As far as I know there was a bug on 4.2.1 where home screen web applications marked with a specific flag couldn't use the HTML5 Application Cache. Maybe they didn't get to fixing this in 4.3, but on 4.2.1 there was a reasonable-ish workaround.
Look, I hate Apple as much as the next guy (maybe more so: I mean, I've dedicate my life to messing with them), but the random rumor mongering surrounding tiny actions that they perform needs to stop.
Like, the HTML5 Application Cache? That code is horribly broken. I started using the HTML5 Application Cache in Cydia (and am now sufficiently "down that road" that I'm launching with this, hell or high water), but WebKit's implementation's barely works, and I don't think it is reasonable for people to be holding Apple quite to task on whether this feature happens to be working in every scenario.
I mean, seriously: when you start going through the WebCore code history and public bug tracker teasing apart what is going on, you find that the developers working on with some of these issues (and there are still critical show-stopper bugs that have only been noticed a few months ago, as well as ones that are still open) actually claim "no one understands this system", something you really believe when you see the massive unstable state machine that surrounds it.
It is therefore entirely plausible to me that the reason the app cache isn't working in apps with some random meta flag is solely because of one of the numerous queue bugs in WebKit's appcache logic that totally wedge the mechanism (even crashing it at times) if things happen to reload in the wrong order.
It's been working for a long time to suddenly just break now ... when Apple just happens to be exercising some particularly anti-competitive practices against other players who might conceivably use it as a workaround.
Like I said - if they jump on it and fix it I'll say fair enough - anything can get broken in the rush to put out a new release (especially with a high profile new device involved - one can hardly expect they would be delaying release of iPad2 because of something like this). So we will see what happens. However until I see it fixed or some kind of indication that it will be I remain highly skeptical.
Look, I hate Apple as much as the next guy (maybe more so: I mean, I've dedicate my life to messing with them), but the random rumor mongering surrounding tiny actions that they perform needs to stop.
Like, the HTML5 Application Cache? That code is horribly broken. I started using the HTML5 Application Cache in Cydia (and am now sufficiently "down that road" that I'm launching with this, hell or high water), but WebKit's implementation's barely works, and I don't think it is reasonable for people to be holding Apple quite to task on whether this feature happens to be working in every scenario.
I mean, seriously: when you start going through the WebCore code history and public bug tracker teasing apart what is going on, you find that the developers working on with some of these issues (and there are still critical show-stopper bugs that have only been noticed a few months ago, as well as ones that are still open) actually claim "no one understands this system", something you really believe when you see the massive unstable state machine that surrounds it.
It is therefore entirely plausible to me that the reason the app cache isn't working in apps with some random meta flag is solely because of one of the numerous queue bugs in WebKit's appcache logic that totally wedge the mechanism (even crashing it at times) if things happen to reload in the wrong order.