We're not arguing this part right?<p>"As the numbers will show, Flash performs far better in Vista versus Mac OS X running on the same hardware, and it actually improved slightly with the version 10 update."<p><a href="http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/10/benchmarking-flash-player-10.ars" rel="nofollow">http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/10/benchmarking-fl...</a><p>(OS X + Safari + Flash 9 Plugin = CPU hog)
(OS X + Safari + Flash 10 Plugin = slightly less of a CPU hog)
(Windows + Firefox + Flash 10 Plugin = CPU friendly)<p>I think that part we can agree on. It's unfortunate Ars didn't report on (Windows + Safari + Flash 10) or (OS X + Firefox + Flash 10) since those would have been a nice data points. I'll also admit this article is a bit dated but the point is that here is an example where Adobe tweaked some code and claimed a 3x increase in speed. Users were complaining all that time and some people were blaming the Plugin API. A performance problem can have multiple contributors.<p>My point is that you would think Adobe would push on it with all of their talent since it's in their best interest to optimize. I think though, that it's only computer geeks who realize it's caused by a plugin (for whatever reason) and the general public just thinks "my computer is slow".<p>I still have never seen a good analysis/description of what is flawed in the Safari plugin API.<p>In the end, I just don't think there's enough published data to settle this.