
My MacBook Pro runs JavaScript 26.7x as fast as my iPad - sant0sk1
http://www.globelogger.com/2010/04/my-macbook-pro-runs-javascript-267x-as-fast-as-my-ipad.html
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sadiq
It would be interesting to see a comparison of Javascript performance per
Watt.

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mechanical_fish
Or per pound.

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scorpion032
or per Dollar (paid for the device)!

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DenisM
Does it make a difference though? I think oit's plenty fast enough to run most
non-game apps. It would help to see an app that's hindered by it before
proclaiming a BFD.

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potatolicious
> _"Does it make a difference though?"_

Yes, a million times yes.

> _"I think oit's plenty fast enough to run most non-game apps."_

Right, and that's the same argument used by a bajillion people before someone
else came and ate their lunch (including Apple!). Nokia had a functional, but
slow, sluggish, and substandard user experience on their phones. Apple came in
and stomped all over that with their slick, super-fast, snappy UI.

IE was functional - sites worked and all - but was slow and bloated when
Firefox came along and blew it out of the water in every way that mattered.

 _Performance always matters._ When you're making the "meh, good enough"
argument, you're in a prime position to be taken out spectacularly by a
competitor who cares.

The complexity of JS-based webapps is going to get higher, not lower. A web-
browsing device that performs JavaScript badly is a BFD.

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ugh
It certainly matters but it might just be the right trade-off in this
situation. Or not.

I think nobody would argue that performance doesn’t matter, it’s just that you
can’t always have everything and then you better pick the right stuff. Apple
probably thinks that JS performance is good enough. For now. And that’s a
attitude I would have no problems with.

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potatolicious
> _"It certainly matters but it might just be the right trade-off in this
> situation. Or not."_

In principle, yes, but if you're marketing a device that is some kind of
ultimate web-browsing machine, and you have to crank down JS performance to
hit battery life... then the technology for your device isn't there yet.

Apple has made the claim forever that they don't execute until the right
technologies are there (an argument they repeated for iPad) - and have
frequently accused competitors of launching something before it's ready (IMHO,
a valid point). This would seem to fit into that case - assuming JS
performance is deliberately low as a trade for battery life.

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swannodette
I'm surprised the gap isn't much larger.

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wmf
Why? 2.66 GHz / 1 GHz is only 2.66x; that means there's a factor of ten
difference due to software and processor architecture.

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chime
Those are the max. speeds. In power-saving mode, I highly doubt the iPad runs
at 1Ghz for anything.

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wmf
What's the point of having a 1 GHz processor if you never run it at that
speed?

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tdmackey
It's a very common process to reduce heat and power consumption. For instance
all the previous iphone and ipod touch underclocked their processor and the
new HTC incredible underclocks. Just about every embedded device underclocks
as a higher speed processor often runs more efficiently at a lower speed than
a processor designed to run at that speed.

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wmf
If the iPad _never_ runs at 1 GHz then we have a case of false advertising. If
the iPad sometimes runs at 1 GHz, just not when executing JavaScript, that
still sounds like a mistake given the complaints in this thread about sluggish
performance.

(Disclaimer: I do power management for a living but I haven't used an iPad.)

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danielrhodes
Using the same test, my MBP is 206 times faster (@347ms) than my 3GS
(@17559ms).

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jws
As long as we are picking on portables, my iMac is 340 times faster than my
iPhone (original model).

I can say that frequently make a frowney face at my iPhone and wonder what the
heck it is doing while I wait, but that I never have done that to my iPad. So
while the iPad browser is not in the running for "fastest javascript platform
on the planet", it is "fast" for everything I've done in real life with it.

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yumraj
Demo of "fast" HTML5 in iPad: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmbZkqORX4>

Edit: put "fast" in quotes per the suggestion below

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treyp
you should have put 'fast' in quotes.

for those who haven't watched it, it's a video about how awful the HTML5
experience is on the iPad so far, not only because of speed but because
developers haven't developed for the touch events.

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groxter
The reason that it IS a BFD is that Steve Jobs is now saying they have "high
performance HTML5" on iPad. This is evidently not true. Here is an app for
which it makes a big difference, something I prepared on my MacBook Pro (with
the iPad in mind) only to be pwned by Apple's anti-competitive exclusion of
the JS JIT compiler from iPad Safari: <http://grokware.com/ff.php>

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akeefer
How exactly is that exclusion anti-competitive? Presumably Apple wants JS to
be fast on the iPad just as much as anyone else does, and would only exclude
something like that for a good reason.

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groxter
You presume too much. Think, man. Free high-performance HTML5 web apps are 1)
not under their control and 2) not profit-making for Apple, as they bypass the
App Store.

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akeefer
You honestly think that Apple would deliberately hamstring javascript
performance on the iPad so that people have to use native apps? I think it's
pretty ludicrous to think they'd do that: their sales of the iPad are
directly, heavily affected by perceived performance of the device. If it's
slow, people won't buy it.

How many extra apps do you think that move would make people buy: 2? 5? So you
think they'd cripple performance and lose hundreds of thousands of sales so
that they can get people to spend an extra $20 or so at the app store, of
which they'll get all of $6? If they wanted your extra $6 that badly they'd
just up the price on the device.

I just don't understand this constant assumption that every decision Apple
makes is anti-competitive and designed to achieve lockin. Isn't it way more
rational to assume that they want to make the device as good as possible
because they make money by selling devices, and that their decisions are
primarily driven by that motive?

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groxter
Naive.

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groxter
I got -4 karma points on this, for refusing to answer point by point the
arguments of a naive Apple fanboy. I'll go back to just scanning HN, instead
of participating. I've been a professional programmer for over 30 years,
Written for Macs since 1984, I know what I'm talking about, and I find the
current generation of developers to be, well, babies.

~~~
groxter
On the contrary, it was quite civil and thought provoking. It was simply
terse, elegant, and to the point. "Naive" needn't have been interpreted as a
personal attack, it was a sufficient and complete summary of the argument
presented, implying it undeserving of response. Only lack of creative
imagination would consider "Naive" not thought-provoking. It is not my
responsibility to hand-hold and lead a conversation. If someone cannot
immediately mentally extrapolate the implications of a statement, maybe they
should ponder it and explore the possible meanings, giving me the benefit of
the doubt as to poignancy. Instead, they vote it down, because it's not full
of the superficial spoon-fed explicitness the down-voters expect.

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cesare
I got 12961ms on my HTC Desire (Android, 1Ghz cpu).

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JoelSutherland
24088 on the Palm Pre. (Dual core 500mhz)

