The ongoing spat between Apple and Adobe over Flash technology took another interesting turn over the past month as the new MacBook Air became Apple's first Mac to ship without Flash Player pre-installed. A review from Ars Technica noted that the battery life of the small notebook took a significant hit when browsing the Web with Flash Player installed, leading Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch to observe that it takes more power to display Flash content than it does to not display it, and claim that HTML5 content of a similar nature to that presented in Flash would use just as much or more power.
According to Engadget, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen yesterday noted that the key to conserving battery life lies in hardware acceleration, and reported that the company currently has a version of Flash Player optimized for the new MacBook Air in testing.
He said it's really all about optimizing for silicon: "When we have access to hardware acceleration, we've proven that Flash has equal or better performance on every platform." You wouldn't be blamed for thinking that sentence a cop-out, but that's actually not the case -- the chief executive says they've presently got a Macbook Air in the labs and have an optimized beta of Flash for the device presently in testing.
Apple revised its policies earlier this year to allow for hardware-accelerated decoding of H.264 video by third-party developers on select graphics cards, including the NVIDIA GeForce 320M that is included in the new MacBook Air. Following a period of beta testing, Adobe released an updated version of Flash Player 10.1 in mid-August to officially bring hardware acceleration to a number of Mac models.
Black Friday sales are continuing today with Best Buy kicking off early Black Friday deals that will last for the next few days. Similar to other retailers, Best Buy's early Black Friday event includes sitewide savings on Apple products, headphones, TVs, monitors, video games, and more.
Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may...
Friday November 8, 2024 7:06 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple has returned to using two 128GB storage chips in the new Mac mini with 256GB of storage, according to a partial teardown video shared on social media today. This means the base-model Mac mini with the M4 chip will not have significantly slower SSD speeds compared to higher-end configurations of the computer with 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of storage, as multiple NAND chips allows for faster SSD...
Thursday November 7, 2024 2:20 pm PST by Juli Clover
Law enforcement officials in Detroit, Michigan are warning other police officers about an alleged iPhone change that causes Apple devices stored for forensic examination to spontaneously restart, reports 404 Media.
iPhones that are undergoing examination have apparently been rebooting, which makes them harder to unlock with brute force methods, and Michigan police think that it's due to a...
Monday November 4, 2024 12:34 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple today seeded the second betas of upcoming iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 updates to developers, and Apple is continuing to refine the Apple Intelligence capabilities. There are also a handful of smaller features that are worth knowing about.
Find My
Find My has a new option to Share Item Location with an "airline or trusted person" that can help you locate something that you've misplaced....
Friday November 8, 2024 12:21 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple launched the new Mac mini, iMac, and MacBook Pro models with M4 chips today, and because the Mac mini is the only one of the machines that got a design update, we thought we'd check it out to see how it compares to the prior version.
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The 2024 version of the Mac mini is much smaller than the previous M2 model, so it takes up...
Thursday November 7, 2024 12:15 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
High Power Mode is available on the 14-inch MacBook Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini models with the M4 Pro chip, according to Ars Technica's Andrew Cunningham. The feature was previously limited to Macs with Apple's highest-end "Max" chip, so this is the first time it is available on Macs with a "Pro" chip.
This is the second time that Apple has expanded availability of High Power...
Wednesday November 6, 2024 8:33 am PST by Joe Rossignol
It has been nearly two and a half years since Apple first previewed next-generation CarPlay at WWDC 2022, and it has still yet to become available in any vehicles.
Below, we recap the latest information about next-generation CarPlay.
Launch Timing
Apple's website continues to say that the first vehicles with next-generation CarPlay support will "arrive in 2024," but it has yet to provide ...
Friday November 8, 2024 9:35 am PST by Joe Rossignol
The new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips launched in stores today. If you are not planning to upgrade this year, be aware that there are already rumors about next year's MacBook Pro models with M5 series chips.
It appears the MacBook Pro will remain on an annual upgrade cycle next year. Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo today said camera module...