only that but FreeHand is sold as half of their FreeHand/Flash studio, there's seamless integration there. You think they would stop there?

If they abandon Apple they are killing a huge amount of their profit.

Do you think that the Mac world will halt because of some crashing issues with one program? You think they will just throw up thier hands and say "Oh well we tried, I guess we all have to go to windows now"?

Me neither.

Peace,
brian

[8minus8]

Please no more MAC vs. PC threads. This is a mac help forum.

[nicholas.w]

Originally posted by Yavstr
I have acheived better Flash projectors on a Mac than my PC and my employeer has noticed this and requested that I work from home until they can get the PO through.

I would suggest you learn some maintenance skills before you ripp Flash on a Mac.

I have to agree with solrac149 on the issue that Flash playback on the Mac is considerably slower than on a PC. Just try it. I am a Mac guy. I have always been a Mac guy and am always the first to put down PCs whenever possible. But I have been doing a lot of arcade style games in Flash 5 and also just navigational sites and it doesn't take an expert to see that it *drags* on the Mac. I believe this has something to do with DirectX on the Pc. I am not sure, but it is to the point where Flash becomes so slow that it is not even enjoyable. And games are unplayable. It has nothing to do with maintenance skills. I have been a programmer for many many years and is nothing to do with code or optimizing your graphics. Until Macromedia fixes this, i am forced to do my Flash development on a pc. Boo. I hate myself. But it's a fact, MacFlash slow. PcFlash better. Where's my therapist?

[mikal]

However, iv been a little put back on the flash random crashes. The update was cool, and helped. I just hope the powers that be.....take care of the MacDaddys and mommas of the world. Other wise i will be forced to entertain the solid perfomace on those poopie pc's.

The last word..........maybe. By the way what is the best software to take care of mac maintance, i use disk doctor....but there is always somthing going on. Any ideas would be helpful.

Thanks

m

[mikal]

However, iv been a little put back on the flash random crashes. The update was cool, and helped. I just hope the powers that be.....take care of the MacDaddys and mommas of the world. Other wise i will be forced to entertain the solid perfomace on those poopie pc's.

The last word..........maybe. By the way what is the best software to take care of mac maintance, i use disk doctor....but there is always somthing going on. Any ideas would be helpful.

Thanks

m

[aidangibbons]

Stop this cr*P about macs being cr*p. i've been using a mac now for 3 years from a performa to a g4 cube. BEfore, I had a PC and used that to peacefully type away to my hearts content. Fist things first, Flash would not have been for the PC if it weren't for Macromedia who developed it for MACS ONLY-this was when it was FutureSplash. Macs can do everything PC's can and more, especially when it come to graphic design and animation. Another thing, Macs rarely crash, and when they do, they fix themselves properly unlike the dreaded PC which crashes whenever it wants. Windows also sux. Mac OSX is X times better than Windows because it is improved, it is slick and it hasn't crashed on my computer yet.

Macs suck.....how dare you, this is a mac forum, twat

[mikal]

Originally posted by aidangibbons
Stop this cr*P about macs being cr*p. i've been using a mac now for 3 years from a performa to a g4 cube. BEfore, I had a PC and used that to peacefully type away to my hearts content. Fist things first, Flash would not have been for the PC if it weren't for Macromedia who developed it for MACS ONLY-this was when it was FutureSplash. Macs can do everything PC's can and more, especially when it come to graphic design and animation. Another thing, Macs rarely crash, and when they do, they fix themselves properly unlike the dreaded PC which crashes whenever it wants. Windows also sux. Mac OSX is X times better than Windows because it is improved, it is slick and it hasn't crashed on my computer yet.

Macs suck.....how dare you, this is a mac forum, twat

First, read my post carfully.
Secound, I dont even own a PC..but have worked on a few with non of the crashing. Sence the update its been a whole lot better.
Third, Iv been a die hard MacAddic twice as long as you.
Fourth, why not take a shot at the question i asked instead of me.
Fifth, you own me an apology.

m

[Hazer]

