Is the iPad's CPU adaquate for web browsing?

[ReallyOldGuy]

Just tested MBA, iPad and iMac.

IMac was a little faster than the iPad with the Air being slower than the iPad about a second and a half

iMac 2.66
MBA. 1.8

 

[topmounter]

If it takes you 16s to load cnn.com then you should have spent your money on something other than an iPad.

 

[antiprotest]

I watched a review video where it took an iPad 16 seconds to load CNN.com via wifi.

It took 4 seconds to load CNN.com on my macbook =/
(my first time to go to that website)

I guess it is unacceptable then. I'll have to wait for the next version, hopefully it is faster.

This can't be right. Web browsing on the iPad is fast. Just go try one at an Apple store.

 

[MRU]

He watched a review video. It was not first hand experience and therefore he was not comparing hardware on his own Internet connection speeds. Basically he made an epic fail of an assumption without paying any thought to why there could be a discrepancy. This thread is just bunk. Period.

 

[antiprotest]

He watched a review video. It was not first hand experience and therefore he was not comparing hardware on his own Internet connection speeds. Basically he made an epic fail of an assumption without paying any thought to why there could be a discrepancy. This thread is just bunk. Period.

I cannot be sure, but it seems to me that he is really not giving the iPad a fair chance. This might be one of those threads where someone is just looking for a reason not to buy in order to combat the jealousy.

This is only speculation, but the OP's attitude is definitely not one of an eager inquirer.

 

[Southern Dad]

I believe a lot of the speed of loading pages has to do with the network in your home. My iPad is connecting via "N" and is faster than my MacBook which is on "G" but my Mac Pro is ethernet and thus the fastest. But the difference is only a second or two.

Anyone remember the days of 300 baud modems? Now that was truly slow but we thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.

 

[martynmc7]

For web browsing it's great. For PDF's on the other hand, even with good reader it's shockingly slow.

I think this may just be an issue with Good Reader, if you try the Dropbox app PDF's are buttery smooth.

 

[Blakjack]

Of course it's suitable. It's better than my comcast, my iPhone, waaaaay better than clears wi-fi, and it's many times better than my AT&T at home. It's a computer man, it's not perfect. I love my iPad. Best and most important thing vie ever bought.

 

[spinedoc77]

My ipad must be broken, it loads webpages slowly, MUCH slower than my macbook air or any other PC I have. The inital load is slightly slower than on a laptop/desktop, but it's the rendering of the webpage that is significantly slower. On a computer the whole page loads at the same time, but on my ipad only the part of the page viewable loads, you can see this when you scroll down and that part of the page isn't loaded. I've even occasionally had it where I scroll back up and the part of the page that was already loaded wasn't loaded anymore.

I'm not talking about a long time, maybe a second or 3, but its 1-3 seconds that is not present on any of my computers.

And yeah PDF files are slow, especially when you are talking about a 700 page textbook with pictures. Both goodreader (especially goodreader is painfully slow) and iannotate can take several seconds to load a page, and it seems to load them one at a time, but on my computers once the entire PDF is loaded I can cruise thru the entire 700 pages with no loading at all.

 

[0dev]

It's very speedy, the reloading of pages everytime you go back to another tab is annoying, but that could be fixed by better memory management in future software updates I'm sure.

 

[oliver5893]

Web browsing on iPad actually feels faster than a Mac for me. I've had very few occasions where it has felt at all slow; to be honest I haven't even noticed that there's no Flash (anyone else or am I just delirious?)

iPad is more than adequate for everyday browsing. One annoyance is about the different tabs not being held in the background and requiring reloading, apart from that it's great.

 

[rutiger]

casual browsing is totally adequate to me. unfortunately sites with large amounts of photos like a nikon forum i use will overload the ipad and either won't show the images or crashes the browser. not sure if this is just a memory thing or cpu related as well. either way that kind of sucks.

also, there's a few sites i'd like to use that don't work right no matter what ipad browser i use. there's a site i want to use for work which is a product configurator tool. the buttons don't work as they should. i'm sure the website owner could fix it, but they're totally unresponsive.

