There is a certain irony that after all the arguments about how plugins are bad and we must kill Flash, actually video on iOS devices typically still plays via a plugin today, just a different one. Moreover, because of Apple’s policy about browsers all having to use the same engine on those devices, no-one can provide an alternative browser that does better.<p>This situation breaks everything from basic cookie mechanics to possibilities for caching short videos for offline use, which <i>should</i> have been letting us do all kinds of interesting and useful things now that the videos are supposed to be part of the normal content on a page.