I'm not sure what you mean by 'keep the language in their own privileged domain' actually means, but I do agree that it is Apple's strategy to invest in Objective-C above other languages on its own platform, and that they have no investment in making a cross-platform framework other than HTML5.
I don't see why you describe Apple's approach as a 'trap'. They are providing a lot of software components that save effort for those who use them. The results are platform specific, but everyone who uses them knows that and chooses to make that tradeoff intentionally.
What you describe as "VM-managed library bundling" sounds a lot like "building your own platform out of open source parts and maintaining a compatibility layer to your target platforms".
That strategy works for a few of the largest most-well resourced projects - e.g. the browsers Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera etc, plus the Adobe Suite, and even these draw criticism for the results not being as good as they could be if they focussed on one platform.
Something like this works on the web too - where people assemble a 'platform' out of javascript libraries - because the base platform simply doesn't provide enough.
I don't see it being a viable strategy for a small team or an individual developer trying to build native applications though because of the amount of time you'll spend keeping the compatibility layer up-to-date with the rapidly changing underlying platforms.
I don't see why you describe Apple's approach as a 'trap'. They are providing a lot of software components that save effort for those who use them. The results are platform specific, but everyone who uses them knows that and chooses to make that tradeoff intentionally.
What you describe as "VM-managed library bundling" sounds a lot like "building your own platform out of open source parts and maintaining a compatibility layer to your target platforms".
That strategy works for a few of the largest most-well resourced projects - e.g. the browsers Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera etc, plus the Adobe Suite, and even these draw criticism for the results not being as good as they could be if they focussed on one platform.
Something like this works on the web too - where people assemble a 'platform' out of javascript libraries - because the base platform simply doesn't provide enough.
I don't see it being a viable strategy for a small team or an individual developer trying to build native applications though because of the amount of time you'll spend keeping the compatibility layer up-to-date with the rapidly changing underlying platforms.