[spankalee]

I don't think Apple sees themselves as _needing_ to shit or get off the pot. They made their opposition to customized built-ins, and their reasoning, known from the beginning, and Chrome and Firefox proceeded anyway.

From Apple's point-of-view they're probably waiting for someone to propose a solution that doesn't have the same perceived issues. They've been doing good work on declarative shadow DOM, selection, a11y, template instantiation, etc., in the mean time.

[inopinatus]

> I don't think Apple sees themselves as _needing_ to shit or get off the pot.

Indeed, judging from both words & (in)actions, I think we can safely conclude that they don't. There's likely no direct commercial pressure to implement this part of the standard, and I'd expect all members of WHATWG's steering group perceive the vast influence they consequently hold as a competitive advantage, not a social contract.

[spankalee]

I don't quite understand that last bit. Apple objected to this part of the standard, but since WHATWG doesn't work on a consensus model like TC39, they don't have an official way to block. So they registered their rather strong objection - including that they have no intentions to implement it - the feature got merged over their objections, and everyone moved on with the rest of the specs.

I'm not sure what competitive advantage that gains them or anyone else. There's an impasse, and effectively no one uses this feature.