Plugins on OS X are *always* windowless, there are 3 different drawing APIs which have been recommended at one time or another and there are plugins & browsers written in cocoa and carbon. The windowless thing by itself kills performance because the plugin relies on the browser to repaint it and in turn the browser may not be able to keep up with calls 30 times a second.
By comparison in Windows, Flash is usually given a window of its own and is left to its own devices. It's not constrained by the browser since the browser window is a parent of the plugin window and not responsible for painting it.
That's why Flash is slow on OS X. Fortunately Apple & Adobe are working to resolve the issues by using features of CoreAnimation and newly exposed hardware acceleration. People who just whine its Adobe's fault don't have a clue what they're dealing with. Linux also suffers performance issues, again because of platform issues, specifically lack of RGB hardware acceleration for video output.
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Many of Flash problems on OS X are OS specific
Plugins on OS X are *always* windowless, there are 3 different drawing APIs which have been recommended at one time or another and there are plugins & browsers written in cocoa and carbon. The windowless thing by itself kills performance because the plugin relies on the browser to repaint it and in turn the browser may not be able to keep up with calls 30 times a second.
By comparison in Windows, Flash is usually given a window of its own and is left to its own devices. It's not constrained by the browser since the browser window is a parent of the plugin window and not responsible for painting it.
That's why Flash is slow on OS X. Fortunately Apple & Adobe are working to resolve the issues by using features of CoreAnimation and newly exposed hardware acceleration. People who just whine its Adobe's fault don't have a clue what they're dealing with. Linux also suffers performance issues, again because of platform issues, specifically lack of RGB hardware acceleration for video output.