Flash Player

Flash Player 10.1 is Adobe's last version of the popular Flash player. It allows Mac OS X users to play Flash content both on apps and web sites.

This last version is significant, as it comes with several new features and, most importantly, is expected to make the Flash-watching experience a better one.

If there is something that we, Mac OS X users, don't get, in comparison with Windows users, is a good Flash experience. Since I have made the switch to Mac, I've noticed that Flash videos often freeze and flash crashes, leaving me with a handicapped web browser. With the arrival of 10.1, I have noticed better performance. Full-screen videos don't hang as often as they did before, and I don't think Flash has crashed on me at all.

Quality-wise, Flash Player 10.1 makes it possible to watch HD videos in my browser with almost no hanging. I have noticed that buffering takes a little longer than on Windows, with exactly the same Internet connection. But I am confident, future versions will fix that. I don't think Flash 10.1 for Mac uses hardware acceleration yet. When that happens, I will be one happy camper.

Another note, there have been recent talks about HTML5, which is the new web development standard that "should" replace Flash in the future. Many browsers are starting to add support for that standard and I like what I have seen so far, although videos streamed in HTML5 do not have the quality that Flash videos can accomplish right now.