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Comment by cartoonworld | Hacker News Reader

Firefox works fine on iOS

As the parent post says, Firefox on iOS isn't really Firefox. It doesn't run Gecko, it's barely more than a skin on top of Safari.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#2.5...

> 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.

How much does this really matter to the typical user? I’m not using Firefox because it’s JS and rendering engine are significantly better than webkit. Can’t really tell the difference honestly. I’m still getting all the other features of Firefox that actually distinguish it from it’s competitors. The so-called skin is more like the guts from a user value perspective.

The reason I use Firefox for Android is the ability to use addons. According to this, they don't work on Apple phones: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-ons-firefox-ios

The user doesn't notice, but it stifles innovation at that level of the stack.

I would notice the lack of ad blocker/no-script.

Safari lags behind on many web standards. On other platforms, when that happens (e.g. IE), competitors provide alternatives that can do better.

Apple doesn't develop things like push notifications via web app, which might compete with the app store.

Question to downvotes:

I’ve seen people saying in these comments often that you have to use safari. I am using ff on my iOS device right now, what am I missing?

The technical reason is that a very powerful system call is blocked on iOS that’s required to build a custom language runtime needed for a browser. This is done to increase security of the device. The trade-off is that the JavaScript engine and renderer must be shared by all browsers on iOS.

But if you can’t tell the difference, does it really matter?

Thanks, appreciated greatly

iOS platform restrictions prevent Firefox for iOS from supporting add-ons. That is a rather striking difference.

> But if you can’t tell the difference, does it really matter?

Firefox on Android supports add-ons, in particular uBlock origin. Firefox on iOS does not. That's a huge difference.

In general, WebKit has more bugs and fewer features than gecko.

You mean safari with a custom skin

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