Performance Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

New iPad battery nearly as good as iPad 2

by Kelly Hodgkins (Mar 19th, 2012)

CNET reporter Eric Franklin spent his weekend torture-testing the battery of the new iPad, the iPad 2 and the Android-powered Asus Transformer Prime. He took each device, charged it fully and then drained its juice by continually playing a movie. All these tests were conducted in airplane mode ...

Unity 3.5 available now, with new effects and performance updates

by Mike Schramm (Feb 14th, 2012)

There are quite a few ways to make and build iPhone and iPad apps and games, but one of the most popular tools to create iOS games is the Unity engine, and that system has released version 3.5. The new version offers a number of improvements and upgrades, with lots of new particle and lighting and ...

Asymco graphs Apple's distinctive growth curve and longevity

by Chris Rawson (Jan 19th, 2012)

Look at the major PC vendors in the 1970s, then look at the same industry today. You'll find only one name common to both periods: Apple. The company's competitors from the early days of the PC industry have all either gone out of business, been absorbed into other companies, or shifted focus to ...

Macworld publishes first round of benchmark results for new iMac

by Dana Franklin (May 4th, 2011)

Macworld posted the results of its first benchmark tests for the newly updated family of iMacs this morning. The publication's tests found Apple's latest iMacs to be generally faster than previous iMacs, although certain build-to-order (BTO) models from 2010 still outperformed the new family of ...

Apple confirms some WebKit optimizations unavailable to iOS Apps

by Dana Franklin (Mar 18th, 2011)

The web performance enhancements included in Apple's latest mobile operating system, iOS 4.3, are exclusively available to the Mobile Safari web browser, an Apple spokesperson has confirmed. The optimizations, which double JavaScript performance in Mobile Safari, are not available to the ...

Android vs. iPhone in 'flawed' mobile browser performance test

by Dana Franklin (Mar 17th, 2011)

Post edited to clarify that the browser testing is not representative of Safari performance, and included Blaze response to CNET. –Ed. Blaze Software, a Canadian software company, today released the results of what it calls a "definitive" research effort to discover "which [mobile] ...

Found Footage: Christmas songs played by an iPad band

by Mike Schramm (Dec 8th, 2010)

Not quite in the holiday mood yet? Here's just the thing to get your chestnuts roasting -- on the next page you can watch a video of the North Point Community Church band (a megachurch in Alpharetta, GA) performing some Christmas carols on iPhones and iPads. I heard "Carol of the Bells," "Rocking ...

Office 2011 puts pedal to the metal with demonstrable speed bumps

by Michael Rose (Nov 17th, 2010)

As we've been diving into the Microsoft Office 2011 application suite, we've been focusing on the new features going from 2008 to 2011, and the relative value versus alternative tools like Apple's iWork suite. One thing we haven't really nailed down, though, is speed. Although it's easy to see in ...

Keep your CPU under control with App Tamer

by Brett Terpstra (Sep 17th, 2010)

It's been a little while since we've heard from St. Clair Software, makers of the well-known system utility, Default Folder X (which we've covered before). You may recall that we caught up with St. Clair Software developer Jon Gotow at WWDC '09. Well, he's got something new to announce today: App ...

iTunes 9.2.1 arrives in Software Update -- many fixes, new features

by Steven Sande (Jul 19th, 2010)

According to the update, the new version disables older versions of incompatible third-party plugins, addresses minor issues, with dragging and dropping items, addresses a performance issue when doing a first sync to some devices, addresses an issue upgrading to iOS 4 on an iPhone or iPod touch with ...

Squeeze keyboardist uses iPad on Fallon appearance

by Mike Schramm (Jul 16th, 2010)

Here's a fun treat for your late night tonight -- one of my favorite bands, Squeeze, made an appearance on Jimmy Fallon's show the other night to play the classic "Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)," and the keyboardist was playing both the electronic ivories and an iPad. He even drops a nice solo ...

Workaround for the 27 inch iMac Flash lag?

by Josh Carr (Nov 3rd, 2009)

We've had a few users tell us about performance lags that they're experiencing with their brand new 27" iMacs. Our own Casey Johnston even wrote a quick article about the problem last month. Now that everyone has had a few days to play with the issue and try the obligatory troubleshooting steps, ...

Software Update Alert! Performance Update 1.0 available for download

by Steven Sande (Oct 14th, 2009)

Our sharp-eyed iPhone goddess, Erica Sadun, alerted us to the fact that there's a small, but potentially important, update that has just shown up in Software Update. Performance Update 1.0 "addresses intermittent hard drive-related stalls reported by a small number of customers." It may not show ...

Apple updates green website

by Mike Schramm (Sep 25th, 2009)

Macworld has spotted a new page over on Apple's website highlighting their dedication to making their products as environmentally healthy as possible. We've seen this pitch from Apple within the past few years -- they've recently slimmed down their packaging and started using recyclable materials in ...

CoverSutra updated to be faster and Snow Leopard compatible

by Mike Schramm (Sep 24th, 2009)

I picked up CoverSutra a little while ago in a bundle purchase, and I generally liked it -- it's an iTunes controller with the added features of regular notifications with album art, a music search, and Last.fm scrobbling. My one complaint with the software was that it was a bit of a CPU hogger -- ...