Demonstrably wrong? Remind us how many years it took to get rounded corners into CSS?
>The innovation in browsers and webapps is coming from the vendors
Yes, which does not contradict what I said at all: "the people defining the standard (who also happen to be big players in many other related markets)". The vendors are big industry players who have their own agendas that rarely coincide with my interests (yes even Mozilla). They also get to veto any proposal they don't like.
The Kinect has been available for years now, which is an age in the consumer tech space. Where is the open standard web API? Do you see how it might be difficult to get Mozilla, Google and Apple to agree to standardise, implement and support an API for proprietary Microsoft technology? Creating a specific API for every type of device (photo cameras, video cameras, accelerometer, touch screens etc) and not providing a low level interface to hardware is the wrong route to take. High level APIs are fine, but it is important to also provide the ability for people to extend platform support in new and unforeseeable ways, and that requires lower level access.
WebRTC is another excellent example of conflicts of interest with Microsoft opposed to it because it challenges Skype (or because it is technically deficient, depending upon which side you are on). The difference between the web as a platform and real open operating systems is stark. If Windows had been like the web -- locked down with only a limited set of approved APIs -- then Skype could not have been created unless Microsoft decided to allow it. Substitute Microsoft for Apple/Google/Mozilla/Microsoft and you have the situation we have with the web.
Perhaps some people don't see the this because of the tribal nature of technology discussions. People don't see the web as being restrictive because their 'team' (be that Apple or Google or Microsoft or Mozilla) has a say in it. So most arguments devolve into discussion about how X is blocking a proposal by Y and the proposal is either good for the web or bad for the web depending on whether you favour X or Y. Few people seem to stop and wonder why we are creating a system where X can veto technologies, even for people who don't use a single product created by X.
>If you as a developer, are waiting around for them all to agree on any technology, before leveraging it, then you are just paralyzed. Develop against WebGL and asm.js now to get early mover advantages.
How does developing against asm.js and WebGL help me interface with new input devices? It doesn't help me one bit. All it does is let me create a faster shinier version of current webapps (that only runs in certain browsers). This is a reoccurring argument though: the web will be a decent platform once we finally get $NEW_API_PROPOSAL that fill fix everything 'once and for all'.