The player has had major changes in terms of memory use, frame/execution timing, and how it is suspended or not. You're taking one phrase from a non-tech person and judging from that.
I hope you are right though.
I know from my experience with Flash on Linux that it is insane, Flash eventually consumes 4gb of memory and slows my computer to a halt. I finally just removed the plugin and browse without flash.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/releasenote... (PDF Link)
Also there is a huge number of bug fixes in this release... don't know why they didn't just call it Flash Player 11, it's not really a dot release.