>How does this matter to Google or the W3C exactly? I don't buy this reasoning.
If you write a standard, and no one uses it, what use is it exactly? If Apple were to come up with a competing standard, in a year, which "standard" would you believe will have more use?
Apple has better control of mobile developer mindshare (almost a monopoly) and if Apple isn't onboard with your "standard" it may be very difficult to get it adopted among developers. Even worse if Apple were to decide to do things differently, their marketshare can make that the defacto standard, which Google will happily follow suit in order to appease developers and wasting everyone else's time that bothered to implement pointer events.
> The CPU analogy doesn't work either,
Its not a perfect analogy, but my point is developers don't target platforms solely based on marketshare. There are a lot more x86 toolchain developers than your all your favorite ubiquitous 8 bit microcontrollers.
How many mobile developers/shops do you know that don't target iOS? How many do you know that are iOS only? The latter number likely dwarfs the former. This isn't about end users. Its about the fact that if a standard doesn't roll out on iOS at this point, it won't see a ton of adoption.
If you write a standard, and no one uses it, what use is it exactly? If Apple were to come up with a competing standard, in a year, which "standard" would you believe will have more use?
Apple has better control of mobile developer mindshare (almost a monopoly) and if Apple isn't onboard with your "standard" it may be very difficult to get it adopted among developers. Even worse if Apple were to decide to do things differently, their marketshare can make that the defacto standard, which Google will happily follow suit in order to appease developers and wasting everyone else's time that bothered to implement pointer events.
> The CPU analogy doesn't work either,
Its not a perfect analogy, but my point is developers don't target platforms solely based on marketshare. There are a lot more x86 toolchain developers than your all your favorite ubiquitous 8 bit microcontrollers.