this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2024
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I don't expect most iPhone users to ever change their default settings, but it's nice that it will be possible in a year.

Who knows, maybe one day you can run actual Firefox on them too? :p

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Who knows, maybe one day you can run actual Firefox on them too? :p

You could, in the EU. But as the EU is only a small portion of the market (Apple did not succeed as much with brainwashing here), Mozilla said it would be too costly to literally recreate FF from scratch for iOS, only for the EU market.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (2 children)

You know, I hadn't realized this before. Thanks to Apple's decade-long policy, alternative browsers for iOS literally don't exist, they'll have to be ported. It will take years for that to happen, if anybody even bothers. Well, Google will.

And that's how Apple will have managed to shoot themselves in the foot and have iOS fall under Chrome domination too.

At this point if they were smart they would sponsor the ports of alternative browsers that are not Chrome, but I doubt they have it in them.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think so. As someone said, safari with another gui.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

It is, but it allows you to install many Firefox extensions. Not everything works, but it’s the best option out there I’ve found.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Is there something I’m missing? I have Firefox on my iPhone, I live in India. Is it not “proper” Firefox or is Firefox now available in US App Store?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Any browser on iOS/iPadOS etc. is just a reskin of Safari. It might add new features - VPN, closing-all-tabs-feature, sync - but the underlying browser engine is still webkit, including all its limitations. Those limitations are, for example, limited debugging and no plugin support. Whereas I can install almost all desktop addons on my FF nightly on Android, I can't even have adblock on "Firefox" iOS. And even after Apple opened up the browser stuff, so FF can now be based on gecko, Mozilla would need to create and maintain a whole new App - for the EU, because other countries won't get those possibilities ever.

So FF on my iPad is just a way for me to access website-only stuff. In my Android phone, I also use eg. youtube/piped, deepl, maps in FF. That would be a pain on iOS due to missing Addons.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Ah! I never knew that! Thanks for the detailed explanation

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

All browsers on iOS are basically reskinned versions of Safari since they all have to use WebKit