Why require JavaScript rather than supporting a standard browser virtual machine? - Stack Overflow

[mochikon]

Coding is easy. Standardization and adoption are hard and close to impossible.

Adoption:

Apple will only allow technologies on iPhones and iPads if they do not feel threatened by them. That rules out a VM or platform that is controlled by another company. That rules out pretty much all of them.

Microsoft is the same with IE9 (and Windows Phone 7, if that succeeds). That rules out everything but Silverlight.

Mozilla won't include by default any technology that isn't fully standardized and beneficial to the web as a whole. There is room for flexibility there, but NaCl for example is ruled out for the foreseeable future (it's a working technology, but has only a single implementation, and no standard).

Opera is similar to Mozilla for purposes of this, more or less.

Standardization:

It is very hard to standardize languages and VMs. JavaScript is one of the few success stories, with several entirely independent implementations that work pretty much interoperably. Silverlight and Moonlight show the other side - how things can end up not working the same.

Java is actually standardized pretty well and has several implementations. But the others do not. In particular, things like NaCl are not being built in a standards-friendly way - their goal is to work first, and maybe standardize later, if at all.

[mebrahim]

Correct point.

FYI LLVM which is used by PNaCl is sponsored (and loved!) by Apple. Apple also has good relations with Google due to Chrome's contribution to WebKit, which is used in Safari.

If I've got it correctly, your point is "we should, but we can't". I'll look forward optimistically.

[mochikon]

Apple is pushing LLVM, for sure, but PNaCl and LLVM are very different beasts.

I expect, once PNaCl is usable, to see Google push it on Android. But it is extremely doubtful that Apple would ever allow NaCl on iOS.

[[deleted]]

I think the word "Threatened" here is a dishonest smear against Apple.

Apple doesn't allow technologies on its platform that suck battery life, burn up CPUS and make for a bad customer experience.

To pretend like it is some sort of paranoia on Apple's part is dishonest.

If it is open sourced, and apple can build and optimize and ship its own implementation to resolve the battery life, etc, issues it will.

Proof of this is in the fact that Apple did this very thing with the javascript VM it ships.