Apple: Web Apps Don’t Utilize Safari Performance Optimizations

The better half of the afternoon today was spent reading about a silly iOS vs. Android web browsing speed benchmark that tried to prove iOS web browsing is slower than Android. Suffice to say, the whole thing was flawed and a waste of time.

Regarding the matter, Apple issued a statement to The Register confirming rumors that iOS web apps and embedded web views in apps run twice as slow as regular mobile Safari.

The iOS 4.3 update included a new “Nitro” web processing engine that runs java script 2x as fast as previous versions of mobile Safari. But this only happens in the full mobile Safari.

In other words, third-party web browser users and iOS web app users would not experience the mobile Safari improvements, the latter of which was used to “prove” iOS browsing is slower than Android browsing in the silly benchmark today (which spawned a lot of this mobile Safari vs. web app Safari stuff)

Apple spokesperson Trudy Miller confirms that only the full mobile Safari experiences performance enhancements:

The embedded web viewer does not take advantage of Safari’s web performance optimizations.

Done and done.

20110317-060634.jpg[The Register]

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