As Gruber points out, Apple have gone out of their way to make this possible, right down to creating a device where an HTML5 app can have its own homescreen button and full-screen experience.

I think Apple wins when people make HTML5 apps that run everywhere. Unlike hte “old” Apple, the Apple is winning on price and obviously people like its design choices. At this point, apps that lock people down into the Apple ecosystem are a nice-to-have for Apple, but if everything is cross-platform, Apple still wins. The only way they lose is if somebody invents a “killer app” that is locked into another platform.

So allowing or even encouraging HTML5 apps is a great defensive move for the leader to make.

This article is a bit sensationalist; Amazon demoed their Kindle web app back in December when the Chrome Web Store was launching; before Apple announced the policy in question. It's not an "iPad web app", it's a WebKit web app.

"Apple's app policies" pretty much state if you play in our ecosystem, you do so entirely to keep it holistic. Of course they are a business and these policies ensure that their "walled garden" is maintained, much in the same way Amazon's ebook DRM does for them.

RDIO did the smart thing and adopted in-app purchasing w/ a surcharge if you do it in-app. The intention seems to be "pay for the convenience" as well as making sure their ARPU is intact regardless of method.

That being said: has anyone calculated what the per-transaction overhead would be if a developer wanted to institute in-app purchasing themselves? Considering Apple handles CC processing, chargebacks, customer service on the purchase, verification, etc?

Do these web apps work offline after you've visited/logged in and purchased content? One of the perks of my iPad native apps is that I can do things like read ebooks and play games when offline.

The kindle app looks great, but it is definitely slower than the native app.

I don't think evade as in tax evasion is the right word nor circumvent more like bypass.

Honestly, Apple should come to their senses on subscription content and just lower their take to something like 10% because they have make no significant contributions to facilitate the sale. They clearly don't get publishing as well as Amazon.

It seems likely that the majority of the industry will follow suit, particularly when they realise that no one else is willing to give Apple such a large share of their profits for simply hosting their apps.

But Apple is doing more than "simply hosting their app" they are facilitating payments as well.

it looks magnific, i am very hopeful about the future of the html5