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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?

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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.

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.

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