I think this is the price we pay for hewing to the party line of only permitting non-breaking incremental changes on the Web.
Would this still be the case if Web development wasn't a broken matrix of browser and OS versions powered by a language which people are constantly trying to paper over with abstractions? (Seriously, it's like a person you'd only have sex with as long as you'd put a paper bag over their head.)
That's the price to pay for having an open platform indeed. Several players, and none of them control the platform.
But that's the whole point of the web. If it was broken into 2 platforms, each fully controlled by a company, we would see quicker innovation. But then we'd have all the drawbacks of apps, so what's the point?
Would this still be the case if Web development wasn't a broken matrix of browser and OS versions powered by a language which people are constantly trying to paper over with abstractions? (Seriously, it's like a person you'd only have sex with as long as you'd put a paper bag over their head.)