Apple CEO Jobs pushes WSJ to dump Flash

During a recent meeting with executives from the Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Steve Jobs aggressively dismissed Adobe’s Flash technology, urging the publication to develop non-Flash alternatives for its video and other interactive content. Citing people familiar with the meeting, Silicon Alley Insider reports that Jobs called Flash a “CPU hog,” claiming that the iPad’s battery performance would drop from 10 hours to 1.5 hours if forced to spend CPU cycles on Flash processing. The CEO also said Flash was a source of “security holes,” and compared it with other older technologies that have either been jettisoned or are in decline, including the floppy drive, old data ports, non LED-backlit LCD screens, and the CD, which faces competition from higher-capacity physical media and downloads. In addition, Jobs suggested that the Journal should switch to H.264 for its video content, and said that it would be “trivial” to make the switch not only to H.264, but to Javascript-based slideshows and other interactive features.