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.

[merovingian Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:30PM]

My Mac Mini w/9400M is pointing, mooning and laughing at my MBPro w/8600M GT........

........hey you two, quit it before i bitch-slap the crap outta the both of ya. Trying to catch up on Chatsworth's buccaneers here. Jaime McGuire just found out Karen's been slagging his best friend. Ewww

[Sad Sack Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:34PM]

Flash makes "the fans whir" on Windows, too.

[ScifiSurfer Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:55PM]

Oh goodness me, I'm out IRL for a few hours and look what happens here on engadget. Sheesh!

It's so obvious that Apple wants to control the environment, ecosystem and user experience on the iPhone. Something makes me think that Steve is trying to, oh, I dunno, "compensate" for something.

This is really starting to annoy me. Well, that and all the fanboi bitchslapping that's been going on around here lately, too.

[Maxipad Posted Apr 29th 2010 12:51AM]

Does this mean that there might be a slight chance that Flash is coming to the iPhone OS?

[4nth0ny Posted Apr 29th 2010 1:03AM]

@Maxipad not at all

[Grajales Posted Apr 29th 2010 1:33AM]

@Maxipad if flash on the iphone is as stable and usable as it is on mac os, forget about it, you would hate it. And... no, iphone won't get flash.

And... why does the iphone comes to every single topic discussed in this website? I don't understand.

[JimmyJimJim Posted Apr 29th 2010 1:55AM]

Watching South Park on Hulu. Things seem to be better than usual. Battery doesn't seem to be draining as fast. Buffering seems to be smoother too. This'll require a Netflix test. >_>

[JonAhdout Posted Apr 29th 2010 2:32AM]

I knew it was too good to be true.

It won't support my Macbook Pro that I bought in 2007. This is a step in the right direction, but why will it only support a handful of GPU's? There are thousands upon thousands of Macs out there that can't play youtube videos properly, why not bring this type of flash to all of them?

[ChocNut Posted Apr 29th 2010 3:24AM]

Whatever about the iPhone it's the ipad that needs flash. That could be what makes the ipad more than just a big iPhone.

[petebob796 Posted Apr 29th 2010 4:21AM]

@incognito This was true in the past but there is hope with VPADU nvidia created it for hardware accelerated video decoding in linux probably so they could target media center setups like XBMC. However it's an open source API that hopefully ATI and Intel will pick up.

[petebob796 Posted Apr 29th 2010 4:24AM]

@incognito This was true in the past but there is hope with VDPAU nvidia created it for hardware accelerated video decoding in linux probably so they could target media center setups like XBMC. However it's an open source API that hopefully ATI and Intel will pick up.

[Lundmark Posted Apr 29th 2010 5:01AM]

What about the prev gen discrete cards like 9600 GT?
Do I need to switch to integrated graphics on my MacBook Pro to be able to use this?

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 29th 2010 5:56AM]

@thomaskingx1

Just STFU, why should we believe you silly anecdotes. Do you speak for the billion plus PC users out there. Stop being a flash apologists and shut it. What about those with flash problems on linux, do you speak for them? If flash isn't taking down broswers why are so many browsers now being programed so that if flash crashes, it doesn't take down the whole broswer. Go ask Mozilla bout flash! Now get out.

[thomaskingx1 Posted Apr 29th 2010 6:14AM]

@Dr Kwame Nkrumah

Why should I ask Mozilla?

Why not ask Opera. No flash issues there.
Why not ask IE dev team. No flash issues there.
Why not ask Safari dev team. (Outside of intrinsic Mac issues, no other problems there).
Why not ask Chrome team. No flash issues there.

When 4 of the 5 major web-browsers handle flash rather elegantly, then it stands to reason that the problem does not lie with flash, but rather with the odd man out, Mozilla.

Even then, only a single-digit percentage of Mozilla users have voiced their concerns, so a vast majority of Firefox users are not experiencing these problems of which you speak either.

It seems to me that antipathy is sorely misplaced and that your crusade is desperately misguided.

[fast Posted Apr 29th 2010 7:24AM]

@thomaskingx1 Don't mind little Timmy. He doesn't know better, the poor soul.

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 29th 2010 7:30AM]

@thomaskingx1

And who told you flash is not a problem on those browsers? Look at this clown now trying to blame Mozilla for Flash's problem.

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 29th 2010 7:31AM]

@fast

And what is this silly rat on about?

[microlomaniac Posted Apr 29th 2010 8:06AM]

Tested with first-gen unibody MBP, no matter which card is active, still 80-90% CPU load (on both cores => 160-180%) whilst playing 1080p video on Youtube. Too bad.

[Timerider Posted Apr 29th 2010 9:20AM]

What about the 9600M GT? Why support only the integrated graphics in the MacBook Pro and not the discrete?

[aliquis Posted Apr 29th 2010 12:40PM]

Oh how typical of Apple.

First it took forever for them to fix it, and then they did they only care about the latest hardware. So anyone with a GPU or chipset which can decode H.264 but isn't in the latest of Apples computer models? Suck to be you!

Apple suck so bad :/

Only bought by complete idiots who can't understand better.

[kloan Posted Apr 30th 2010 1:46AM]

WELL, it worked at first.

NOW, every single video on YouTube is black. Great update, thanks Adobe.