I don't see it? In cases of misleading or linkbait titles we're glad to hear suggestions for a better title. There are too many posts here for us to correct everything correctly, so help is welcome.
While the title isn't necessarily false, it's misleading link bait because people click on it thinking that Apple is now allowing us to push out Swift/Objective-C updates in-app. It's more feasible than ever that this could happen now since they've added the ability to include frameworks inside of your apps where previously you couldn't.
The link is referring to using HTML/JS/CSS to update apps, which has been possible since the UIWebView in 2.0 - literally for years and years. You download those files and view them in a web view – technically it's running javascript "hot code" but this isn't news, it's been around since we could develop apps for iOS. A better title might be "Apple allows you to download and view HTML in a web browser inside of your app" but that wouldn't generate many clicks.
What is news to me is the explicit mention of WebViews. I remember this exception previously being for JavaScript in general, which I assume would include JavaScriptCore.
Does anyone know if they changed this before or after JavaScriptCore was introduced?
No, "sites" would imply "web sites that you could just as easily open in Safari", which is not what they're talking about here. They're talking about implementing an app in Javascript stored locally (still accessible when you have no connectivity), and then being able to download updates to that code directly from the developer rather than through the app store. A lot of people (including myself) legitimately wondered if Apple permits this, since it bypasses Apple's normal review process for apps. Many of us (especially people like me who aren't regular iOS devs and have only anecdotal knowledge of their rules) didn't realize that Apple has an explicit and intentional exception for Javascript run via webview that applies to more than just web pages.
OK Great, Meteor uses regular HTML5 to store things in the app cache (that you could just as easily do in Safari by the way) and Apple's webview complies with the HTML5 standard. I guess I'm just not that surprised that Apple allows the use of standard HTML5 and UIWebview behaves like a browser.
http://docs.meteor.com/#appcache
"
The appcache package stores the static parts of a Meteor application (the client side Javascript, HTML, CSS, and images) in the browser's application cache
[...]
Hot code pushes are loaded by the browser in the background while the app continues to run. Once the new code has been fully loaded the browser is able to switch over to the new code quickly."
Appcache is a completely different feature that existed in Meteor long long time ago.
The new feature that works in Phonegap integration is storing the application data in App's local storage (not browser's). Not only these files are accessible before the browser is loaded but also they don't need to be downloaded first time, the initial code is shipped with the standard app bundle.
When you use a webview you're basically displaying HTML content period. granted it's not on the "web",that's what it is.If webviews implement specs correctly then what they does is basically what any browsers do.And the title IS link baiting.
The link is referring to using HTML/JS/CSS to update apps, which has been possible since the UIWebView in 2.0 - literally for years and years. You download those files and view them in a web view – technically it's running javascript "hot code" but this isn't news, it's been around since we could develop apps for iOS. A better title might be "Apple allows you to download and view HTML in a web browser inside of your app" but that wouldn't generate many clicks.