Flash Decreases MacBook Air’s Battery Life by 33 Percent

Submitted by lalit on November 5, 2010 - 12:09pm.

When Apple didn’t include Adobe flash as default on the new MacBook Air many eyebrows were raised. Apple said that they want users to always have the most up-to-date version of Flash and hence they are not installing it by default. However, benchmarking down by Ars Technica shows that Apple might have other reasons to omit Flash from MacBook Air. In their 11-inch MacBook Air review Chris Foresman of Ars Technica wrote:

We did find (quite by accident) that Apple may have more reasons behind not installing Flash by default other than the stated reason of ensuring that users always have the most up-to-date version. Having Flash installed can cut battery runtime considerably—as much as 33 percent in our testing. With a handful of websites loaded in Safari, Flash-based ads kept the CPU running far more than seemed necessary, and the best time I recorded with Flash installed was just 4 hours. After deleting Flash, however, the MacBook Air ran for 6:02—with the exact same set of websites reloaded in Safari, and with static ads replacing the CPU-sucking Flash versions.

We all knew that Flash increases battery drain, but a drop of 33 percent in battery life is staggering.