Hi all,
I just wanted to add my two cents to this thread.
I'm using F5 on a Mac G4 Dual-proc.(which is really irrelevant since Flash doesn't use the DP functionality)w/ 512 RAM, 128 allocated to F5. The OS is 9.04 (I tried 9.1 and it wreaked havok on everything, not just Flash). It took me two weeks to "tweak" this machine for optimum performace across apps, especially F5. It helped that I spent 5 years as Mac tech support for a large publishing company. Now I do all web/multimedia development on this machine, and I'd say it's about 90% flawlessly stable (to even hope for 100% is just ridiculous).
I removed unecessary inits and cdevs (USB software seemed especially dicey), all the Security and Multi-user 'junk', and made sure that ALL components were updated to most recent versions (but I did NOT do the firmware). I also have a second ATI card, and I removed all OpenGL software. Also, our servers are Netware, so we use the Netware Client. This allowed me to turn OFF AppleTalk (the printers are set up as LPR queue Desktop printers, an IP only connection, which can be achieved with the Desktop Printer Utility). Just disabling AT made a huge difference in the overall performance of the machine.
I am fortunate enough to have all of the most current software versions, but if anyone is still using older v's, make sure to check for any incompatibility issues.
I'd also like to say I am not totally Mac-centric. I have used Flash extensively on PC as well, and I really see very little difference. Some may say that optimizing images and such has little effect on the speed of movies played back on Mac, but I have seen it make a marked difference.
I love developing content on the Mac, it's my platform of choice. But, if I had to go back to PC, as long as it was a comparable machine, there is really very little difference and it wouldn't bother me at all. It's all in the configuration.
Keep Flashing!
Peace,
jr

[griffkay]

I am sick and tired of PC People always downing the Mac. I have been using a mac for almost 10 years now and I can tell you that apple has made a great machine and OS. The proof of that is how the mac is THE computer of choice for graphic designers and artists.

The same hold true for Flash. It is a great product and macromedia has done a fine job. Flash 5 is pretty stable and it has given me no problems.

I am running it under OS X and i had no problems to speak of. You must have a very sick Cube or you are just not skilled enough with flash to make it do what you want . If you would just RTFM maybe you would not have any problems with your MAC.

Oh now as for those 2 sites that you say crash every time you visit them. You are crazy it works just fine and if you didn't notice on the Balthaser:fx site there are a couple MAC screen captures on it. So I guess that it was made on a MAC.

Now as for incomplatablity with OS X. i will agree that there are a lot of products out there that have to port there products over to OS X and there are products that may not fully work with OS X but flash isn't one of them.

The MAC OS has been consistent and there have been few bugs with third party software. Can Windows say that??? I think NOT. I have seen my PC friends download and install patch after patch and update after update just to make there old software work because they upgraded Windows.

So now that you have made your self seem like a computer sales man at PC's R US why don't you just stick to your side of the forum and leave the MAC community here on flashkit alone.

[boooya]

Macromedia just sucks ass thats all. If Adobe made flash noone would be *****ing about it. It isnt about PC vs. Mac, its about macromedia getting their heads out of their asses and making a piece of software that works the way it is supposed to.

[ndl]

Has anyone thought this might *not* be Macromedia's, Apple's or Microsoft's OS division problem?

All a lot of the problems listed above are due to internet related issues. I say posts about iCab, OmniWeb, MSIE and Netscape. Posts of the "problems" where with those applications running in the OS environments, not the OS themselves.

I do agree with 8minus8, that this thread is not really of any relevance anymore.... or at least not here. The 2 OSes are getting more alike all the time, so now it's just a mere choice of preference...

[jamiewi]

The first guy goes on about "who likes netscape?". What? Is he mental? Most Mac users I know wouln't use IE if it were the last browser on Earth. It's notoriously buggy with the Mac system.
If you ain't happy(ish). Switch platforms, pal. Apple can do without your unconstructive criticisms.

[ekonnn]

my two cents:

it seems like alot of people are taking what solrac149 said abit to seriously. I agree with most of what he said. It's not an issue of mac vs. pc. he said he has a g4 cube, so duh obviously he likes macs. I am mac to the core, but i use a pc at work, and flash does work better on the pc platform. that's all.

[t3h_w00t]

i run flash 8 (developer) on my new iMac 17" Intel Core Duo, and flash runs a million times faster then on my P.O.S. PC. however very frequently the program crashes while i am working (just drawing stuff on the stage). i just get the spinning beach ball of doom and i have to force quit the program. i left it spinning for a day and nothing appened. i have lost hours and even days because of this. does anyone else have this problem?
if someone says "your using a mac duh" i will never come back to flashkit. ever. and i know you wont care but please dont say it.

[rayrob]

i run flash 8 (developer) on my new iMac 17" Intel Core Duo, and flash runs a million times faster then on my P.O.S. PC. however very frequently the program crashes while i am working (just drawing stuff on the stage). i just get the spinning beach ball of doom and i have to force quit the program. i left it spinning for a day and nothing appened. i have lost hours and even days because of this. does anyone else have this problem?
if someone says "your using a mac duh" i will never come back to flashkit. ever. and i know you wont care but please dont say it.

I've been working on both PC's and Macs for many years now, mainly Mac at present.

All I can say, basically through experience, there are 3 rules which can be applied to working in any application...

1.save regulary
2.save often
3.save regulary and often

It's the only sure way, of when it does lock up (and it will), of minimising lose of hard work and effort.

I don't mean to sound condesending, I've just been there.