We told you last month that Apple had stopped installing Adobe’s Flash as standard on the new range of MacBook Air’s. The reason first given for this was so owners can get the latest secure version themselves, but improved battery life could be another reason.
Daniel Eran Dilger of AppleInsider is reporting that Chris Foresman of Ars Technica, has found that the new MacBook Air has better battery life without Flash following testing. Loading up various web pages in Safari the battery lasted for a full six hours, once Flash was installed and the same sites loaded battery life dropped to four hours.
Foresman wrote “Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary.” When Flash is not installed, websites normally display static ads instead of Flash content, doing away the need for processing power being constantly demanded by the Flash rendering engine.
As Flash ads are consuming up to 33 percent of the battery potential, it’s no surprise Apple seem not to be interested in installing Flash on devices with smaller batteries such as the iPhone. Use the link to read the full article.
*Identifying Monetised Links - outgoing links that we monetise are marked with an '*' symbol, or (AD). Also, prices and information correct at publish time and date.
