Credit where credit is due, Adobe has released a preview version of Flash that is hardware accelerated on current nvidia equipped iMac and Macbooks.
Get it here:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/gala/
It works really, really nicely! If you see a small white square in the top left corner of a video, you know hardware accel has kicked in. So love or hate Flash, this is probably currently the best implementation out there for Apple users.
The ultimate irony, of course, is that Apple exposed an API for h.264 hardware decode, which Flash now implements, but that ironically, that same h.264 content is what is being positioned as the replacement for much of what Flash does in common usage. So if you like Flash, this is great for you. If you hate Flash, realize that encouraging more content to go h.264 is ultimately leading to Flash's demise, so you can feel good about running this. Win Win!
I don't care, I'm just happy to have an improved tool available to me. Thanks Adobe!