Did they give any ideas on how? It's not a very complicated function and the numbers honestly seem pretty good to me (with prop being the fastest of the ones that aren't simply getting the property). I don't really see prop as a replacement for using raw javascript in all situations, but it is at least convenient for setting on multiple elements and currently for retrieving a selected property that hasn't been set yet. In the example in the perf, it goes through jQuery.access (meaning you have all of the conveniences in signatures), which has 3 conditions then a call to prop. prop then has a condition for checking the elem and nodeType, 3 assignments depending on isXMLDoc, propFix and propHooks, a check if value is undefined, check if hooks exists, then return elem[ "checked" ]. None of that seems expendable to me.

I think that's all this was looking for.