Awesome article. Very evenly balanced in its conclusions, though it avoided the subject of asynchronous rendering/layout. I would add that it is possible to achieve the 1/60th sec. setup time for more complex drawing (NSAttributedStrings, composited views) through the use of background rendering/compositing into CALayers that are delivered to the cells only when complete, though it gets complex very fast, and as noted the performance in newer devices is rapidly getting to the point that I don't have to think so much about this anymore. Now if only we could get everyone to drop the iPhone 4... (just kidding).