I repaired the solid-state disk using Apple’s Disk Utility. I cleared my caches. I blamed my browser and switched to another one. (At various points, I’ve used Safari, Chrome, and, most recently, Firefox as my primary browser.) Some of these tactics seemed to help–emphasis on “seemed”–but they didn’t resolve the situation permanently.

When the Mac was in one of its moods, it was no fun at all. That’s one reason why I’ve found myself using my iPad 2 (equipped with a Zagg keyboard) more often than the Air over the past three months. But I never stopped wanting the Mac to work better.

Then it struck me. The iPad, unlike any Mac or Windows PC I’ve ever used, is pretty much bulletproof. It doesn’t get bogged down. It has no equivalent of the spinning beach ball. Even its worst technical problems can almost always be fixed by powering it down.

And–in case you hadn’t heard–it doesn’t run Adobe’s Flash. New Macs don’t come with Flash, but I reflexively installed it on mine.

Last night, I was using the MacBook Air and it went from running just fine to seizing up. On a whim, I disabled Flash Player in Firefox. The computer instantly–and I mean instantly–became its old self again. Several hours later, it’s still happy and healthy, and so am I. I believe I’ve finally diagnosed the problem. (If I’d been paying attention, I would have been able to do so a long time ago.)

My MacBook Air, is, incidentally, a  model with 2GB of RAM. Memory’s a bit tight, and I think that having a few browser tabs with Flash content open at one time was capable of rendering the computer unusable. But with Flash deactivated, it’s once again the laptop I knew and loved, and 2GB is plenty of space–even for heavy-duty applications such as Photoshop. I won’t be surprised if my battery life improves meaningfully, too.

Will I miss Flash Player? Maybe, in certain instances. Much of the video I’ve encountered plays without it (in part because I’ve opted in to YouTube’s HTML5 version). But if I find myself needing Flash–for instance, if I absolutely must play Bejeweled Blitz–that’s okay. It’s easy enough to briefly enable it in Firefox, do my business, and then shut it off again.

(I’m still not sure if I’ll give Flash the boot in Windows; generally speaking, it seems to perform better over there than it ever has in OS X.)

I don’t take any particular pleasure in evicting Flash from my Mac. I first encountered the technology way back in 1994, when it was part of an obscure piece of software called FutureSplash SmartSketch, and thought it was cool from the start. I fondly remember the Flash of a decade or so that was mean, lean, and useful. It made the Web better.  But if Flash is capable of turning a reliable Mac into a basket case, there’s nothing it can do that would make it worth the performance hit and general hassle I’ve encountered. What a sad fate for a once-great piece of software.

Adobe’s Mike Chambers gives several reasons for mobile Flash’s death, but the first he mentions is Apple’s rejection of it:

This one should be pretty apparent, but given the fragmentation of the mobile market, and the fact that one of the leading mobile platforms (Apple’s iOS) was not going to allow the Flash Player in the browser, the Flash Player was not on track to reach anywhere near the ubiquity of the Flash Player on desktops.

And Mobile Opportunity’s Michael Mace–thoughtful as always–says that greed did Flash in:

So here’s what Adobe did to itself:  By mismanaging the move to full mobile browsing, it demonstrated that customers were willing to live with a mobile browser that could not display Flash.  Then, by declaring its intent to take over the mobile platform world, Adobe alarmed the other platform companies, especially Apple.  This gave them both the opportunity and the incentive to crush mobile Flash.

I agree that there were a bunch of reasons why mobile Flash never amounted to anything, but I still think one of them trumps all others: It didn’t work. If it had been fabulous, even Apple might have had to reconsider the situation.

The real reason why Adobe is dropping Flash mobile support is not iPhone. It is Windows 8.

Microsoft made it very clear that they won’t allow Flash to run in Windows 8 Metro browser and they are pushing HTML5 as a platform. You do not need a crystal ball to see that without Windows’ (which runs on 95% of PCs worldwide) support, Flash is dead. It will be supported for legacy reasons for a while, but it has no future.

Windows 8 isn’t a mobile operating system–it’s an OS that aims to run well on both mobile devices and garden-variety, traditional computers. If its browser doesn’t support Flash–or any plug-in, how much longer will Flash in any form live on?

Over the past two years, we’ve delivered Flash Player for mobile browsers and brought the full expressiveness of the web to many mobile devices.

However, HTML5 is now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively.  This makes HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores.  We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.  We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations.  We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations.

Yup, Adobe–the company that has been maintaining that the Web isn’t really the Web without Flash–just said that HTML5 is “the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms.” That’s true. I didn’t expect it to concede the point just yet, but I’m glad it did.

