In the sentence you quoted I'm referring to SVG, not canvas, and the "in this case" refers to mapping apps, not games. I never made any claims with regards to games.
In the test you quoted the goal is to stress it until it could only handle 30fps (it says so on the page), so you necessarily must see 30fps for the test to go on to the next one. That is why your median score on the Mac is 29fps, because it degrades smoothly on the desktop compared to a mobile device.
If you want to see many devices peg 60fps on the canvas (the rate imposed by requestAnimationFrame), you can use a demo like MS' Fish one.[1] Your Mac ought to get 60fps for 1000 fish on a 1920 x 1075 canvas with no sweat. This is not a very interesting test, and I don't know what it will look like on an iPad, but it more than enough accounts for any animation you might see in a mapping application.
“Your Mac ought to get 60fps for 1000 fish on a 1920 x 1075 canvas with no sweat.”
I just checked, and indeed, my new MacBook Air with external display ran it just fine at 60fps. My 3 year old Mac mini handled 45fps. My iPad 4 managed to crank out 25fps in a 981x644 window.
In the test you quoted the goal is to stress it until it could only handle 30fps (it says so on the page), so you necessarily must see 30fps for the test to go on to the next one. That is why your median score on the Mac is 29fps, because it degrades smoothly on the desktop compared to a mobile device.
If you want to see many devices peg 60fps on the canvas (the rate imposed by requestAnimationFrame), you can use a demo like MS' Fish one.[1] Your Mac ought to get 60fps for 1000 fish on a 1920 x 1075 canvas with no sweat. This is not a very interesting test, and I don't know what it will look like on an iPad, but it more than enough accounts for any animation you might see in a mapping application.
[1] http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/performance/fishietank/