Battery-friendly hardware-accelerated Flash on the way, but will it ever make it to the iPad?
Adobe Systems have announced that a release candidate version of their latest Flash plug-in is now available. Adobe claim that the 10.1 release candidate for Windows, Mac, and Linux will significantly reduce the amount of resources needed to power the plug-in.
H.264 video and Flash-based games should all be noticeably less system intensive, as well as web video content, the majority of which is powered by Flash.
The update flies right in the face of Apple’s Steve Jobs, who has repeatedly lambasted Flash as a “CPU hog”. There was much outcry from Tech fans when it was revealed that Apple’s iPad tablet would not support Flash, given its emphasis on web browsing and the fact that so much online content relies on the Adobe-built plug-in.
So will this updated version of Flash ever make its way onto an iPad? Unlikely; he’s branded Flash a dying “old technology” and put his full weight behind the H.264 codec, despite the difficulties associated with rapidly producing interactive graphics with it.
As it stands right now, seeing Flash on an iPad is like holding your breath for a Super Mario game on the Xbox 360.
