> Apple's JS disables the animation for iOS 4.x and below, so maybe that's why it wasn't playing on your friend's iPod.

I see Apple is really embracing the idea of "the one web" here, introducing web-fragmentation even among their own devices.

Apple has long stopped impressing me. Back in the days when they were the clear underdogs, they were for web-standards and a unified web, because they saw how that was good, and that was what allowed them to become what they are now.

Now it seems they don't really have so much ideological issues with how web-pages should be built anymore. Funny thing that.

There's nothing non-standards compliant about what they've done, as far as I can tell. Disabling the animation seems like an attempt at ensuring graceful degradation.

Graceful degradation shouldn't be based on user agent sniffing. That defeats the purpose.

I would argue that any reasonable technique that allows users of older browsers to access your site or use your app relatively normally is within the bounds of what we would describe as "graceful degradation." Being non-automatic doesn't make it any less valid.