This is very true: if you wanted to do anything interactive you really had to dive into Java, Flash, or ActiveX. But, as you say, ActiveX was Windows and IE only, and that wasn't an accident.

And it wasn't just that JavaScript and DOM manipulation were slow: it was incredibly lacking in capabilities. Any kind of basic drawing? Nope. Multimedia support? Nope. Local storage? Nope. Decent networking capability and access to remote APIs? Nope. Good, standardised browser APIs? Nope, and hence the arrival of JQuery, Dojo, et al.

I completely agree with you but Microsoft's approach was deliberately and calculatedly shady.