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Adobe Releases Beta of 64-Bit Flash Player for Mac OS X

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Apr 12, 2001
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Adobe yesterday announced the release of a beta preview version of Flash Player for Mac, Windows, and Linux offering 64-bit support. The new release, codenamed "Square", has been found to be fully functional as far as content compatibility and stable enough for broad testing so far, but Adobe of course encourages feedback on performance.
The community has been very vocal around the need for native 64-bit support and we've heard you loud and clear. Today we're also sharing a refresh of the Linux 64-bit version of Flash Player together with the first preview of both the 64-bit Windows and Mac versions. If you're using a 64-bit browser, I encourage you to install a 64-bit version of Flash Player and give it try.
Click to expand...
Downloads of the various preview versions of Flash Player "Square" are available through Adobe Labs. Adobe has also put together an FAQ (PDF) discussing some of the details of the move to 64-bit support.

Article Link: Adobe Releases Beta of 64-Bit Flash Player for Mac OS X
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/09/16/adobe-releases-beta-of-64-bit-flash-player-for-mac-os-x/
Took Macrumors long enough to post the bloody news - what has it been, a day since it has been released and Macrumors finally talks about something else besides i-devices and iOS.

Anyway, hopefully the 64bit plugin will result in the extra registers being used on x86-64 which will hopefully translate into higher performance. IIRC from what I understand the 64bit version is based on Flash 10.2 so hopefully we'll see further developers in a faster schedule when compared to how long it took for Flash 10.1 to come out.
 
Lets hope more web sites practice proper etiquette and offer a choice of flash or non-flash versions.
 
Performance Improvement

Using no official, methodical, or statistically accurate testing, it appears to improve performance by at least 10% in my particular case.

Watching a 720p YouTube video with whatever version of Flash I had before, my C2D 2.4 GHz was running all over between 40% and 60% (using a 9600M GT, 4 GB RAM).

After installing the 64b version, CPU usage remained between 30% and 40% for the same video at 720p.

Not bad at all.
 
Finally

Finally after years adobe is actually stepping their game up on the Mac platform. Let's see how well it does...it may be too late
 
Adobe

Adobe is an authoring company not a technology one! They should stick with that and make better authoring tools. Leave the technological aspects to Apple, MS, Oracle etc.


:confused:
 
I know this has been an issue for Linux people who run all 64-bit systems, but what's the deal with 64-bit plugins on the Mac? Does Safari run in 64-bit and spawn another process for plug-ins, regardless of 'bittyness', or does it mean something else? Are there any OS X ninjas out there care to enlighten us?

Pre-post edit: it occurred to me before I hit Submit that I could test this myself using Activity Monitor. Safari on my late 2007 MBP with 10.6 runs as a 64 bit process. If I go YouTube, Flash is spawned as a new, separate 32-bit process.

Does the 32-bit Flash work if you make the kernel run in 64-bit, or was this a blocker in the move to full 64-bit? I always wondered why Apple made the hybrid kernel the default. I also notice that Firefox is 32-bit. I'm surprised that isn't 64-bit -- interestingly, when I load Flash in Firefox it doesn't spawn an external process for Flash, it hosts it in the Firefox process. Maybe the 64-bit Flash will pave the way for 64-bit Firefox?
 
blackpond said:
64 bit Flash ads. Hooray!
Click to expand...

To be fair, there are still some web developers who still use, and will continue to use, flash for main web content. They are what I like to call "new old school," in that they are past the point in their career of really learning anything new. So they will retire after designing one of the last flash websites, and I will get to come in behind them and rewrite the thing in HTML5 (for a good fee).
 
adrian.oconnor said:
I know this has been an issue for Linux people who run all 64-bit systems, but what's the deal with 64-bit plugins on the Mac? Does Safari run in 64-bit and spawn another process for plug-ins, regardless of 'bittyness', or does it mean something else? Are there any OS X ninjas out there care to enlighten us?

