Mr. Jobs met with The Journal‘s editorial staff to pitch them on launching the paper on the iPad, part of which included a salespitch to dump Flash for video and slideshows for presentation on the iPad. In the process, he called Flash a “CPU hog,” and said it was filled with security holes, and even labeled it a dying technology.
As with other dying technologies, Mr. Jobs was confident that Apple could lead the world to new directions the same way it did with floppy disks , Apple’s own ADB connectivity port, CDs, and LCD screens.
Mr. Jobs also reportedly said that if the iPad spent its CPU cycles on decoding Flash that it would degrade battery performance on the device from 10 hours to 1.5 hours. When the device was introduced, Apple said that it had up to 10 hours of batter life even when playing a video, non-Flash video, of course.
BusinessInsider said that it wasn’t clear how the assembled editors receive the presentation, and pointed out that it was shortly thereafter when one of those present co-authored an editorial accusing Apple of becoming more like Microsoft when it comes to dogged pursuit of perceived enemies, using the lack of Flash on the iPad as an example.
The Wall Street Journal has used Flash extensively in building its online presence for the paper making the topic a salient one when contemplating offering the paper on the iPad.
In a video interview, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch recently said that his company was working hard on improving Flash, that it was focused on making it better on the Mac platform, and that the company was open to criticism of the technology and listened to both customers and critics alike.