Apple’s Apps (Usually) Perform Better Than Third-Party Ones

Apple’s apps have access to private APIs they don’t provide to third-party developers. That allows them to make their apps perform magical tasks other apps cannot. Sure, a developer could find out about a secret API and use it, but then Apple would remove their app from the App Store in the event they found out. When it comes to sheer performance, both in speed and in battery life, Apple’s apps will almost always perform better. Let’s take a look at the advantages of Apple’s performance gains: In general, you get faster speeds all around. We’ll get more specific in a minute, but Apple’s apps just perform a heck of a lot better overall. Some developers manage to eke out every last bit of performance and you’d never really know, but certain ones (I’m looking at you, EvoMail), can’t seem to grasp it. With Apple, you get solid performance with pretty much everything—even the App Store, finally, in iOS 7. Safari wins just about every JavaScript benchmark because it has access to a JavaScript engine that uses lower-level system processes that other apps can’t. This sucks, but what can you do. Apple keeps their advantage here by not sharing. Apple video apps use less battery and less power because they use hardware acceleration. Other video apps, like VLC, struggle to keep up. On older devices, apps like VLC can't even play HD video—something Apple's video app does just fine. Now let’s take a look at what you lose: You get fewer features with Apple apps, which means if you want to play an MKV file in VLC or use Chrome because it syncs your bookmarks, you can’t. You need to take the time to convert your video and sync your Chrome bookmarks with Safari just to make it work with your Apple solution. This is really annoying. Apple rarely updates their apps. In fact, Apple default apps tend to only get updates with system updates. Want new features? You have to wait a year. Fortunately you can easily mix and match here. When Apple apps work better, you can use them primarily and have a third-party app fill in the gaps. That doesn’t work in every case (e.g. bookmark syncing with Chrome) but it does with most. What’s the Bottom Line? While third-party apps may work better, you didn’t buy an iPhone because you wanted choice. People buy iPhones because they work well and they look nice. You know what to expect from Apple’s mobile darling, and that’s pretty comforting if you rely on your smartphone for many daily tasks. You don’t have to maintain it like a computer. You know it’ll be there for you when you need it. You can get fed up with restrictions and a lack of options, but do you really need your phone to do everything you ever wanted? Do you really need that much choice? You kind of have to accept the ramifications of going Apple. Your money votes for Apple’s walled garden whether you like it or not. You chose a device that sacrifices choice for comfort. If you don’t like that, you probably purchased the wrong smartphone. So should you just stop worrying and love the walled garden? Yes, to some extent. When the restrictions make your life complicated and frustrating because a third-party app can’t do what you want it to do, let it go. If you can get the experience you want by dumping parts of Apple’s proposed lifestyle, go right ahead. In the end, if you can’t get what you want with iOS you can always jump ship to Android. It all comes down to the types of sacrifices you want to make.