Were they seriously even pretending to use that excuse?
Everyone I've ever talked to was 100% certain it was simply because they didn't want anyone by-passing the app store for games and other immersive content they would then have no control over.
Well, "everyone you ever talked to" was wrong. Apple could not care less about web apps by-passing the app store in this regard.
For one, they initially offered web apps in place of a native API, and developers (and users) hated it.
Second, they had for the longest time (still do IIRC), the fastest and more complete web browser experience on mobile. Including extra JS hooks for things like the accelerometer and such. Strange coming from a company concerned about the web apps by-passing the app store.
Third, most iOS developers don't pericularly want web apps. The App Store has half a billion of credit cards on the ready, and gives billions of dollars to developers each year. It will be extremely difficult to try to monetize some web based game for iOS users. Plus it offers far better performance (and possibilities for integration) than some Javascript/WebGL game.
Fourth, WebGL is not that great a deal on the desktop web yet (even most casual games prefer the canvas API or Flash still), so why would it be on the mobile web?
If that was the only reason to not having feature parity with other OS's, they'd have some something about it.. oh, you know. 2-3 years ago.
Well, those other OSes, namely Android, just enabled WebGL in their Chrome browser 9 months ago. And, oh you know, that in the beta version of the broswer. In fact, "Can I Use It", still shows only partial support for WebGL, and for the first time available just in the latest Android Chrome version: http://caniuse.com/webgl
Comments
Well, "everyone you ever talked to" was wrong. Apple could not care less about web apps by-passing the app store in this regard.
For one, they initially offered web apps in place of a native API, and developers (and users) hated it.
Second, they had for the longest time (still do IIRC), the fastest and more complete web browser experience on mobile. Including extra JS hooks for things like the accelerometer and such. Strange coming from a company concerned about the web apps by-passing the app store.
Third, most iOS developers don't pericularly want web apps. The App Store has half a billion of credit cards on the ready, and gives billions of dollars to developers each year. It will be extremely difficult to try to monetize some web based game for iOS users. Plus it offers far better performance (and possibilities for integration) than some Javascript/WebGL game.
Fourth, WebGL is not that great a deal on the desktop web yet (even most casual games prefer the canvas API or Flash still), so why would it be on the mobile web?
Well, those other OSes, namely Android, just enabled WebGL in their Chrome browser 9 months ago. And, oh you know, that in the beta version of the broswer. In fact, "Can I Use It", still shows only partial support for WebGL, and for the first time available just in the latest Android Chrome version: http://caniuse.com/webgl