Apple Degrading Web Performance, Enhancing App Performance?

With all the recent talk about the merits and problems posed by network neutrality rules, specifically understood as preventing the optimization of end user experience using packet prioritization, there also has been some largely ignored talk about why Internet access providers could not optimize experience when application providers or even handset manufacturers are allowed to tweak their services and features to do precisely that sort of thing.

Some developers now say Apple's iOS mobile operating system runs web applications at significantly slower speeds when they're launched from the iPhone or iPad home screen as opposed to in the Apple Safari browser, and at the same time, the operating system hampers the performance of these apps in other ways. In other words, Apple might be tweaking the performance of Internet-delivered applications in ways that favor its app store products.

It's unclear whether these are accidental bugs or issues consciously introduced by Apple, observers say. But the end result is that, at least in some ways, the iOS platform makes it harder for web apps to replace native applications distributed through the Apple App Store, where the company takes a 30 per cent cut of all applications sold.

Whereas native apps can only run on Apple's operating system, web apps, built with standard web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can potentially run on any device.

"Apple is basically using subtle defects to make web apps appear to be low quality, even when they claim HTML5 is a fully supported platform," says one mobile web app developer.

Apple handcuffs 'open' web apps on iPhone home screen