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Adobe Flash Player 10 beta brings major speed improvement

The slowness of Flash has long been a complaint on the fairer platform and it finally looks like somebody at Adobe was paying attention. Adobe Labs has released a beta for Flash Player 10 and among the changes is a major speed boost. Indeed commenting on his personal site, one Adobe Flash engineer has gone so far as to say that "this version of the player runs... [the GUIMark] benchmark substantially better on OSX than any previous Flash Player version. It should be up to 3 times faster" (more details here).

Adobe Flash Player 10 beta 2 is a free download from Adobe Labs. However, they warn that previous version should be uninstalled before updating.

[via MacNN]

The slowness of Flash has long been a complaint on the fairer platform and it finally looks like somebody at Adobe was paying attention....
 

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Brent Hobbs

I have the same problem mentioned above with the uninstaller. It just hangs and quits with no indication of whether it was successful or not. Have the green blocking problem too. Maybe the two problems are linked?

On a PB G4.

July 09 2008 at 3:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tom

It works great on my 2.2GHz MacBook, but on my 867MHz PowerBook, YouTube is unwatchable due to the previously mentioned blocky green artifacts.

July 08 2008 at 11:03 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
eric f

@reallycrazyguy, if they are working on a new version, that kinda implies that they are trying to make it better.

July 08 2008 at 10:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
funkonaut

Didn't work for me at all. Flash apps would load, but I Flash never registered any mouse clicks. Uninstalled and went back to version 9. Thanks for playing, Adobe. :(

July 08 2008 at 9:44 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Emilio

this may seem odd or whatever but i was having some big problems with flash not loading on some websites and sometimes crashing the browser. what I found works is installing or reinstalling the shockwave player. I can't explain why.

July 07 2008 at 10:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris G.

I had the Flash 10 Beta 2 installed, but some sites claim that Flash isn't installed (CNN's video for example). I decided to reinstall Flash 9 until I know Flash 10 has more support.

That said, it is amazingly faster. I can't wait for the final release.

July 07 2008 at 9:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
OwlBoy

I am having the same issues with beta 10 that are listed here:

http://www.360east.com/?p=1010

Distorted video content, green blocking, etc. I am on a G5 with GeForce FX 5200.

July 07 2008 at 8:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to OwlBoy's comment
David Lawrence

yep, same problem with flash video here. Completely unviewable. Too bad because it really is *much* faster on my powerbook G4. Uninstalling for now. :(

July 08 2008 at 12:47 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mark S

I have that problem too. I had to uninstall and go back to the current version. Really unfortunate. I've generally had really good experiences with the beta plugins.

July 09 2008 at 4:13 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris Papadopoulos

Adobe's software is generally ok — maybe a little bloated and un-Maclike at times — but definitely functional.

But their software's installers are consistently the worst of any major company I've seen.

Constantly having to download and use some crappy uninstaller that looks like it was made in 1998 just to install software is ridiculous.

July 07 2008 at 8:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jason

Ugh, I hate Flash, but I went through the laborious process of uninstalling 9 and installing 10. I'm completely sick of having jerky flash video playback on a Core 2 Duo w/ 3GB of RAM. That's pathetic.

By the way, nice job Adobe on the hideous uninstaller program that looks like it came from OS9, appears to freeze for about a minute with no CPU or disk usage, then just quits with no indication of whether it was successful. Bravo Adobe, bravo.

I'd really love to go Adobe-free on my system, maybe moreso than Microsoft-free. Sometimes I just need a Windows app. I'm trying hard to wean myself off of Photoshop. When I do -- see ya later Adobe!

July 07 2008 at 7:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
reallycrazyguy

Sure it's three times faster than the current released version of the Flash plugin. However it's still much slower and takes much more of the CPU than under Windows on the exact same system.

Hey Adobe, instead of trying to hack Flash onto the iPhone, where Apple doesn't want you, maybe you can convince Apple it's worthwhile if you produce a first-rate implementation on MacOS X, instead of the second-class plugin you're currently foisting on us.

July 07 2008 at 6:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to reallycrazyguy's comment
Nick

Only took six comments for someone to post some snark. Hey, reallycrazyguy, did it ever occur to you that this is a pretty good sign that they're working on it? No, of course not, because you'd rather bitch and leave your mark. Go home.

July 07 2008 at 7:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
reallycrazyguy

oZ, I would say you are quite optimistic if you believe Adobe is finally working on making the Flash plugin work as well as it does on Windows. That they've finally made that commitment to begin this work after only 10 years of leaving it in the crapper.

July 07 2008 at 8:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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