One of the big differentiators between the Apple iPad and the Motorola Xoom is the ability of the latter to support Adobe Flash, a technology that Steve Jobs said is not the future of the internet. The Xoom was released last month and Flash was nowhere to be found due to development delays by Adobe. The company has now released version 10.2, currently available for all Xoom owners, but unfortunately the software is still a beta release and not the full-fledged offering. The USA TODAY is reporting that Adobe expects to release the full version, including hardware accelerations, in the next few weeks
While this is a good first step, reports from PC World and CNet say that the software isn’t quite ready for prime time. The biggest complaint seems to revolve around the playback of HD video. It seems that there are audio sync issues and playback is jerky or outright crashes. In addition, websites with advertisements that use Flash obviously take longer to load on the Xoom, although they still load faster than the original iPad. Lastly, Hulu blocks all access to the Xoom via the browser.
All of the playback issues should be resolved in the next few weeks once hardware acceleration is brought to the non-beta version, but this continues to show that the Xoom is a cutting edge product and not quite as polished as people had hoped.