Comment by scottbez1

Heh, I never worked on iOS but based on what I heard from our iOS team at the time, I don't think iOS was any better. Though a lot of the frustrations back then were largely app review issues rather than API stability, like trying to push out a big feature release or bug fix and getting rejected because the reviewer found a new way to follow 20 links to get from the help center website to a page allowing you to sign up for a subscription outside the app store...

Web might be a better counter example - it started super locked down, but has slowly gained useful functionality like notifications, USB, serial, GPU, etc within the sandbox model. It just encourages more investment over time as new functionality is added, rather than annoying devs as useful functionality (documented or undocumented) is taken away.