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Comment by mtomweb | Hacker News Reader

True. Or even 2010

Exactly, for both time periods. In 2007, it was probably because Apple wasn't ready for the demand to create apps, see John Gruber's complaints from his notes on the launch [0]. By 2010, the money was too good to invest in webapps.

We're like 15 years from the original iPhone launch. I was going through reading about every web API on MDN [1]. I was wondering what you could accomplish now that many of the apis are now reasonably stable. Looks like I'm in for some frustration. Glad to learn about open web advocacy initiative today, mtomweb.

0: https://daringfireball.net/2007/06/wwdc_2007_keynote

1: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API

> I was wondering what you could accomplish now that many of the apis are now reasonably stable.

Many of those "stable APIs" are non-standard and exist only in Chrome. Almost every one that is listed as "experimental" on that page are one or more of:

- only exist as a scribble on a napkin. Example "Barcode Detection API" which is literally, and I quote, "not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track" https://wicg.github.io/shape-detection-api/

- are in the process of gathering requirements or trying to reach consensus

- will not ever be implemented by either Firefox or Safari in the current state of the spec. Example: most of the hardware APIs (Bluetooth, HID, Serial etc., considered harmful and will not implement by both Mozilla and Safari)

However, almost every single one of these are being shipped by Chrome.

Don't be fooled by mtomweb's "web advocacy". It's anything but.

Or even 2022.

It’s doable but as far as fully featured applications, PWAs that don’t just act like a website & offline support it isn’t easy.

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