At Least One Reason Apple Hates Flash (Battery Life)



The seemingly strange feud between Apple and Adobe has been going on since the first iPhone launched. The iPhone's Safari web browser did not come pre-loaded with Flash and Apple was adamant from the beginning that Flash would never be an option.
This opened some eyes, because Flash content is very popular on the web. Everything from YouTube videos to games and many other interactive experiences are delivered using Flash.
Many have speculated that Apple would not allow Flash on its iPhone and iPod Touch devices for various reasons such as:
• Preferring the open HTML5 standard Adobe's proprietary software
• Security concerns with Flash
• Apple's desire to protect their App store by not allowing free Flash games
One additional theory was that Flash used up additional processor power and therefore limited the life of the battery. While this theory has been out there for a while now, it never was at the top of the list as to why Apple did support Flash.
Now Apple is taking an additional step and not pre-installing Flash on the new 2010 MacBook Air laptops. This certainly raised a few eyebrows and clearly showed that Apple was not backing down from their anti-Flash campaign. But why on earth would Apple limit the MacBook Air, a fully functional computer where people are very likely to install Flash themselves anyway? Does Apple hate Adobe Flash that much?
Probably not. Don't forget that Apple is both a software and hardware company. It turns out that Flash makes a huge negative impact on the MacBook Air's battery life. A MacBook Air without Flash installed can run for approximately 6 hours on battery while it only lasts 4 hours with Flash installed under the same usage conditions. That's a huge 33% decrease in battery life. When selling products, Apple would much prefer to have a bullet point that says their laptops last 6 hours instead of 4 when on battery. I believe the Flash feud is really as simple as that.


Read more: http://technorati.com/technology/article/at-least-one-reason-apple-hates/#ixzz14iRFflNi