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Slow Flash on Mac

I recently got a chance to play with a Apple Macintosh PowerBook and I have noticed that while everything else is so smooth and cool, Adobe Flash Player (previously known as Macromedia Flash) performs poorly on both Firefox and Safari.

After researching the Internet, I came to the conclusion that there is no real solution to this problem. However, there are some measures you can take to minimize the problem.

  • Set your power options to run your Mac at Better Performance or at least Normal. Other options reduce the processor speed drastically, affecting Flash Player’s performance.
  • Update your Safari and Mac OS X with the latest updates and upgrades. To do this, click the Apple Logo in menu bar and select Software Update. Update your Firefox with latest version if you use Firefox.
  • Update your Flash player by visiting this link which is Apple’s official page for downloading and installing Flash player. (Don’t ask me why, but somehow going through the Apple site seemed to give better results than going directly to Adobe site.)
  • Always make sure you have only one page loaded with a Flash Player in it. If you have two or more pages open with Flash players in them, the processor is divided and the performance degrades. (If you want to see what I mean, try loading two or more windows with the choppy test below.)
  • Optionally use only one browser at a time. Even if you use multiple browsers, make sure you minimize your use of Adobe Flash player to just one page, regardless of what browser is used to display the page.
  • Make sure you quit all applications by pressing Apple-Q or selecting Quit from the menu bar. Closing the window does not quit applications on a Mac, and thus applications continue running in the background.

To test the performance of Adobe Flash Player, click here to run the Choppy Test.

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