 

[martynmc7]

My ipad must be broken, it loads webpages slowly, MUCH slower than my macbook air or any other PC I have. The inital load is slightly slower than on a laptop/desktop, but it's the rendering of the webpage that is significantly slower. On a computer the whole page loads at the same time, but on my ipad only the part of the page viewable loads, you can see this when you scroll down and that part of the page isn't loaded. I've even occasionally had it where I scroll back up and the part of the page that was already loaded wasn't loaded anymore.

I'm not talking about a long time, maybe a second or 3, but its 1-3 seconds that is not present on any of my computers.

And yeah PDF files are slow, especially when you are talking about a 700 page textbook with pictures. Both goodreader (especially goodreader is painfully slow) and iannotate can take several seconds to load a page, and it seems to load them one at a time, but on my computers once the entire PDF is loaded I can cruise thru the entire 700 pages with no loading at all.

I'm hoping that these issues are software related, we'll see how things are when OS 4.0 is released. I've heard people say that the current iPad OS is a stop-gap before a version of the OS that was truly developed to optimise the iPad hardware.

 

[xraydoc]

The iPad is slower than my other Macs, but not by too much. Not enough to be unacceptable. I find the iPad's browser speed to be perfectly acceptable.

But remember, you're pitting a $500 device (which only costs Apple about $290 in parts) against Macs which are using dual-core (minimum) x86 processors at clock speeds 2.5-3x faster than the iPad. The Macs better be faster than the iPad or there's something wrong with the Mac.

 

[synagence]

Ok, my iMac (3Ghz C2D) loads CNN.com fresh in 4 seconds, iPad in 9seconds...

What do you expect thought?
You're comparing a 2-3Ghz multi-core laptop/desktop class CPU compared to a ultra low-power 1Ghz System on a Chip....

Its like complaining that a 4 litre engine'd BMW is faster to 100mph than a 1.5litre city-car....

Its not going to be as quick at loading media intense pages as a full blown laptop but can you honestly expect it to do otherwise?

Why are peoples expectations anything else?

 

[Gibson88]

For people having problems its probably down to this Wi-Fi software bug, hold out for the fix and I'm sure things will improve.

 

[Jaro65]

My iPad is definitely slower loading webpages, sometimes annoyingly slow. This is readily evident when you scroll down and see a couple of seconds of a grid of an unloaded page. After a couple of seconds it loads, then you scroll down again and there is the grid again.

I wonder if this has more to do with its video memory and caching though.

 

[Brookzy]

Just tested abc.com on iPad and iMac. Not visited page before on either device.

Bear in mind I have a slow connection (1.1 Mbps about)

iMac - 16.9 seconds to fully load (ethernet)
iPad - 17.2 seconds to fully load (obv. Wifi)

I'm impressed at the similarity.

 

[msmyth]

In regards to the comments about CNN.com i thought I'd give it a try.

5-6 secs. Thats from the UK aswell which would mean more traffic routing surely?

I've found some JS intensive sites to be slower, but nothing near unnaceptable.

 

[Nevasleep]

It's faster than my netbook, which would randomly slow to a crawl.

Haven't really noticed it being slower than my desktop, it's fast enough for me.

 

[Sebby]

I watched a review video where it took an iPad 16 seconds to load CNN.com via wifi.

It took 4 seconds to load CNN.com on my macbook =/
(my first time to go to that website)

I guess it is unacceptable then. I'll have to wait for the next version, hopefully it is faster.

It just took me about 5 seconds to load CNN.com on my iPad.

 

[phpmaven]

I cannot be sure, but it seems to me that he is really not giving the iPad a fair chance. This might be one of those threads where someone is just looking for a reason not to buy in order to combat the jealousy.

This is only speculation, but the OP's attitude is definitely not one of an eager inquirer.

Ya Think?