Tired of Safari

To be fair on Apple, they usually only drop devices once the OS wouldn't run performantly on them. The issue of non-updated devices used to plague Android far more than iOS.

Also, you aren't describing IE6, then. You're describing IE. The issue of obsolete OSes not having new features? IE6/7/8/9/10 gave us that. But calling Safari IE6 is weird, there's no specific version. Apple didn't ever stop work on Safari.

It's obvious that Apple slowed down innovating the web since the core of their business is iOS and apps. They shouldn't have any interest in a fast innovating web that gets on par with native apps which is their main lock-in for iOS, just like Microsoft 15 years ago. They only speed up their rendering engine and JS core but don't try to help on standards improving the web experience.

BUT: I doubt this pointer event thing is a good example for their reluctance because it's really just a nice-to-have feature for the Surface and the Note series which is for my taste a too small target to justify a standard.

A good example for Apple reluctance to innovate the web is CSS Flexbox. CSS Flexbox is the best positioning standard I encountered, every vendor supports it, only Apple still prefixes it with -webkit.

Another example is their reluctance to make WKWebview fully workable, since months there is still a bug which prevents WKWebview loading local files, the bug was already fixed in an early beta of iOS 8 but then they put it again in. WKWebKit is way more performant than UIWebview and can produce butter smooth HTML5 apps with Cordova/Phonegap but this one bug makes it hard (people already build local web servers to work around this problem).

EDIT/ADDITION: A third and probably the most obvious indication that Apple doesn't want innovation in the browser space is their ban on 3rd party browsers on iOS. Benjaminjackman articulated this well in this thread below: "And yet here we are 15 years later and the iOS platform is doing just that, Apple is embracing this Microsoft strategy and extending it to a whole new level by flat out banning 3rd party browsers and so we all run the risk of having this great renaissance in browser application innovation extinguished into a second dark age."

Quoted from the homepage: "QuirksMode.org is the prime source for browser compatibility information on the Internet. It is maintained by Peter-Paul Koch, mobile platform strategist in Amsterdam, the Netherlands."

> It's obvious that Apple slowed down innovating the web since the core of their business is iOS and apps. They shouldn't have any interest in a fast innovating web that gets on par with native apps which is their main lock-in for iOS

I worry about this regarding Google as well. Both Apple and Google benefit from App lockin. :/

NOTE: You can downvote me, but web apps are secondary on mobile -- remember all those Chrome apps people have on the desktop, they are not treated the same as Andriod Apps on mobile, even though they could be.

I doubt it's intentional malice. I think it's just Apple's engineers being spread too thin.

Before Blink, they had Google's manpower also helping them. Now that's gone.

Flexbox will come, it'll just take Apple a while to implement it.