Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

selowitch · Nov 2, 2008, 09:22 AM

I'm using an iBook G4 and its 802.11g AE card to view online video via Hulu, fancast, YouTube, etc. As you might imagine, performance is often quite herky-jerky. Are there any tips out there for improving the experience? I believe I have all the necessary plugins and Perian installed (not that I'm sure the latter will help much). Does it pay to quit the Finder when playing back a long video, and does one do that with the kill command in Terminal.app?

mduell · Nov 2, 2008, 10:39 AM

Those sites use Flash for their videos and Flash performance on OS X is terrible. Killing Finder isn't going to help.

selowitch · Nov 2, 2008, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by mduell

Those sites use Flash for their videos and Flash performance on OS X is terrible. Killing Finder isn't going to help.

Is it any better under Linux? I suppose I could install that on my iBook, but would there be drivers for the video card and for AE card? Hulu, I suppose, uses Flash as well. It seems like Adobe hasn't done very much with Flash for Mac since it Adobe bought Macromedia. I'm also surprised there isn't an open-soure plugin for Flash unless Adobe has prevented that in order to protect a (low-quality) proprietary technology.

I almost feel as thought things would run better under OS 8/9!

Isn't Apple supposed to be superior for "multimedia"? What gives? I hate to say it, but I'm having better experiences using *cough* *cough* Windows *cough* *cough* under BootCamp on my iMac.

mduell · Nov 2, 2008, 01:51 PM

Originally Posted by selowitch

Is it any better under Linux? I suppose I could install that on my iBook, but would there be drivers for the video card and for AE card? Hulu, I suppose, uses Flash as well. It seems like Adobe hasn't done very much with Flash for Mac since it Adobe bought Macromedia. I'm also surprised there isn't an open-soure plugin for Flash unless Adobe has prevented that in order to protect a (low-quality) proprietary technology.

I don't know that much about Flash in Linux, but if I recall correctly there is an official plugin from Adobe. Linux for PPC Macs was never very strong and has been abandoned by a few distros due to the Intel switch, so I don't know if all the hardware is supported. The specification for Flash is open, but I don't know of any quality, third party implementations.

Originally Posted by selowitch

Isn't Apple supposed to be superior for "multimedia"? What gives? I hate to say it, but I'm having better experiences using *cough* *cough* Windows *cough* *cough* under BootCamp on my iMac.

There are certainly some good media creation/editing/management apps available for OS X (Photoshop, Final Cut Studio, Lightroom, etc) which has lead to the "Macs for multimedia" phase being thrown around, but video playback and flash (video, audio, or games) are two very weak points for OS X. Videos that play perfectly on my 3 year old, single core, 1.8Ghz Dell running XP are choking, freezing, and dropping frames left and right on my 1 year old, dual core, 1.8Ghz Mac running OS X, even with the same software player.

selowitch · 05:17 PM

I have no doubt that you're correct on all points. What surprises me is not only that Apple hasn't corrected this situation or made it a priority, but that this condition has persisted for a number of years. What's standing in the way of real improvement here?

Here's an interesting post I ran across: Why Does Flash Suck on OS X?. The comments in particular are quite illuminating.

mduell · Nov 2, 2008, 06:06 PM

Originally Posted by selowitch

I have no doubt that you're correct on all points. What surprises me is not only that Apple hasn't corrected this situation or made it a priority, but that this condition has persisted for a number of years. What's standing in the way of real improvement here?

Here's an interesting post I ran across: Why Does Flash Suck on OS X?. The comments in particular are quite illuminating.

The relationship between Adobe and Apple seems to be a bit weird; from the outside it looks like a multibillion dollar DSW. Also, Apple has their own agenda, with the desire to push other technologies like JavaScritp and QuickTime (not complete replacements for Flash, but competitors in a lot of ways).