Good news! You can now have H.264 hardware-decoded Flash on your Mac without resorting to installing beta software… just like Windows users have been enjoying for years!
Yep, Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is now official and available for download. But it doesn’t work on all Macs. The new video acceleration API is only available in Mac OS X 10.6.3 or later and it’s limited to Macs with GPUs like the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M.
More specifically, here are the Macs that can take advantage of the new Flash player’s hardware decoding:
• MacBooks shipped after January 21st, 2009
• Mac Minis shipped after March 3rd, 2009
• MacBook Pros shipped after October 14th, 2008
• iMacs which shipped after the first quarter of 2009
For the record, we loved the earlier Adobe Flash 10.1 beta: it’s a huge leap forward for Flash performance on Macs, specifically when it comes to streaming high-definition video. If you’re rocking one of the supported Macs listed above, you should install the latest Flash update now.
[via Hard Mac]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
