Well, the most perceptible tuning AF does is turning on HTTP pipelining for image requests (which are off, by default). Other than that, it's just small steps t

Well, the most perceptible tuning AF does is turning on HTTP pipelining for image requests (which are off, by default). Other than that, it's just small steps to use HTTP correctly as much as possible. </admittedly vague cop-out> I understand and respect your skepticism, since by using NSURLConnection, its performance is bound by the same thing most other libraries are (although ASI was wrapped the lower-level CFNetwork APIs, FWIW). It's the stuff around the network activity--the way the application interacts with the data that makes AF fast. I've gone out of my way to design a minimal API that is performant no matter how you (mis)use it. But you're right: I'll have to get around to writing a benchmark app at some point :)