[dlib]

Playing the devil's advocate but isn't Apple hindering web standards a strategy to keep people using the apps from the AppStore. On mobile, where the iOS market share is huge and it's impossible to use any other rendering engine it would be hugely beneficial to stifle progress as native apps and thus the lock-in they provide, will keep the upper hand.

[captainmuon]

If I look at what features are provided and what are not in HTML5 (especially on iOS), I also get the impression that some features are "conveniently" missing, with the consequence that certain things can only be written as native apps.

Notably: - Network access. You can't write a BitTorrent or IMAP client in HTML. You could have with Java or Flash, but those have been axed (Apple was a major contributor to that). Of course there were good technical and security reasons for that, but it is a "convenient" side effect. - Last time I checked at least, touch input and rendering (WebGL/Canvas) was inferior to native.

Now, I'm not convinced there is a concious decision to keep HTML apps limited, but I do believe it plays a role when it comes to Apple supporting certain features and disallowing others.