Download Flash Player 11 & Adobe Air 3 for Mac OS X

64-bit Flash Player 11 Comes to Mac OS X, AIR 3 Brings Stage Video Hardware Acceleration to iOS

New versions of the popular Flash Player and AIR runtime are making their way towards Mac OS and iOS customers and developers with Adobe announcing Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 that support 64-bit architectures, and hardware acceleration respectively.

The Flash Player 11 desktop application now has native 64-bit support on all supported platforms, including Mac OS X.

No word on whether this new Flash version has been tested against the OS X Lion GM (Golden Master) seeded by Apple last week, but Adobe does say that it can finally leverage 64-bit operating systems and 64-bit web browsers on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux.

Flash 11 now has Asynchronous Bitmap Decoding, a first for Adobe’s flagship product.

The technology improves app responsiveness and delivers smoother animation.

This is done by decoding images on initial load instead of on demand, according to Adobe developers. Just as well, images are cached as needed.

Also noteworthy in the new Flash Player for desktop computers, TLS Secure Sockets are now supported. Also new to Flash Player, this enables secure communications for client/server applications, Adobe notes.

Download Flash Player for Mac OS X (Free)

Moving on to AIR (Adobe’s integrated runtime for building Rich Internet Applications (RIA) using Flash, Flex, HTML, and Ajax to ultimately run as desktop apps), the most notable enhancement in version 3 has to be Stage Video Hardware Acceleration.

For the first time present in Adobe AIR, Stage Video Hardware Acceleration allows iOS to “leverage hardware acceleration of the entire video pipeline to deliver efficient, best-in-class high-definition (HD) video playback experiences.”

This major new enhancement paves the way for decreasing processor usage, reduced memory usage, and higher fidelity on mobile platforms, ultimately enabling a smoother video experience.

Compatible platforms include not only iOS, but also Android 3.1, BlackBerry Tablet OS, as well as desktop and TV devices, Adobe said.

The company behind Photoshop also noted that this version of AIR includes security improvements described in a recently issued security bulletin (APSB11-12).

Download Adobe AIR (Free)