Every computer and browser combination I've ever had slows way down whenever Flash is involved, except for my gaming rig. I shouldn't need a quad-core processor to watch videos.
I'm sorry I call bullshit. Flash runs fine on my shitty netbook, as it does on tons of even weaker Java mobile devices around the world.
Again, if you want to pick a fight with the mac client I'm all with you (on MBP now...).
What does Flash playing video have to do with raytracing in AS3? The AVM has nothing to do with the video decoding in Flash.
Well, as it happens, this does indeed run incredibly badly in Flash. I didn't try to optimize it at all (I probably couldn't anyway) and it ran at about 8fps, whereas the JS runs at about 12-15 in Chrome.