Adobe Released Adobe Flash Player 9 for Mac OS X (PPC or Rosetta) and Adobe Flex 2

Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced the availability of Adobe Flash Player 9 (formerly Flash Player 8.5), the next-generation Flash Player client runtime for the Mac. However, the new version 9 is still not a Universal application. If one wishes to run it on an Intel-based Mac, the Web browser must be forced to run under Rosetta emulation.

According to Adobe, Flash Player 9 achieves up to 10 times faster performance through ActionScript 3.0 and a new ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM), which features a Just In Time (JIT) compiler that translates ActionScript bytecode to native machine code for maximum execution speed.

Flash Player 9 provides new application runtime capabilities for Adobe Flex 2, also announced today. The Flex 2 product line provides developers with a comprehensive, integrated set of tools and technology for fast, end-to-end development of rich and innovative web applications.

Adobe Flash Player 9 is available immediately as a free download from this Adobe Web page. Flash Player 9 is available for the Mac OS X (PPC and Rosetta) in both English and localized versions. [Bill Fox]