Installing Flash Player on a Mac is a surefire way to ensuring all of your processing power and RAM is maxed out on a frequent basis. Whether you’re watching a video on YouTube or playing a simple puzzle game, the second Flash begins to load your system becomes an unstable mess.
Unfortunately, a lot of sites still insist on using Flash content, so you’re forced to install it or put up with a half-baked worldwide web. But it’s good to know Adobe is still hard at work on improving the experience. The company has just released the first Flash Player 11.3 beta for Mac OS X, which features all sorts of enhancements and tweaks.
Flash Player 11.3, version 11.3.300.214, brings a new backgrounder updater to the Mac, which means you’ll no longer have to download updates manually. Adobe also claims that it has “relaxed” the driver gating hardware acceleration to 2006, which could mean older graphics cards and chipsets, like the Intel GMA 950, will now support hardware acceleration.
There are also improvements to mouse control, the introduction of texture streaming, and improved support for the Mac App Store.
For developers, there are a number of enhancements to Adobe AIR Mobile, including screen DPI support for the new iPad’s Retina display, ADT support for the new 144×144 icons added in AIR 3.3, and more.
The beta requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later, and it’s compatible with Safari 5, Firefox 4 and above, and all versions of Google Chrome and Opera 11. You can download it from MacUpdate.
[via Electronista]
