There is a lot of debate on the web over whether or not Mac users should uninstall Adobe's Flash after Apple stopped installing it on new machines.
The Pro camp highlight the benefits: better battery life, less CPU usage as well as the feeling of warmth for Apple devotees at following Steve Job's wishes.
The Anti camp will highlight the madness of this: rich media on the internet will never work, why cripple yourself, Apple are wrong to make this a political game.
The Anti camp do have a point. We all expect YouTube, the BBC's iPlayer as well as the millions of websites that embed audio within Flash to just work. It's the same reason we advocate the use of Apple products here on UsedMac. On the whole they just work well without hassle.
Right now I would recommend against any normal user uninstalling Adobe Flash from their machine. It will simply break too much of the web that you use.
If you use Safari.
But what if you use Google Chrome? I do and I have uninstalled Flash from OS X.
Why have I done this? Well as we recommend here at UsedMac, I use Google Chrome as my main browser. For some time now Chrome has included it's own Flash plugin that Google have developed with Adobe. It's a Chrome specific version that attempts to improve stability and performance.
So what's the difference? Well I have uninstalled the Flash plugin that was installed on my OS X system in order to force Chrome to use it's own plugin. I rarely (if ever) use Safari, even though I am very fond of its cleanliness and its speed. The lack of Flash support therefore in Safari causes me few issues.
What this does is ensure that when Chrome does need Flash it will only use it's own version of it. This version of Flash, like Chrome itself, will always be up to date and from what I can ascertain from day to day use, performs more reliably and a bit more efficiently.
I've gone a step further than this though. I've installed a Google Chrome extension called 'Flashblock'. Now this may sound like an extreme move usually done by hardened geeks, but it's so I can make the most of improved battery life when Flash isn't being used to load countless ads when browsing.
This is not to say that I am against online advertising. I have decided to use Flashblock so that I can control when or not Flash is being used. Alot of web advertising is still present: you simply get delivered static images and no Flash developed animations. If I want to see them though, I simply have to click on the empty placeholder.
Flashblock: Simply click the Flash Logo to Play
Already I can hear you asking "does this not get infuriatingly difficult?". Not really. When I do visit sites where I want to always see Flash content (i.e. the BBC iPlayer or BBC News site), I can tell Flashblock to always allow Flash on this site. It doesn't take a lot of web browsing to 'whitelist' (i.e. the opposite of black listing) the websites that you are happy to always load flash.
Whitelist: Decide which sites to allow Flash on
So why do this? Well when browsing sites with Flash ads, your CPU could be using as much as 20% of extra power even if your not using Flash for content that you want. This is simply to serve ads. CPU power = Battery consumption. Why not reduce the burden on our battery when it won't prevent you from seeing content you don't need: animated ads.
So you can get the best benefit of removing Flash (more battery life) without losing the ability to watch what you want (The Only Way is Essex on the ITV Player). Plus you can achieve it without alot of hassle.
(Hardcore geek or happy to go without Flash completely? Then Apple commentator and Tech Journalist John Gruber has some tips for life with HTML 5 Video)
