I have the mid-2009 Macbook Pro (Core 2 Duo, 2.53 Ghz, 4GB RAM, OSX 10.7.2), and use the most recent version of Chrome. However, it seems every time I visit a website with Flash, whether it be Youtube, or a site with a simple Flash advert, Chrome and sometimes all of OSX lock up for up to two minutes with the SBBOD, and then spontaneously returns to a normal state.
I've tried Safari, with the same problem occuring. I don't think it's a Lion problem since I've been plagued with this since Snow Leopard. I've mitigated the problem a little bit with Flashblock for Chrome, but still – when I actually need to load something in Flash, the computer locks up again.
Additionally, the computer gets very, very hot when playing Flash video, it gets even hotter than some really CPU intensive tasks — like After Effects rendering. I probably can resolve this with a complete re-install, but will wait to do that as a last resort. That's without knowing if the problem will come back.
Has anyone had similar experiences, and can you offer a fix without reinstalling everything? Is it not an isolated problem, and OSX simply hates Flash?
Best Answer
I've been trying to figure this out for a while. Here's the answer:
Chrome has a flash player built into it, and it updates automatically. Other browsers use an external flash player. If you're like me, you have flash player installed outside of chrome for other browsers. Chrome doesn't seem to handle this very on it's own, but you can disable one or the other by going "about://plugins" in chrome, expanding the details (+ details at the top right), and finding the flash section and clicking disable on one or the other.
It doesn't seem to matter too much which one you use, but turning one off dramatically improves flash performance and overall memory usage for me.