Re:MacBook Air ships without Flash
by Someone on Thursday October 21, 2010 @09:08AM
(#1815208)
"Perhaps it stems from Apple's claim that Flash is bad for battery life"
Supporting multiple similar runtimes (HTML+JavaScript vs Flash vs Java vs SilverLight vs somebody else's kitchen sink) may make sense, but eats disk space, and, once people start using them, RAM and CPU bandwidth (due to less sharing of code between programs).
Including Flash and Java made sense a couple of years ago on the Mac, but when designing the iPhone, Apple, as they always do, revisited earlier decisions, and decided they should go. Given RAM constraints, I can see why.
On these new MacBooks, I guess Flash was dropped not because of RAM constraints, but because the disk is relatively small. It is but a tiny part of that 64 GB, but they probably must make many small cuts to give the user as much space as possible for his own stuff.
Supporting multiple similar runtimes (HTML+JavaScript vs Flash vs Java vs SilverLight vs somebody else's kitchen sink) may make sense, but eats disk space, and, once people start using them, RAM and CPU bandwidth (due to less sharing of code between programs).
Including Flash and Java made sense a couple of years ago on the Mac, but when designing the iPhone, Apple, as they always do, revisited earlier decisions, and decided they should go. Given RAM constraints, I can see why.
On these new MacBooks, I guess Flash was dropped not because of RAM constraints, but because the disk is relatively small. It is but a tiny part of that 64 GB, but they probably must make many small cuts to give the user as much space as possible for his own stuff.