...
Does the 32-bit Flash work if you make the kernel run in 64-bit, or was this a blocker in the move to full 64-bit? I always wondered why Apple made the hybrid kernel the default. I also notice that Firefox is 32-bit. I'm surprised that isn't 64-bit -- interestingly, when I load Flash in Firefox it doesn't spawn an external process for Flash, it hosts it in the Firefox process. Maybe the 64-bit Flash will pave the way for 64-bit Firefox?
Click to expand...
I was just going to comment like you did. Linux is really the one can benefit from this 64 bit plugin / flash player currently. IE-64bit is the only one I can see on windows and nothing really on Mac. However for linux, I have run 64bit beta flash plugin on my linux for almost a year now even it crashes. So what is the big deal of this new 64 bit beta?

And yes, if you run 64bit kernel on Mac, 32bit flash will still work.

I just tried with this beta with my IE9 beta and CPU is kinda high...
 
The coolest part about this isn't just that it's 64-bit but this:

Flash Player 10.1 introduces significant optimizations specifically for Mac OS. As part of our engineering work for 64-bit, Flash Player 10.1 has been rewritten entirely to use the modern Mac OS X Cocoa framework. It also takes advantage of Mac OS technologies such as Core Audio, Core Graphics, Core Foundation, and Core Animation, leveraging native technologies while improving performance.
Click to expand...

The fact that they are modernizing their flash code to use Cocoa instead of whatever the older flash used (carbon?) is a big deal and a huge step forward for flash.
 
If anything, Steves open letter on flash kicked Adobe in the butt.

They can deny how flash sucks on the mac all they want, and then release major updates/upgrades to flahs, but it will still suck
 
Separate processes help reduce crashing.

I believe that Safari is being extended further in WebKit to better use this technique. At least with the nightlies I've noticed crashes that affected only one open window.

While the prevention of crashes is one important element we also can't dismiss the potential for better performance on multi core systems. In the end the use of separate processes should lead to a better overall user experience.
adrian.oconnor said:
I know this has been an issue for Linux people who run all 64-bit systems, but what's the deal with 64-bit plugins on the Mac? Does Safari run in 64-bit and spawn another process for plug-ins, regardless of 'bittyness', or does it mean something else? Are there any OS X ninjas out there care to enlighten us?

Pre-post edit: it occurred to me before I hit Submit that I could test this myself using Activity Monitor. Safari on my late 2007 MBP with 10.6 runs as a 64 bit process. If I go YouTube, Flash is spawned as a new, separate 32-bit process.
Click to expand...
Yes that is the case. Just realize that the use of separate processes is new to Safari and under development in Webkit. A few months ago there was a news release describing where Apple was going with web kit development. Frankly I've forgotten the details, but Webkit development is fairly open so you can look for yourself.
Does the 32-bit Flash work if you make the kernel run in 64-bit, or was this a blocker in the move to full 64-bit? I always wondered why Apple made the hybrid kernel the default. I also notice that Firefox is 32-bit. I'm surprised that isn't 64-bit -- interestingly, when I load Flash in Firefox it doesn't spawn an external process for Flash, it hosts it in the Firefox process. Maybe the 64-bit Flash will pave the way for 64-bit Firefox?
Click to expand...
I'm not sure what is stopping 64 bit FireFox. Lately it seems as if FireFox has lost focus.

Generally on a Mac you want all of your apps to be 64 bit to save on memory. Loading 32 bit apps while running an otherwise 64 bit system causes the loading of 32 bit versions of many libraries into memory. Of course having a backup browser is very important so I keep Firefox installed, but seldom use it.

Oh one last thing I use Click to Flash, a fantastic solution to crap Flash advertising.
 
Quote:
The community has been very vocal around the need for native 64-bit support

JAT said:
That would be the techno-geek-porn-loving community, I take it?
Click to expand...

That would be the techno-geek-porn-and-pop-up ad-crash/security vulnerability-loving community, I take it?

There. I fixed it for you. :)
 
remove java also

Not just flash, remove java.
And python, php, etc. and don't allow for Ruby. All those are buggy and slow... and non standard.

Apple should only be the latest version of Objective C!
 
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