Apple might one day be fairly accused of holding up web standards, but so far they're still at least 80/20 implementing new proposals. It might be unpopular but it is actually the responsibility of browsers to somewhat govern what standards do or do not move forward.
For example when IE decided not to do WebGL due to security concerns and then successfully got the standard altered as a direct result [0]. That was what browsers are meant to do. That's what Apple does in some cases too, however their primary focus appears to be battery not security.
"it is actually the responsibility of browsers to somewhat govern what standards do or do not move forward"
An underappreciated point. Browser developers incl. Apple also have a responsibility to recognize that it's a mobile world. A compute cycle might look like it's getting cheaper, but a mobile CC is vastly more expensive than a desktop CC because of the cost of energy.
We might have three monitors plugged into 100A mains, but the typical end user has a 1900mAh battery and 7.5 seconds between Starbucks and the car door to send log in to the school's website to approve a field trip permission. It will be a while before mobile web standards can progress in the blue sky fashion we'd prefer.
That's quite the spin there. I wouldn't say that's why ms originally decided to bash WebGL. It's far more likely they wanted to both scare users away from browsers supporting WebGL and at the same time try to prevent an OpenGL like API from gaining any traction vs directx as targeting directx makes your app ms platforms only.
It was only later they finally caved and implemented WebGL in ie. If they truly were only concerned about security but otherwise ok with WebGL they would have joined the WebGL committee and cooperatively influenced the spec.
Not applicable here. Apple just want to retain the usage of their patented API in this case[1]. I.e. they are simply being greedy jerks who don't care about the Web.
Apple might one day be fairly accused of holding up web standards, but so far they're still at least 80/20 implementing new proposals. It might be unpopular but it is actually the responsibility of browsers to somewhat govern what standards do or do not move forward.
For example when IE decided not to do WebGL due to security concerns and then successfully got the standard altered as a direct result [0]. That was what browsers are meant to do. That's what Apple does in some cases too, however their primary focus appears to be battery not security.
[0] (end of article) http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/applications/why-m...