Flash Player 10.2 was released today. The big claimed improvement is better, i.e. lower, CPU utilization playing H.264 encoded HD video. This tweet claims a big drop in CPU usage for Pandora.com's Flash app.
Curious, I installed Flash Player 10.2 on my main iMac even with the rare Safari pseudo-hang I had on the work laptop after installing Flash Player 10.2
Here's the audio playback performance I see in Mac OS X 10.6.6:
- Pandora.com playing a song with Flash Player 10.2 uses ~ 10% of CPU
- iTunes 10.1.2 playing a 256 kbps AAC file ~ 5% of CPU
- Pandora.com's Flash app paused, ~ 6.6% CPU
Yeah, Flash is totally not going to use more CPU cycles than native Mac OS X audio/video playback Real Soon Now™