XP is faster for 'rich internet'?


More than a few people believe, myself included the internet isn't as fast on the Mac as it is on Windows. Now those people have a measure of proof that the fairer platform isn't as speedy.

The Register reports that a newly released "rich internet application" (RIA) benchmarking tool, GUIMark, shows that Windows XP consistently bests OS X running on an Apple MacBook Pro.

"I've been surprised with the results so far between WinXP and OS X. On the same machine it's very clear which vendors take more advantage of the underlying hardware," said Sean Christmann, experience architect, EffectiveUI, creators of GUIMark. "[Then again] the results for the different plug-in technologies aren't too surprising since it's regularly admitted that most companies spend their optimization time on Windows due to its larger install base."

Apple Store


GUIMark, which tests RIA framework performance for Flex, Flash, Swing, Silverlight, etc, showed that XP also bested OS X when rendering plain-old HTML with Internet Explorer showing a marked advantage--1 : 1.6--over Safari.

Christmann, who calls GUIMark "like Acid 3 on Speed," believes that this may be evidence that the Mac's "core APIs" may actually be inhibiting performance.

Editor's note: If you've got a consistently clean, fast connection, these results might be a single reason to make you pause for thought. However, in my experience, your internet service provider's quality of service, or in my case lack thereof, is a much more important determinant.

Also, when parsing the components of user satisfaction, there's a lot more involved than simply measuring how fast something happens. For example, if you're surfing faster but picking up performance crippling viruses and trojans at the same time, you're overall satisfaction is going to be low...

What's your take?

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