The much-maligned Adobe Flash is getting a boost on the Mac platform this week, with the arrival of the official release of Flash Player 10.2 for Mac, following the first beta version released back in December.

Cult of Mac is reporting that Adobe has made the official release of Flash Player 10.2 for Mac available to the public at large after making a beta version available for the last couple months. Even if you use Flash infrequently, this version is worth an install, especially if you have a recent computer.

“The big advance in Flash Player 10.2 is functionality called Stage Video that offloads almost all of the rendering of high-performance videos to the GPU, using ‘just over 0 percent CPU usage,’” Cult of Mac explains. “Stage Video should have a noticeable effect on battery life and snappiness, and if you can’t get along with Flash on your Mac notebook, Stage Video support alone makes this an easy upgrade to recommend.”

Of course, the Stage Video performance is also dependent upon content providers enabling the technology’s API, which not too many have done thus far. That means that for now, Flash Player will continue to rely on the main processor for video -- and likely drain your laptop battery in no time flat.

Adobe Flash Player version 10.2.152.26 is a 5.54MB universal binary for Macs and is available to download and enjoy right now. Note that you’ll need to shut down any open browsers in order to install the new version, and iOS users are still out in the cold for now.

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