The modern era of Flash on portable devices began just last year when Adobe released Flash Player 10.1 for Mobile.  The notion, however, has been around in one form or another for over a decade. Adobe, therefore, isn’t axing mobile Flash prematurely, and you can’t blame Apple for doing it in.

I never had a religious opposition to the idea of mobile Flash. Actually, I would have been delighted if it had worked well. But even as Adobe and hardware makers kept telling the world that mobile Flash was fabulous, my own personal eyeballs kept telling me otherwise.

When I’ve reviewed devices with the mobile version of Flash Player–ones like the Motorola Xoom, RIM BlackBerry PlayBook, HP TouchPad, and a bevy of Android phones–I’ve tried it out. The experience has always ranged from unimpressive to excruciating. Watching video was frequently like going to see a movie at a theater with a projector that keeps breaking down. Bits and pieces of user interfaces didn’t work, and was often painfully obvious that they were designed for mouse input, not fingertips. Games either didn’t play at all or weren’t fast enough to be fun. Certain things did perform as promised, but I never knew whether they would until I tried, and none of them were exciting enough to make up for all the hassle.

Which has always left me completely befuddled by the industry’s excitement over Flash. Why did it continually claim that the next version would be great? Why did hardware makers come up with phrases such as “Flash-enabled” to cover up the fact that they were shipping without Flash support? Why, oh why, would a company like RIM triumphantly run pricey TV ads focused on Flash support?

(This is a UK version, which is all I can find on YouTube, but I believe it’s the same as the U.S. one except for the voice of the narrator.)

I could never tell whether Adobe and its partners never actually used Flash on shipping products, or were desperate for something that sounded like a competitive advantage over the iPhone and iPad, or were simply caught up in some sort of irrational exuberance. Maybe all three. As I think about it now, I’m still mystified. (I sometimes wondered if it was somehow my fault that I couldn’t make Flash work.)

Whether you think Apple’s decision to bar Flash from its devices was cynical, pragmatic, or idealistic, it’s tough to make the case that it was bad for iOS users. In fact, it ended up benefiting them, because site owners and software developers who couldn’t use Flash ended up using other technologies–HTML5 and native iOS apps–that actually worked.

Belatedly and reluctantly, Adobe has come to the conclusion that a similar approach makes sense for all mobile platforms. Apple’s customers simply got to the future first. Now everybody who uses mobile devices will be going there. And everybody’s going to be better off for it.

During Adobe’s MAX conference, the two companies demonstrated Unreal Tournament 3–originally a PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 title–running inside a web browser. Scads of modern games are based on Unreal Engine 3, including hits like Mass Effect and Epic’s own Gears of War series, and Flash 11 will be able to tap the hardware acceleration necessary to run these games within a browser.

“Flash Player is a key technology for gaming on social networks and the Web, and with UE3 will usher in the leap from simplistic 2D game experiences to world-class 3D gaming on the Web,” Epic said in a press release. In other words, Epic and Adobe are hoping to bring hardcore gaming to Facebook (or Google+, perhaps).

The partnership provides a nice little boost for Adobe, which has earned an unsavory reputation for being a buggy resource hog. Apple has led the way in steering web developers away from Flash, promoting HTML5, CSS and Javascript instead, but at the moment those alternatives can’t duplicate the kind of web-based gaming that Flash enables.

Adobe can keep squeezing life out of Flash as long as it stays a few steps ahead, at least on laptops and desktops. On mobile, Epic’s already thrown its support behind Apple, having brought Unreal Engine 3 to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch in 2010. The first Unreal-based iOS game, Infinity Blade, is gorgeous. As Joystiq notes, maybe Flash will get a port from iOS. That’d be a trip; usually it works the other way around.

When the modern World Wide Web first came to be in the mid 1990s, there was no such thing as a plug-in. The Web was a basic place, and function was more important than flashiness.

Times changed and so did developers’ preferences.

Soon, sites wanted to enhance the web experience beyond what HTML alone could provide, and Java, Flash, and other technologies were brought to the Web. Overall it worked as intended and made the Web more lively, but there were issues.

First off, plug-ins led to a more uneven browsing experience than issues surrounding how different browsers render pages ever did. If you didn’t have the plug-in or couldn’t install it, pages did not appear as intended. Look at devices that don’t support Flash (iOS, I’m talking about you): their users are locked out of a significant portion of the Web.

Moreover, these plug ins opened up our computers to additional security issues. Most security issues on the Web come as a result of the attacker making his or her way into your computer through an exploit found in a plug-in. Think about it: a significant number of major security flaws have been found here.

It shouldn’t be a surprise then that Microsoft is following Apple’s lead in moving away from Flash, and plug-ins generally. IE10 for Windows 8 will come in two flavors — one for Microsoft’s new Metro interface, and another for the desktop. Metro won’t support plug-ins and will instead support HTML5 as well as possible, says Windows chief Steven Sinofsky.

