This morning, Adobe Systems made some dreams come true with pre-release updates to two of their key Internet products: Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0. The updates were previously announced in early October and previewed at the recent Adobe MAX 2009 event, but are now available for everyone.

While technically an Adobe Labs beta release, Flash Player 10.1 brings some significant performance enhancements for Mac, Windows and Linux users and their desktop browsers. Sadly, the mobile version of Flash Player is still missing in action, but is expected for Palm’s webOS later this year, with additional devices to be supported in 2010.

Flash Player and AIR both now include multi-touch support (including gestures), a global error handler and long-awaited local microphone access. Additional improvements on the AIR 2.0 front include a native process API, mass storage device detection, open document API, improved socket support and speedier WebKit.

Windows PCs and notebooks also get hardware decoding of H.264 video out of Flash Player, but this feature isn’t yet available to other systems: “H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under Linux and Mac OS,” reads Adobe’s tech notes. “Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. We will continue to evaluate adding the feature to Linux and Mac OS in future releases.”

Tech blogs have been buzzing this morning with early reports that Flash Player 10.1 still features some major playback improvements for Mac users, however, particularly with full-screen Hulu.com viewing. Using a Mac Pro, Anandtech saw their CPU utilization go from 450% CPU load to only 190%. “With actual GPU-accelerated H.264 decoding I’m guessing those CPU utilization numbers could drop to a remotely reasonable value,” they reported.

Both updates are available now at the Adobe Labs site.