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Comment by josteink | Hacker News Reader

> Firefox for iOS is a lie.

That's a bit harsh.

> It's a non-Firefox browser just set up to sync FF settings and bookmarks and kinda look like Firefox.

It's a WebView-wrapper like all other iOS "browsers" because that's everything Apple will allow. To be fair though, synced data, history, passwords and settings is probably one of the most important things for a mobile user, where entering things manually is a pain in the ass.

Basically NOT having this would risk losing users on the desktop (to something which does sync). And right now, Firefox can't afford to do that.

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I'm not too familiar with how heavily locked down iOS is: does this "WebView only" policy only apply to apps released via the AppStore? Meaning, can I build locally and sideload install an app that uses my own engine? And if that existed, could I open source it for others to use?

Yes and yes, though that would require your users to pay $100 per year, install Xcode, and compile your app.

> and compile your app

Which in turn would mean that lots of people would have to shell out several hundred dollars more for a Mac just to build it.

It's not exactly a stellar deployment-model when you try to push it at scale.

These days you can sideload apps with a free developer account (with certain restrictions), but it's meant for development - AFAIK using it as a general-purpose app distribution mechanism is a violation of Apple's ToS. But people do it anyway, and you could too.

Separately from the ban on third-party browsing engines, iOS has technical restrictions preventing you from mapping unsigned code as executable, so JITs don't work. There may be some ways around that if you have a developer signature, but its messy at minimum.

And still the usability of FF on iOS is so much worse then the one of safari it stands no chance and that is not all Apple's fault :(

What do you mean it's not Apple's fault??? Apple is 100% at fault. They are the ones who won't let actual Firefox be released for iOS in normal channels.

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