Apple touch icon in html head or htaccess file

I'm in the process of building a new web application.

I've got my favicon and apple icons all ready to go. I was wondering if I need to include them in the 'head' of my HTML file - or is routing them from the .htaccess file acceptable?

HTML code:

<head>
  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="assets/ico/favicon.ico">
  <!-- Standard iPhone --> 
  <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="57x57" href="touch-icon-iphone-114.png" />
  <!-- Retina iPhone --> 
  <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="114x114" href="touch-icon-iphone-114.png" />
  <!-- Standard iPad --> 
  <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="72x72" href="touch-icon-ipad-144.png" />
  <!-- Retina iPad --> 
  <link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="144x144" href="touch-icon-ipad-144.png" />
</head>

or just put them in htaccess?

    # Rewrite for Favicons
RewriteRule ^favicon\.ico$ assets/ico/favicon.ico [L]
RewriteRule ^apple-touch-icon\.png$ assets/ico/apple-touch-icon.png [L]
RewriteRule ^apple-touch-icon-57x57\.png$ assets/ico/apple-touch-114-icon.png [L]
RewriteRule ^apple-touch-icon-114x114\.png$ assets/ico/apple-touch-icon-114.png [L]
RewriteRule ^apple-touch-icon-72x72\.png$ assets/ico/apple-touch-icon-144.png [L]
RewriteRule ^apple-touch-icon-144x144\.png$ assets/ico/apple-touch-icon-144.png [L]

Question: Is there any negative to just putting them in my .htaccess file and removing them from my HTML?

Solution

You don't have to specify them if you follow Apple's naming convention.

From Apple's documentation:

If no icons are specified using a link element, the website root directory is searched for icons with the apple-touch-icon... or apple-touch-icon-precomposed... prefix. For example, if the appropriate icon size for the device is 57 x 57, the system searches for filenames in the following order:

apple-touch-icon-57x57-precomposed.png

apple-touch-icon-57x57.png

apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png

apple-touch-icon.png