Apple's WebKit performance tax leaves iOS browsers stuck in the slow lane, says Microsoft Critics and competitors have long complained about the "Apple Tax" – the sales commission developers are obliged to pay on App Store sales and in-app purchases. Now Microsoft engineers have documented a performance tax – the performance hit that iOS users today endure because Apple requires iOS browsers, with theoretical …
I use Safari on Mac an iPhone, and the only "slowness" I see is due to slow websites or slow mobile data (often so slow I get nothing).
Are we talking fractions of a second difference or something noticeable?
BTW - anyone else seeing the "comment" links of this site still coming and going at random? I also often get the connection dropping when trying to post comments (also happened with the previous version of the site).
"BTW - anyone else seeing the "comment" links of this site still coming and going at random? I also often get the connection dropping when trying to post comments (also happened with the previous version of the site)."
The comment icon seemed to appear about 30 minutes after the article itself but not always. I assumed it was intentional — to give the commentards the chance to read the article first. ;)
But I have noticed some flakiness in the forums too. (I mean the site not the content… well, yes, that too.)
Would you like that slow website to be 25% faster? That seems to be what's being said.
Obviously, we can't tell how much of that slowness is down to poor browser performance and how much is due to the quantity of data the web site shovels at you. But, equally, speed is subjective and even a 25% speed up at the right moments could make the page seem a lot snappier than the raw metric hints.
(And that's all before the browser makers have had a chance to optimise the performance on iOS.)
Well, I can say that, in the past at least, Safari was notoriously bad at following standards. For example, it was years behind in implementing http verbs other than `GET` and `POST`: `PUT`, as an example. I get the sense that some web devs see it as backward when it comes to JS and CSS features as well.
Also, while speed to load content is one thing, battery use is another. Browsing on iOS seems to guzzle batteries far beyond other activities like YouTube.
I can certainly see the risk in a half-baked browser engine being exploited, but methink Apple doth protest too much on our behalf.
I'd MUCH rather have a more secure browser than a faster browser. Not saying Safari is necessarily more secure but Microsoft is totally ignoring that and implying that speed is all that matters. Given Microsoft's track record with security that's hardly surprising!
Safari (and Firefox) deliberately do not support some of the insecure-by-design HTML extensions Google rammed through the standards process that Chrome does like websites having direct USB device access via the browser, so there's certainly room to argue on security by design even if it is hard to compare them on a CVE by CVE basis (since not everyone assigns/reports CVEs in the same way)
There's also an argument to be made for Apple continuing to require the Webkit engine on iOS simply on "prevention of browser monoculture" grounds. With Firefox sadly having such a low market share, the iPhone being Webkit only is really the ONLY thing saving us all (even Apple haters) from a Google controlled Chromium browser monopoly. Because if Apple was forced to allow native Chrome browsers on iOS worldwide, how long do you think it would be before web designers decide "I don't want to devote any extra time insuring my web site is compatible with Safari, I'll design/test it only for Chrome and put a 'best viewed in Chrome' badge on it. If any iPhone users complain something doesn't work in my site I'll point to that and tell them they need to use Chrome to access my web site."
If it was only a few sites you visit doing that you could either quit using them or use Chrome only when you do. But it wouldn't be, it would be enough sites that iPhone users would go from having no choice but to use Safari (or at least Webkit) to having no choice but to use Chrome, which is unquestionably a worse outcome for everyone but Google shareholders. They would be FORCED to adopt Chrome as their default browser because so many sites would be broken in Safari - perhaps even deliberately if post "do no evil" Google copies some old school Microsoft OS/2 era tactics.
There's no need to be an apologist for Apple. Of course, no-one should want to use Microsoft Bling as a browser, but they should be able to. There's nothing to stop Apple adding additional security requirements to browsers but this was never the justification in the first place. In fact, "speed" was the reason Apple gave for not allowing Adobe Flash to run on its phones – it wasn't really, but it was the one they gave.
