I have to agree. The app itself feels very native (gestures, smooth animations) and browsing is fast too. It could be the absence of the blue bar on Mobile Safari, but webpages render instantly.

Apple will never allow a JIT Javascript engine on any app except their own, for security reasons.

(App Store apps can't allocate pages with the executable bit set, which is a good idea really.)

While that does, technically, "matter", it doesn't really matter to users. I've been using it for a few minutes and I too can confirm that it feels very, very fast. Which is all that matters. In fact, a few years ago, Mozilla confirmed that seeming faster is much nicer than actually being faster:

http://www.johnwaynehill.com/blog/2010/06/16/perceived-speed...

The point is, the Chrome guys executed well enough on their iOS app that the inherent performance issues really don't seem to be a problem (though I've only been using the app for about 5 minutes so my opinion is limited). And it's quite a pretty app. It brings just enough of the Holographic UI to look nice without looking alien on iOS. They did well.

I'm sure Microsoft could've used 10 excuses like that for IE back in 2000.