Mh, as a developer i can see that it can be a totally different thing then just "here it works, here it doesn't". Software architecture is not as simple as you seem to think.

Also, on the other hand, i know that Apple released the API for this just recently, which tells me that it wasn't possible before? Maybe Silverlight uses some undocumented, unsupported API? Or maybe it does software rendering but faster? There are a lot of cases why silverlight could be faster, but it's extremely superficial to just blame Adobe.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/adobe-will-acceler...

I just can't understand why software decoding of video would be that slow if you're implementing the stuff using standard api calls. VLC & MPlayer run great on the mac and I doubt they're using undocumented api calls to play video -- I just don't understand why flash video runs so slowly. I'm guessing they just have a really crappy video software architecture.

The Mac Mini in question has no means for hardware video acceleration, so you're right, Silverlight does software rendering but faster. How on earth then is it not Adobe's fault that they can't do the same?

I haven't said that it's entirely Apples fault. I wanted to give the understanding that there may be different technical reasons to that.

From my point of view it is obvious that video playback could be faster if Adobe had access to hardware acceleration. We can agree on that point, right? This is obviously Apples decision to make an API public or not. Of course, i am not saying that video playback couldn't be smooth in software mode. The point that mplayer plays almost everything and smooth on different hardware is a good point. But to pass the buck to Adobe all the time is just wrong. I mean, the API is now public and Adobe already has built in the hardware acceleration, that is quite fast and shows that they are doing something to address the problem.

Obviously my opinion seems to upset others, so i should have just shut up and let people brag about how bad Adobe is. I'm not using a Mac, i am not developing with Adobe tools and i have no problems with my flash plugin, so in the end why should i care. I just hate one-sided views.

Thanks at the blind Apple Fanboys downvoting me because i hurt their feelings and expressed my opinions, even tried to find prove with the link. Go ahead, downvote here too, please, because i am apparently an evil person in your twisted reality!

(fyi, i wish that flash video dies, too, as much as everyone)