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Apple Handcuffs Web Apps On iPhone Home Screen
SF Polack writes "On Apple's iOS 4.3, HTML5 and JavaScript apps are running significantly slower when they're run from the iPhone or iPad home screen rather than Safari, and the OS is hindering the performance of these apps in other ways. The end result is that it's harder for web apps to compete with native iOS app sold through the App Store, where Apple takes a 30 per cent of sales."
RTFA.
It says (near the end) that the Apple mobile team has confirmed the issue and Apple engineers also said that it will not be fixed.
It doesn't matter whether the new behavior was introduced deliberately or not, the negative effects are there. And Apple is saying they won't be fixing it. Therefore the article is not a troll.
The cause of this has been discovered already; it's a software bug. iOS 4.3 has a new JavaScript engine. Websites launched from the home screen seem to be reverting to and using the old JavaScript engine from iOS 4.2. The article makes it sound like a conspiracy. I'm sure it'll be patched soon; I can think of no obvious reason to do this but give the same apps full speed if bookmarked within the web browser.
This is the opinion(not mine, I know this will be downvoted regardless) of this very interesting and detailed article which I wanted to post.
http://blog.millermedeiros.com/2011/01/ipad-is-the-new-ie6/
This space for rent.
> Apple allow free apps in their store.
Apple still gets money for that. $99/year to host a free app. If you stop paying the $99/year, Apple removes the app from the store.
We're not talking about these apps which were native apps and not web apps.
Yes, that's exactly what we are talking about. The whole point of the article is that if these services now want to be on the iPhone, etc without paying that cut to Apple they will need to create a web app, and when they attempt to integrate them seamlessly using Apple's recommended method, they will run more slowly for no apparent reason.
You don't need a subscription for the Kindle app. There are tons of free Kindle ebooks too. But Apple wants 30% of the cost of any ebooks that Amazon sells through the Kindle app.
This space for rent.