Flash Player 'Gala' brings hardware decoding support to Mac OS X

Even amidst all their fighting, it appears Apple and Adobe can manage to lay down arms and work together every once in a while: Apple just enabled low-level access to NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, 320M and GT 330M H.264 GPU hardware in Mac OS X 10.6.3, and Adobe's followed up six days later with a new preview version of Flash Player code-named "Gala" that takes advantage of it. That's good news for anyone who's ever heard their fans spin up while watching a YouTube video on a Mac (so, everyone) but we doubt it means there's any détente on larger issues between these two coming -- Apple remains committed to HTML5, while Adobe's pulled all investment from iPhone-related Flash development, and the company's relationship with Google seems to be heating up. We'll take what we can get, we suppose -- we'll hit you with some benchmarks just as soon as we get things installed.

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 29th 2010 5:48AM]

@thomaskingx1

LOL at these dudes so because flash crashes my broswer it means these sites don't exist. Damn these flash apologists.

[thomaskingx1 Posted Apr 29th 2010 6:03AM]

@Dr Kwame Nkrumah

No, it's because you extrapolate your anecdotal evidence in ways that would suggest everyone is prone to the same alleged problems that you would lead us to believe that you are experiencing.

Engaging in hyperbole and sensationalism is why your posts get downranked every single time -- because people see through your thin veil of bogus and outlandish claims.

Quick fact check:

There are approximately 1.4 BILLION Windows based machines out there today.
Virtually every single one of them has internet access.
I would wager that at least half of those can access flash based sites with relative ease.

If the problems were so prevalent with flash as you are suggesting, then the entire world would be in an uproar, rather than just a few Apple shills.

[fast Posted Apr 29th 2010 7:22AM]

@taligent site runs perfect at around 15% cpu usage...got some more?
No crashy.

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 29th 2010 7:29AM]

@DrDr

LOL

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 29th 2010 7:37AM]

@thomaskingx1

Stop writing the same stuff everywhere on this same blog.

[brian515 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:21PM]

No! Watching flash videos on my Macs is how I heat my house. I will freeze to death during the winter now!

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:21PM]

@brian515

LOL

[Bensawsome Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:24PM]

@brian515 I just do my own room with my mac and my 5 other desktops xD

[brian515 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:34PM]

@brian515 Well, it looks like my house can remain heated. I just installed it, and after reading the release notes, for some reason it appears that it only works on the 9400M, 330M and 320M GT. So, as long as I don't switch to the higher powered 9600M GT, my fans will still spin up.

Seriously, though, where's the love for my 9600? Why do I have to switch to the lower powered card on my MacBook Pro do get accelerated goodness?

[DBG Posted Apr 28th 2010 10:11PM]

@Darkroom You must be really fun at parties...

[Marklitt Posted Apr 29th 2010 1:38AM]

@brian515 Apple only allowed access to the latest 3 gpus! They're playing with people. Forcing them to upgrade all the time

[aardWolf Posted Apr 29th 2010 11:42AM]

@DBG
At least his parties are HOT... Literally....

[jeff181995 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:22PM]

Sweet Jesus, that was fast.

[Nilay Patel Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:23PM]

@jeff181995 Yeah, you get the feeling Adobe had this all ready to go, right?

[etwashoo2 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:25PM]

@Nilay Patel

Or Adobe wasn't that "lazy" after all.

[unclepain Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:45PM]

@Nilay Patel
or just an example that Adobe really was being hamstrung by Apple closing off their direct hardware APIs. I guess Adobe's not that lazy after all.
I don't know- I just don't understand why a company would intentionally stiff-arm Adobe for so long at the expense of their own userbase. Whatever the reason, I'm certain it was deliberate and intentional and will somehow benefit Apple's bottom line somehow. Not even Jobs is that calculated and cold hearted.... is he?

[Edobe Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:14PM]

@unclepain "I just don't understand why a company would intentionally stiff-arm Adobe for so long at the expense of their own userbase"

Have you met Apple?

[higherdestiny Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:40PM]

@Edobe Best post ever!

[prodigypv Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:22PM]

Finally (sigh of relief)...

[sweet greggo Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:23PM]

Adobe doesn't have to worry about flash on the iPhone anymore if HP sinks the money into WebOS that it so desperately needs. Palm and Android will level the mobile playing field very soon and a lot of people with iPhones are going to start wondering why everyone else can browse the "real" web while they can't. Jobs has sealed his doom!!!!

[Ambient80 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:29PM]

@sweet greggo

Wow, already counting on Palm to grow that much, huh? When exactly is our new overlord supposed to take charge? I'm all about WebOS as well, but I'm not counting on it to take over the smartphone world in a matter of days >_>

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:30PM]

@sweet greggo

HP and webOS will do as well as the iPaq. The world doesn't need another mobile OS.