Apple has a poor record of releasing fixes for its software and competition could help improve this. I don't use Chrome and I don't like particularly like Google, but I can remember what a change it was when they entered the browser market. And I think it would be hard to argue that their work on the browser hasn't benefitted all users. At the time, Mozialla and Opera were struggling to convince regulators how bad Microsoft's stranglehold of the browser market was for consumers. Apple has followed similar tactics with its own browser: implement niche things it wants and ignore the rest.
This seems to make 3 assumptions:
First that Safari is the greatest rendering engine in terms of safety, better than anything else that could be deployed on iOS. What makes anyone think so, other than MS acting as an anti-expert of sorts here? I happen to think glitches and JS and CSS standards non-compliance are an indicator of browser immaturity, unless those bits of the standards themselves are security-risky.
Second that I would use Edge. Or Chrome. Most certainly not. Firefox with its own rendering backend is what I’d prefer. Once it had proven robust - see next point.
Third, that I would not privilege safety. I would, but I’d much rather base my choices in that regard on industry experts’ say-so (hint: not MS) than a blanket fiat Apple nyet that ensures they don’t really have competition to challenge them.
Last, iOS itself is pretty robust safety wise. Any _actual_, _demonstrated_, risk to the OS itself should indeed result in a browser’s ban.
are that keen on having Edge or any other browser on their devices. Most Apple/iOS users seem fairly content in their walled garden and I don't entirely blame them.
I am not a big Apple fan but the boring predictability of my small now obsolete iPhone is reassuring compared with some of the insanity of its Android predecessors.
If Apple were to let the AI no·ball through to the keeper they might well find themselves on the right side of history — possibly the last man standing.
Umm... I have before me a MacBook Air, running the latest Apple non-beta OS, and Safari (latest release) and Firefox (just updated to 152 this morning). I also have a Lenovo desktop (not one of my personal machines) running the latest MS crapware release and Edge and Firefox (just updated to 152 this morning) plus an iPad Pro on the latest iPadOS release and running Safari. All are connected by WiFi 5, to the same WAP. The iPad Pro is, if anything, very slightly faster than the others; the difference is totally insignificant. Edge on the Lenovo is the slowest, but not by much and frankly if I hadn't been looking closely at performance I wouldn't have noticed. All three were connecting to El Reg's front page, and then to Yahoo's front page. I suspect that the main difference is that I have adblockers running in Safari and Firefox but not Edge, so Edge gets slowed by ads. Who knows, if I had an adblocker on Edge it might place first, but it's not my machine and those who own it don't want any 3rd-party extensions on Edge. (Which is why I usually use Firefox on that machine...)
...and still yet to see what all the fuss is about. Browser rendering is the least of the problems. It's the worst piece of kit I've ever owned.
For those wondering why I bought one, it was due to my dumbphone not being smart enough to run a hospital check-in app. A requirement that was dropped a week after buying the phone. Still, the battery is almost ****ed so I'll find a decent dumbphone to replace it. Any suggestions?
I have an iPhone I acquired for free (no, I didn't steal it) and thought I'd give it a fair trial in case it was my infrequent use of iOS causing me to find it the most infuriatingly illogical and clumsy GUI short of Windows 8.
Suffice to say I still don't use an iPhone, pretty happy with Pixel 9 running GrapheneOS. Still runs nearly all Android apps if required but doesn't feel like it actually belongs to Big Brother.
Speed not an issue? I'm not so sure. My machine is very sluggish and I've only got 37 tabs open ... :-)
The real issue is the crap loading behind what you need. Why have a line of text saying "done" instead of 3 concurrent animations, ten ads, five sliding backgrounds and a floating pop-up dialogue box ...?
Perhaps I'm just too old?
So the best argument against a monoculture at a specific level (iOS) is to force a monoculture (all devices)? Wait ... what?
The Chrome/Chromium monoculture needs to stop. It has clear that Firefox has lost the battle and the war. So, it becomes "Help me Safari on iOS, you're my only hope".
If you want openness and competition, then split Google's Browser division out from Google (and Edge from MS where applicable). Prevent Chrome being installed by default on Andriod devices as well. Then the argument about Safari on iOS holds some weight.
