After reading this post on Wired which reposts a review of the new MacBook Air from Ars Technica, I am going to uninstall Adobe Flash from my MacBook. As has been widely reported, Apple decided to not include Flash with the latest MacBook Air. The reason given was that it was better for consumers to download the most up-to-date version of Flash on their own rather than shipping busted out-of-date software from Adobe. Apple and Steve Jobs are waging a war against Adobe’s interactive bloatware, and this recent move with the updated MacBook Air seemed to be another salvo. However, it now seems that Apple was concerned about the loss of battery life as a result of having Flash installed. According to the tests by Ars:
Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably—as much as 33 percent in our testing. With a handful of websites loaded in Safari, Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary, and the best time I recorded with Flash installed was just 4 hours. After deleting Flash, however, the MacBook Air ran for 6:02—with the exact same set of websites reloaded in Safari, and with static ads replacing the CPU-sucking Flash versions.
I would like to see if I get some lost battery time back without Adobe Flash’s rapacious need for CPU cycles. Unfortunately, I believe that many sites that I use rely on Flash for interface elements, so I don’t know if I will be able to keep Flash off of my MacBook. Flash could become the zombie app that you just can’t keep down as it hungrily seeks electrons.
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