The war between Apple and Adobe continues, but there are good news for Flash on Mac OS X today: Adobe has released a preview build of Gala, a version of Flash Player that has access to low level H.264 hardware decoding. This version is aimed at developers, but you can go install it here.
From the press release:
“Users will be able to enjoy a much smoother viewing experience when accessing rich, H.264 video content built with the Flash Platform from popular sites like Hulu.com or YouTube.
The Gala preview release is an opportunity for developers to preview this functionality and to test compatibility with existing content on supported Mac computers. We want your feedback to help improve this feature, which is expected to ship following the release of Flash Player 10.1.
In this preview release, you will be able to recognize when hardware decoding is in use when you see a small white square appear in the upper left corner of a video.”
[via]