Adobe Admits OS X Lion Flash Claims Were False

Adobe has backtracked on claims that OS X Lion dropped hardware acceleration for Flash video, after a knowledge base article suggested that Apple had disabled the systems used to speed up rendering of such clips. In a statement on the company's Flash Player Team blog, Adobe admits that Apple "provides the same support for Flash hardware video acceleration as Mac OS X Snow Leopard" and that their false suggestion was based on misinterpreting results from a pre-beta Lion build.

However, while the capabilities might still be there, it seems Adobe has been slow to take advantage of them. Flash Player can still use greater amounts of CPU processing than the same video would require on a Mac running Snow Leopard, as Adobe is yet to update the software to support Lion. Nonetheless, the company does say that it will "continue to work closely with Apple" on a fix.

"The final release of Mac OS X Lion (10.7) provides the same support for Flash hardware video acceleration as Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6).  The previous "Known Issue" described in a tech note suggesting that video hardware acceleration was disabled in Lion was incorrect and based on tests with a pre-release version of Mac OS X Lion that related to only one particular Mac GPU configuration.  We continue to work closely with Apple to provide Flash Player users with a high quality experience on Mac computers" Adobe

The Knowledge Base article that had prompted the acceleration speculation has since been updated with the same comment as from the blog. Apple dropped Flash Player from the default OS X Lion install, instead suggesting that users should download the latest version from Adobe if they required it, in what is described as a move to phase out "legacy" software.