intellectual honesty and html5
OK, this is the post that contains everything that everyone on the inside of the browser market knows, but doesn't say out loud. It's time for someone to expose the emperor. It's a shame that the main victim here turns out to be Apple …
Context & Ripple Effects
The immediate backdrop is Apple’s web-standards showcase that requires Safari, arriving amid debate over HTML5, Flash and mobile applications. Microsoft had also publicly answered criticism of its HTML5 strategy, underscoring that browser support—not the standard’s label alone—was becoming a competitive issue.
The critique matters because Apple was already facing complaints about tight App Store control. A Safari-only demonstration lets Apple promote web standards while retaining control over the browser through which that demonstration is experienced.
First-order effects
- Developers and users on non-Safari browsers are excluded from Apple’s standards showcase, making Safari a prerequisite for evaluating Apple’s claimed web capabilities.
- Apple’s HTML5 messaging becomes vulnerable to the same openness critique directed at its App Store, because access to the demonstration is browser-gated.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft and other browser vendors gain a concrete example for arguing that HTML5 competition depends on interoperable implementations rather than vendor-curated showcases.
- Web developers evaluating HTML5 for mobile applications face a sharper incentive to test across browsers instead of treating an Apple demonstration as proof of broadly available support.
Third-order effects
- If browser-specific showcases become a common distribution tactic, nominally open web standards can still function as a competitive alternative to Flash and native mobile apps controlled through browser access rather than formal ownership.
- The central fault line shifts from whether HTML5 is open to whether major platform owners expose equivalent experiences across competing browsers.
The trend: HTML5 is becoming a platform-control battleground in which browser compatibility determines how open web standards feel in practice.