[sweet greggo Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:31PM]

@Ambient80

How's next Thursday? ;)

[Ambient80 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:33PM]

@sweet greggo

Haha. If they announce the HP Slate will ship with a modified WebOS instead of Windows 7, I would absolutely agree. ;D

GOD that would be sexy, lol.

[Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:42PM]

@Dr Kwame Nkrumah Uhhh it's not getting another one....WebOS has been around for a while now.....I always wanted an iPaq but they were too costly....if HP does Palm right it could very well catch Android in the next decade....lol

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:52PM]

@Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi

Dude webOS has been around a year and it hasn't done jack in the marketplace. HP may be able to pump more money into it but that doesn't guarantee success. Already the market is a bit crowded, am not sure it wants another player.

[soccerpro100cn Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:56PM]

@sweet greggo
as an iphone user, i have wanted flash on my phone about 3 times within the almost two years i've had it. for everything else, there's html5 (youtube, vimeo, major news sites, etc). flash really is a non issue for casual browsing.

[Bteeuwen Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:24PM]

Apple user " damn this is better then HTML 5"

dang!

[Ben64 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:25PM]

If I am not using windows right now I would've thought Flash on windows is blazingly fast....

[IvanP91 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:25PM]

incoming massive Flash hate.

[SamAdam Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:25PM]

Strange that they have left out more powerful graphics cards. What will it do with my mac's GTX 280?

[Grajales Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:26PM]

And how about older macs? are we screwed up? Oh, well, we are talking about apple and planned obsolescence...

[slipdisc Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:28PM]

@Grajales It sure seems like it. Just like iPhone OS 4.0

[Matt314 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:39PM]

@Grajales
Not to judge but if you buy a mac you should know that your computer will be useless in a few years...Friend of mine is stuck on 10.3 and can't even get firefox 3...

[Amnak Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:25PM]

@Matt314 What are you even talking about up until win 7 came around my old crapy windows laptop couldn't upgrade to vista. How old is his computer... 10.3 was 3 operating sytwms ago..

[ThreeDee912 Posted Apr 28th 2010 10:01PM]

@Matt314

How old is your friend's Mac? It must be over 10+ years old, as even the ancient PowerMac G3's back from 1999 could run 10.4, although not very well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Tiger

I don't like spending tons of $$$ upgrading my computer either, but I think waiting over 10 years is pushing it...

[Ben64 Posted Apr 29th 2010 2:58AM]

@Matt314 not to judge, but I just upgraded my sister's eMac G4 to Mac OS X 10.5. Whatever your friend bought... it's probably older than my sister's eMac.

[Rexian Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:29PM]

I hope now all the idiots who were calling Adobe lazy know who's to blame for this Flash eating Mac CPU fiasco.

[RidleyGriff Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:50PM]

@Rexian Considering that there's been hardware acceleration available in OS X for years if developers used Apple's APIs, not really. Adobe's simply refused to do things by the standard OS X guidelines, and then whined about it.

[RidleyGriff Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:05PM]

And incidentally, Adobe's refusal to use Apple's APIs is also the reason only 3 graphics cards are getting hardware decoding support, vs. every single card that OS X supports it on.

[xsacha Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:27PM]

@RidleyGriff

Excuse me:
"Apple just enabled low-level access to NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, 320M and GT 330M H.264 GPU hardware in Mac OS X 10.6.3"

Apple, after an entire year, has only given access to these three videocards. Nothing to do with Adobe. Blame Apple.

[xsacha Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:35PM]

@RidleyGriff
By the way the APIs aren't designed for this sort of application. You will notice that Adobe can't use these APIs on any platform and relies on low-level access.

[CL Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:31PM]

It took them 6 days to make this? Those lazy Adobe guys!

[Kyle P Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:32PM]

Installed. Works well. My MacBook Pro isn't at "grill steak" temperature after watching a 720p YouTube video for the past five minutes.

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:35PM]

@Kyle P

Why don't you open 5 tabs with different flash websites and see how that runs?

[Kyle P Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:38PM]

@Dr Kwame Nkrumah

Considering that you can only watch and concentrate on one or two things at the same time, that test will establish nothing.

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:40PM]

@Kyle P

I'm not talking about videos genius. Just different websites with flash on it like www.worldstarhiphop.com and www.thisis50.com

[LAY Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:59PM]

@Kyle P

He's looking for someone to back up his bogus thesis that Flash is just soooo awful and will explode all of your internetz.

Amazing how far this contrived effort against Flash has gone.

[fast Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:28PM]

@Dr Kwame Nkrumah nah he ain't following you, you just too damn spotable. It's the way your blantant theory contrasts with reality that is giving you away...over...and over...and over again. And commenting on other people with ad hominem, really not that constructive.

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:37PM]

@fast

Dude I'm not the only one commenting here who has problems with flash!