iPad Pro Safari on iPadOS is not quite a desktop level browser

[Retskrad]

I recently bought the 12.9 iPad Pro with the new M2 chip thinking that it's going to be the same great browsing machine as my M1 MacBook Air running Chrome. Turns out, Safari on iPadOS is a gimped version of a desktop browser and the javascript performance is slower. Reddit.com, YouTube.com, Twitter.com, Google docs on the web all load slighty slower on the iPad. The question is, why is Apple putting a gimped browser on the iPad? Is it because Apple restricts apps to a small amount of RAM and as a result apps can't load huge parts of the browser engine in memory?

 

[pdoherty]

M1 MacBook Pro vs M1 iPad Pro: Which is quickest in the real world? | TechRepublic

Apple's new M1 chips make MacBook Pros and iPad Pros faster than ever. But is there a big difference between the two? Erik Eckel aimed to find out.

www.techrepublic.com

Fully accessing a website not previously cached required 5.6 seconds on the iPad Pro and eight seconds on the MacBook Pro, whereas downloading a 125MB file from a popular U.S.-based photography site took 9.13 seconds on the iPad Pro and 10 seconds flat on the MacBook Pro. Those numbers were consistent with simple download tests run on both devices in which the iPad Pro measured in at 210.8Mbps downstream, 10.62Mbps upstream and just 17ms for pings, close to identical to the MacBook Pro’s 211.39Mbps down, 10.76Mbps up and 20ms.

 

[ct2k7]

M1 MacBook Pro vs M1 iPad Pro: Which is quickest in the real world? | TechRepublic

Apple's new M1 chips make MacBook Pros and iPad Pros faster than ever. But is there a big difference between the two? Erik Eckel aimed to find out.

www.techrepublic.com

As the article says, it’s completely unscientific.

And what does “fully accessing” a website mean?

The routes taken for a packet to get from a source to a target is going to vary, which is why you can never reproduce download and uploads and likely latency in a real world scenario.

It’s possible both of you aren’t wrong: the browser architectures are slightly different in both macOS and iOS so I’m not inclined to believe any of these statistical values outside of face value.

Your article doesn’t account for Safari on iOS and Chrome on macOS, which is what OP’s comparison is. I don’t use Chrome on macOS so have no idea what its performance is.

That the article says this tells you how ludicrous and how the author misunderstands technology is:

Opening commonly used Microsoft tools, such as Outlook and Planner, required only two seconds and one second, respectively, on the iPad Pro and 11.22 seconds for Outlook and 4.22 seconds for Planner on the MacBook Pro.

 

[Shirasaki]

Safari is just a terrible browser period, with few developers willing to properly optimise it Compared to google chrome. And on iPadOS apple probably removes some features that macOS safari has and still claim “desktop browser”. Some websites still behave strangely on iPadOS despite user agent stating macOS. For example, pixiv doesn’t load image preview correctly all the time on Safari, but correct every single time on Chrome (and I’m talking about iPadOS Chrome, which uses the same WebKit as Safari on iPadOS does).

website reload time varies greatly due to network conditions, connection congestion among other factors, and thus should not be used for any sort of comparison.

 

[Andeddu]

Safari is the best browser I have ever used. Genuinely.