Developers are accusing Apple of intentionally slowing down web apps that run on iPhones and iPads in order to make apps from the Apple’s popular app store more appealing, according to a report from The Register.

Developers who create “apps” out of JavaScript and HTML that can run in a web browser of an iOS device accuse the company of neglecting the JavaScript engine so that their apps run slowly when added as an icon to the home screen and run from there, instead of as a bookmark in a browser.

The advantage to the user is that homepage web apps are more prominent and easier to access. The advantage to developers is that they can be distributed outside Apple’s control and are not subject to rules which apply to the app store.

They are also intended to be cross-platform since they rely on open, shared standards. But apps that are speedy in Apple’s mobile Safari browser lag when run via the home screen, developers told the tech publication.

Apps written in Cocoa, Apple’s proprietary language for iOS apps, must be approved by Apple and distributed through Apple’s app store. As native apps, they are generally more powerful than web apps since they have more access to the operating system.

But web apps are growing increasingly more powerful as browser makers build better JavaScript engines, such as the Nitro engine included in mobile Safari. The promise is that such apps can easily run on many platforms while delivering performance that rivals those of apps written in device-specific languages, which require developers to write separate apps for Android, iOS, Windows Mobile 7, Blackberry and WebOS, among other mobile operating systems.

Google, in particular, has pushed its various cloud-based services offered in their iOS app as separate web apps. The Apple rival has even offered what it says is a superior HTML alternative to the YouTube app that ships with the iPhone, iPod and iPad.

Apple has almost zero control over web apps, unlike native apps, where the company gets 30 percent of the purchase price and gets further revenue from in-app ads and mandated recurring fees from apps that offer subscriptions.

That, according to developers, explains why Apple hasn’t ported over Safari’s fast JavaScript rendering image to the general operating system. Moreover, HTML5 apps are hamstrung by how iOS limits the way the web apps connect to the net and cache data for offline use.

“Some people like to think of it as a conspiracy theory, but it could be a bug,” HTML5 web-app developer Alex Kessinger told The Register, referring to the difference in speed between the browser and homepage. “If it is conspiracy, it makes a lot of sense for Apple. If you ‘disallow’ home screen web apps, you prevent people, in a way, from bypassing the App Store.”

The accusations open another front in the war over whether apps or the web will dominate the net’s future.

Apple is aware of the issue, but no fix has been promised.

Photo: Screenshot of a web app for iOS. (Aburt)