Katie MarsalThe video posted this week by RIM is entitled "BlackBerry PlayBook and iPad Comparison: Web Fidelity." The video shows the PlayBook loading a number of websites much faster than Apple's iPad.
RIM also touted that their device can run Adobe Flash, demonstrating the interactive front page of adidas.com with the PlayBook. Loading the same site on the iPad shows a message that says Flash is not available on the device.
The video also shows an Acid3 test to demonstrate HTML5 performance of the PlayBook and iPad. Both Apple's and RIM's tablets earn a perfect score of 100 out of 100, though the iPad has a rendering artifact in the top right corner.
Of course, the iPad has already been on the market since April, while RIM's PlayBook will not go on sale until early 2011. Apple is expected to announce its next-generation iPad about the same time.
RIM also hopes to take on the iPad with a competitive starting price of under $500. But the device will also come with a smaller 7-inch screen than Apple's 9.7-inch iPad display.
Screen sizes of tablet devices has been a hot topic since Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs criticized iPad competitors, like the PlayBook, for their smaller 7-inch screens. Jobs said that Apple's own internal testing has found that a 7-inch display is too small to be functional for most users.
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273 Comments
The apparent speed differences could be due to them exploiting differences in caching behavior. It's not exactly a controlled test, it's a propaganda film, so it's hard to determine how much weight should be given to it.
This is a RIM Job!
The apparent speed differences could be due to them exploiting differences in caching behavior. It's not exactly a controlled test, it's a propaganda film, so it's hard to determine how much weight should be given to it.
Or it could not. You don't know. The user did type the web addresses manually. The flash part did not look that impressive to me. What was more telling was the supposed Flash killer canvas/js demos which reduced the ipad to a crawl. That needs to improve for ipad 2.0 and if fuel for the fire that canvas+js is not ready to be a drop in replacement for flash yet... at least on mobile devices.
Or it could not. You don't know. The user did type the web addresses manually. The flash part did not look that impressive to me. What was more telling was the supposed Flash killer canvas/js demos which reduced the ipad to a crawl. That needs to improve for ipad 2.0 and if fuel for the fire that canvas+js is not ready to be a drop in replacement for flash yet... at least on mobile devices.
That's why I said:
Same applies to the js demos. Obviously these are all handpicked sites. Without independent testing, it's pretty meaningless.
I won't speak to the performance differences, they are likely using the latest greatest whatever browser whereas the browser on the ipad is getting a bit long in tooth whilst waiting for 4.2 to come out, call me when they test a release version of their browser with whatever is the current ios version when they ship the thing.
What I did want to mention is that gawd awful adidas flash site. All I have to say is thank goodness that mess of a website doesn't come up on the ipad. It's an utter waste of bytes, an wonderful example of "flash" (both literally and figuratively) over function and frankly, good taste. One should note that the iphone version of the site is much nicer but still manages nice graphics and loads way faster (notice the flash animation stuttering along on the playbook, yeah, that gets me excited about flash).