One of the most obvious drawbacks of Apple’s approach to iOS development has been the fact that no browser except for Safari could tap into Apple’s fastest Javascript engine. Not only did this decision prevent standalone browser apps like Chrome from running at full speed, it also hampered apps like Twitter that need to open a lot of URLs. As noted in Re/code, this is changing in iOS 8: Apps using the latest WebKit interface will have access to Apple’s Javascript engine. Hopefully, this means users will soon be able to also set a new default browser as well, but we’ll see: iOS 8 may be significantly more open than previous versions, but Apple’s not going to radically change overnight.
Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.