“Running Metro style IE plug-in free improves battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy for consumers,” he argues. “Providing compatibility with legacy plug-in technologies would detract from, rather than improve, the consumer experience of browsing in the Metro style UI.”

I have to applaud Microsoft here. Plug-ins, in this day and age, are outdated and unnecessary. Some have criticized Apple’s stance on this, but lets face it: modern Web technologies can provide nearly the same experience.

To me, the most attractive part of this switch is the additional security benefits. I’m hoping that this change spurs developers to wean themselves off of these unnecessary technologies, making the Web safer for all of us. Bad news for Adobe? Maybe, but hey even they are preparing for a life without Flash.

Well, maybe. It’s true that the inability of Flash to run natively on iOS gives Adobe a powerful incentive to get on the HTML5 bandwagon. I tend to think, however, that this take gives Apple too much credit, and Adobe too little. Edge isn’t about Adobe bowing to Steve Jobs; it’s about it acknowledging reality. And Adobe shouldn’t be building this product in a grudging, grumbly fashion. If Edge is a great HTML5 tool, there’s no reason why it can’t be an enormously popular and profitable component of the company’s portfolio. It would be nuts for Adobe not to do it.

I’ve run Flash on a bunch of mobile devices based on three operating systems: Android, WebOS, and QNX. Sometimes it works, sort of. But that’s the best thing I can say about the experience. It’s usually painfully obvious that Flash really wants more computing horsepower than phones and tablets have. And even when performance isn’t a serious issue, it’s too often clear that most Flash content wasn’t designed with touchscreen input in mind.

End result: On mobile devices, Flash gets out of sync. Or freezes up. Or has odd display glitches. Or doesn’t let you control apps the way they were intended to be controlled. It introduces as many problems as it solves.

Even if Adobe is inclined to be biased in favor of Flash, and in favor of the profits that Flash currently brings, it must understand that mobile Flash in its current incarnation has severe issues. It keeps saying that the next version of Flash is going to be great. But by the time mobile Flash is great–or even just tolerable–it might be largely irrelevant. (Its absence on iOS hasn’t hurt Apple devices so much as forced sites and developers to redo their Flash-based creations so that they don’t require Flash anymore.)

But you know what? If Flash did run on iOS, it wouldn’t solve Adobe’s Flash problems.  It would almost certainly be less than satisfactory there, too. It would still feel like the past, and HTML5 would still feel like the future.

And even if Flash somehow worked great on every mobile device, HTML5 would be here, and would be burgeoning–and it would make perfect sense for Adobe to create Edge.

There’s no scenario under which it’s a bad idea for Adobe to build a top-notch HTML5 authoring product. Adobe, I suspect, is capable of understanding that without Steve Jobs’ help. The hard part will be making sure that Edge is, in fact, that product.

I installed the new Flash on the Xoom and started trolling the Web for Flash content to try. My experience was mixed.  Adobe doesn’t claim that this is a finished piece of software: The Honeycomb version of Flash Player is billed as a beta, and according to Engadget’s Sean Hollister, it doesn’t yet support hardware acceleration. (Apparently, the First Law of Mobile Flash–the version you want is always not quite here yet–still holds.)

A few notes:

–I watched Best of Show on Amazon Video on Demand in hopes of performing an informal battery test. It drained the battery from 44% full to 15% full in one hour and 20 minutes. But during that time, the audio got out of sync, and then the picture froze–and I couldn’t get Flash to work properly again without rebooting the Xoom. At that point, I gave up with the battery test.

–Some other standard-definition video I tried, such as that at Bloggingheads.tv, worked reasonably well.

–I watched Glee in HD, again on Amazon, and it would play smoothly in full-screen mode for a few seconds, then sputter, then play smoothly, then sputter…

–I tried Bejeweled on Facebook; it was playable, but the animation was herky-jerky.

–Hulu, as I expected, blocks Flash Player on the Xoom.

–Google’s Picnik photo editor sort of works–I could load photos and apply effects. But the sliders that are everywhere in the interface don’t function properly; I don’t think they really understand touch input.

All in all, it seems to be a version of Flash that works some of the time but not always, and not always well. That’s not, um, ideal. Neither is the fact that Flash isn’t available at all on the iPad. But the lure of Apple’s audience has prompted plenty of companies to make Flash-based stuff work on iOS devices in one way or another–I can get Hulu (Plus), Bloggingheads, and Bejeweled on the iPad. And they all work reliably.

We’ll know that Flash Player for Android makes sense when having it is clearly better than not having it…

A few screenshots of Flash-based content on the Xoom: