Adobe on Thursday released its Flash Player 10.1 for the Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems - after fixing 32 vulnerabilities across its product line.

Adobe on Thursday released its Flash Player 10.1 for the Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems - after fixing 32 vulnerabilities across its product line.

The company also released Adobe AIR 2 for the same OSes.

Adobe promised improvements in performance, power management, and video, as well as new multi-touch and private browsing capabilities, and Mac-specific updates.

An Android version is expected later this month; the beta release is available now in the Android Market.

The news comes as Adobe fixed 32 separate vulnerabilities, including one that was the target of zero-day attacks on Acrobat and Reader. AIR was also updated to address some of these flaws.

The update is critical and all users would be well-advised to apply it as soon as possible. If left to its own devices, the vulnerabilities could lead to remote code execution and Web-based attacks. Remember that different browsers on your system may have different installations of Flash, so you have to check and potentially update all of them. Check your Flash version on Adobe's site.

Adobe and Apple have waged a very public battle over Flash lately, with Apple chief executive Steve Jobs recently antiquated, closed, and unstable, and refusing to allow it on Apple devices like the iPad.

Nonetheless, Flash Player 10.1 makes several Mac-specific improvements. The release is now a full-fledged Cocoa app, so it leverages Cocoa events, uses Cocoa UI for its dialogs, leverages Core Audio for sound, Core graphics for printing support, and Core Foundation for bundle-style text, Paul Betlem, a Flash Player engineer, wrote in a blog post.

Adobe also used double-buffer OpenGL for improved full-screen playback and used Core Animation to improve rendering performance on Macs, he said.

"Don't let the version number fool you! Flash Player 10.1 is more than a 'dot upgrade.' It was a monumental undertaking including some significant architectural improvements and a long list of enhancements that will help the more than 3 million Flash designers and developers continue to move web innovation forward," Betlam wrote.