You're absolutely right about BeforeInstallPrompt. It never achieved consensus, Mozilla declined to implement it, and this is exactly how standards should work. But here's the thing, this actually makes the broader argument stronger, not weaker. The issue isn't any one feature rejection, it's the pattern.

Remember the iOS 17.4 thing from February 2024. Apple completely disabled PWAs in the EU, claiming alternative browser engines created insurmountable security problems that would require building "an entirely new integration architecture" that wasn't practical given DMA timelines. Then after two weeks of backlash they reversed it. If the technical barriers were real, how did they solve them in 14 days? That looks less like a technical limitation and more like testing how much they could get away with.

Or push notifications, Safari on macOS got them in 2013. Safari on iOS got them in 2023. Same WebKit engine, same APNs infrastructure, 10 years apart. What's the technical explanation for that gap? And even after iOS finally got push notifications, they only work for PWAs installed to home screen, not in Safari itself. That's a restriction that doesn't exist anywhere else. Android Chrome has had this working in the browser since 2015.

That's the genius of plausible deniability, every individual decision has some technical justification you can point to. BeforeInstallPrompt lacks consensus (true). Safari has limited resources (as has Chrome). Security is hard (definitely true). But the cumulative effect of all these decisions, year after year, is that PWAs on iOS are hobbled compared to native apps in ways that just happen to protect a $20B+ App Store business.

Your fact-check on BeforeInstallPrompt actually demonstrates why the other patterns are harder to explain away. It shows Apple can legitimately decline features through proper standards processes, which makes the decade-long notification delay and the iOS 17.4 reversal look even more suspicious by comparison.