I've spent a lot of time playing with this over the last two days, and it's absolutely the implementation not being where they want it yet. There are definite stability issues with more intensive scenes, though it generally works pretty nicely. I imagine that's why they allow it for iAds, where they can monitor the quality and test it across devices. Hopefully with iOS 6 my tweak won't be needed any longer.
It's hardly a tin foil theory. Even if it isn't the primary reason WebGL isn't enabled at the moment, higher-end games moving out of the App Store and into the browser must weigh on their mind.
Re:Show HN: WebGL Enabler for iOS
by othermaciej on Monday May 28, 2012 @07:45PM
(#4035394)
I wouldn't recommend using the WebGL enabling hack at present, for security reasons. But then, people who are jailbreaking their phones in the first place are probably making a different security vs. features tradeoff.
Feeding your tinfoil hat for the moment... Isn't the implementation of Angry Birds in desktop Chrome built using WebGL?
His program essentially leaks beta software for profit.
Agreed. I don't know what I'd do without the $20.60 I've made off of this (before Paypal fees)...
Would be really interesting to see how much you make off this with your donation model. I wonder how much it would affect income if you used someone other than paypal, or had several donate options.
Anyways, good on you for doing this.
I'm expecting that it's probably not going to go much above where it is right now (which is still twice as much as I figured it'd bring in); despite quite a few downloads from HN, no one has paid for it. That said, I'm sure I could increase paid conversions with some work, but I honestly don't care enough to do so. I built this so that I could build neat demos on my iPad, and there's no way I'll recoup the cost of 5 or so hours of dev time I spent on this. I'm just glad that it's working well for people.
Re:Show HN: WebGL Enabler for iOS
by knowaveragejoe on Monday May 28, 2012 @06:46PM
(#4035245)
...except you don't have to pay a cent for it.
The reasons I can think of are:
* Performance isn't what they want yet.
* Implementation isn't what they want yet.
* There are security issues they still need to fix.
OR putting on my tin foil hat for a second:
* Apple sees WebGL as a possible threat to their app revenues as a soild WebGL implementation could allow developers to avoid entering their app market place and instead charge users directly. It would also allow developers to deploy to other platforms with the same code base.
Obviously the last point is a bit nutty but one can't help but wonder if it is a consideration.