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 exceptions, to use the WebKit browser engine that powers Safari.
The performance tax comes to 28.6 percent, almost as much as Apple's 30 percent commission rate.
Browser rendering engines handle the heavy lifting for web browsers. "They determine how web standards are implemented, how security and privacy protections are enforced, and which actors ultimately shape the evolution of the web," as Mozilla recently explained.
Just three major engines dominate commercial deployments: Blink, the foundation of Chrome and its Chromium-based siblings Edge, Vivaldi, Brave, and Opera, among others; WebKit, the foundation of Safari; and Gecko, the foundation of Firefox.
Firefox holds...
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