a Parallels 4.0 virtual machine using my MacBook Pro 2.33 C2D running OSX Tiger. I ran some Youtube HD clips and they ran a smooth as silk in Explorer 8, barely using up 22% processor resources. Windows sure knows how to handle Flash and if it's left up to Microsoft, Flash will live on forever.

There's nothing abnormal about this. Flash has performed horribly on macs for as far back as I can remember. A simple search on google shows people complaining about bad flash performance on their macs for years.

Im on an 8 core 2.8Ghz mac pro w/ 16gb ram right now and flash performance sucks as expected. Same with my early 2008 imac. Adobe's flash product is just horrible in general and needs serious optimizing.

yup. sounds like flash on the mac alright. that's bloatware for second class citizens of adobe world - now so power hungry it'll fry your mac!

and you want THAT on the iPhone? no thank you...

People - it's Flash! It Sucks! Get over it...

The Linux version of Flash is also poor. It's not Microsoft that helps Flash work better on Windows, more that Adobe obviously focus their efforts in optimising Flash on the 90%+ platform, and also where there are plenty of developers with low-level skills.

That's cost them when it's come to mobile phones (and see the comments from ARM today on how much effort they've spent helping Adobe optimise Flash for mobile.

(This should, in turn, help OS X and Linux, because Adobe have also taken this as an opportunity to move to unify the codebase between mobile & desktop versions).

It does sound to me like the problem may be around graphics drivers (if it's using hardware accelerated video), or perhaps (if it's only affecting larger screens, and given the high CPU usage) in the effort of scaling up video onto a higher resolution window size.

How could that be?

Ever since i installed ClickToFlash, my web browsing has been faster, much more pleasant and productive.

Basically, it presents Flash content as a grey frame with a Flash button. It's up to you whether or not to load and view it. It's amazing how quickly pages load when Flash becomes an option rather than jammed in your face.

Find it here: http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/

I will second the beauty of ClickToFlash. Sure beats having to put up w/ all that stuff. Only have to see it on the sites I absolutely want to. I also might add that I am a bit shocked by areas of sites that are flash that I would have never suspected were.

For once being a strong Flash proponent, I have now swung to the other side of the fence and can't wait for Flash to die asap... It just has been abused and used for stuff (ie video) that is not what it was originally developed or used for.

Pretty much ALL of Google's online offerings (G-mail, Maps, Calendar, Documents, Finance, etc. - except YouTube, of course) are completely FLASH-free. Google successfully and effectively does this with AJAX-type technologies.

There are very few situations where Flash can provide solutions which AJAX cannot. I am pretty sure, 97% of the world's Flash content could simply be re-coded into a non-Flash version without losing ANY functionality whatsoever. And I'm not even including advertising...

Shhhhhhhhh. Don't spread that around. Soon the advertisers will learn this (or learn to use something else like mp4 files) and then it won't be so easy to block their ads, esp. on the iPhone.

Have you actually used all those google apps you mentioned? In google finance all the charts on the main quote pages are done in flash. In google maps the street view is also done in flash.