Oh boy here we go... queue the comments about how Apple hates your cat or whatever ridiculous theory people will invent to explain this.
Apple is testing WebGL. Introducing it in iAds is a pilot and will allow them to shake out bugs and such. This is a good thing as it means that WebGL is coming to iOS soon.
Apple often uses frameworks itself in one generation of the OS (Mac or iOS) and then makes it public in the next release after they've worked out the kinks. This is similar, they are testing out WebGL in something under their thumb that they control tightly, it just happens to be less private than usual as 3rd parties will get to bang on it with iAds.
I think if you're worried about having a large unvetted attack surface, simply releasing it en masse to beta testers won't usually result in a very secure product. Sure, you'll get some bugs closed but plenty others will simply get ignored or worked around or worse reserved by bad actors for when it's live. It only really makes sense to release something like that to a wide audience after you feel like you've made a solid first attempt.
Are iAds the only and best way to test this out? Imagine ad developers given a free reign on animating ads while distracting users and taking up precious phone resources like CPU/GPU/RAM/Battery which need to be available for the actual game or app that the user wants to run.
Haven't we learned anything from the web and flash ads that we are forced to repeat it all over again on mobiles?
It's a very safe way because if there is a bug in the WebGL implementation, Apple can quickly pull the Ads that crash WebKit.
Apple will have huge advantage of being able to pull the content, especially if it is a security bug. If Apple enabled WebGL in Safari, then Apple would not be able to react as quickly as all users would have to upgrade their iOS version.
I totally agree with you about the unpleasantness of ads in general, but iAds don't work like that - a static banner appears first and then if the user taps it, the interactive portion is started.
Oh boy here we go... queue the apologies for Apple, how this is innovative and how it will benefit the platform.
I'm sorry for the snark (not really), but do you have any citations for any of this? I'm a skeptic, but it doesn't help that they still haven't turned on the acceleration for Javascript in webviews.
Yes, I saw that. That has nothing to do with mobile, nothing to do with Mirosoft trying to exert their native development over the web, which is sorta my implication here (though I did read that one of the embedded web views is Nitro'd but the jury's still out on the other).
No apologies because none are warranted. Just watch Apple for a few years and you'll see how routine this is.
What if WebGL turns out to be a flop? (I know it's unlikely at this point, this is purely hypothetical) If that were the case they didn't launch some new thing and have a bunch of people using it in their apps or on their websites in production, thus be obligated to support it. They are cautious about introducing new APIs. That's it.
That's fine. I'm in no rush to accuse them of anything here. WebGL is new enough that I'm shocked to hear they're pushing it at all, but I also know nothing about it and graphics (esp at that level) are as foriegn as photoshop and water painting to me. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes and/or is adopted more widely!
Apple is testing WebGL. Introducing it in iAds is a pilot and will allow them to shake out bugs and such. This is a good thing as it means that WebGL is coming to iOS soon.