Report Finds Performance of Web Apps Throttled on iOS Devices

No, this was NOT "The Register's discovery". This was originally discussed here on HN last Friday, <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2317804" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2317804</a> by marcusramberg, <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=marcusramberg" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=marcusramberg</a>.<p>After replicating some of the tests, as I documented here <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2317975" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2317975</a> in the comments, then here on my site in full, <a href="http://trending.us/2011/03/12/performance-numbers-for-nitro-javascript-engine-in-ios-4-3/" rel="nofollow">http://trending.us/2011/03/12/performance-numbers-for-nitro-...</a>.<p>That was Friday. Then yesterday the author of the Register story, Cade Metz, contacted me out of the blue about my blog post. I more or less told him (what I imagine every developer he contacted about this story) was that Yes, it runs slower in UIWebViews and that No, its not an Apple conspiracy, and that this appears to be a bug that Apple is now aware of going by posts in the Developer forums. I told Mr. Metz that if he can get into the dev forums, he can see for himself, but that I could not directly provide links or anything because the forums are confidential. I don't intend to lose my developer license, thank you.<p>Then yesterday afternoon, the story was published. I was not referred to directly (for which I am thankful), though perhaps one of his anonymous sources was a paraphrasing of some of the things I said.<p>Now here we go again in the echo chamber that is the Valley, where ReadWriteWeb is regurgitating a non-story published by The Register, that was verified by me and others on our personal sites, that I (we?) heard about from Hacker News, that was originally reported by someone else who first found the problem.<p>Assuming marcusramberg was the original discoverer of the this, has he gotten any credit? No.<p>Fucking mountains out of molehills.

So, here's the link to the actual referenced report:<p><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/15/apple_ios_throttles_web_apps_on_home_screen/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/15/apple_ios_throttles_...</a><p>IMO, it doesn't add much to the discussion except for this nugget at the very end of the article:<p>"This developer reiterates that if Apple didn't specifically introduce these problems in iOS, it's aware of them now. <i>And he says that the Mobile Safari team has indicated the issues will not be fixed.</i>"

Where 'throttled' means just as good as before.<p>Occam's razor suggests that they simply hadn't finished the integration work before the ship date.

A big part of me thinks that Apple doesn't quite get that both developers and users both want the full capability of the device to be <i>theirs</i> ... whilst Apple still clings to the idea that they can control the line between device and network.

They probably just forgot to rebuild the WebKit view built into the Springboard that runs homescreen webapps with the new JS engine. I am sure they will issue an update soon.

remember when Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, and said the only applications for it would be web applications? [1] and how, across the next 5 months before native apps were announced, people alternatively wondered how they were going to possibly develop for it, or whether it was going to be a second genesis for the web? yeah, good times.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/11/apple-announces-third-party-software-details-for-iphone/" rel="nofollow">http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/11/apple-announces-third-par...</a>

I think aside from whether this problem was intentionally created by Apple (I don't think it was), I think it does show that Apple considers these web apps to be second class citizens. Making sure the new JS engine worked for these web apps apparently either was not on the list of things to test before shipping 4.3 or it was something that was allowed to slip. Either way, web app performance was not a release blocker for 4.3.

I don't think users actually do this anyway.<p>I am running a twitter poll on how many web apps people have saved to their iPhone: <a href="http://twtpoll.com/r/g3bnth" rel="nofollow">http://twtpoll.com/r/g3bnth</a><p>I have a pretty techy following and this just doesn't seem to be done with any regularity. Maybe half of the people have saved at least one web app, but how many native apps have they installed.<p>I think this tells us two things:<p>1) saving a web app doesn't really make it any better than just using that web app in mobile safari.<p>2) apple has little incentive to prioritize the testing and developing of this feature since so few people actually use it.<p>Seems like a non-issue to me.

If this is a problem with the UIWebView in general, then the problem affects a lot more than just saved Web Apps. Many, many native apps use the UIWebView.

You know I would really like to see Gruber (and Siegler) defending this. yes yes, "apple can do what it likes with its product" is a common retort, but it would be refreshing to see a different one.

This seems like a mighty convenient "bug" given that HTML frameworks like jQuerry Mobile are just starting to be able to deliver a native-app-like user experience.