Slashdot Mirror
No Firefox For iOS, Says Mozilla's Product Head
hypnosec writes "Jay Sullivan, Mozilla's VP of Product, has revealed that the non-for-profit organization is not going to build an iOS version of its Firefox web browser as long as Apple doesn't mend its unfriendly ways towards third party browsers. Speaking at SXSW in a mobile browser wars panel Sullivan said that Mozilla is neither building nor planning to build a Firefox version for Apple's iOS. Mozilla pulled Firefox Home from the App Store back in September 2012 following Apple's not so accommodating attitude."
It's not just microsoft that engages in anti-competitive behaviour.
... will they allow other browsers on their new mobile OS?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Apple IS competition. There are two very strong platforms for smartphones right now, and they both improve almost daily because of intense competition.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Apple takes care of me -- I don't have to thiwnk about words like standards, or openess, to see the content Apple provides. All my friends like Apple too. Apple is the only company whom provides a user esperience -- I don't need anything else -- people think I'm cool.
the risk to the 99% of users who don't care is too high, for only 1% of users who care (though that 1% is very vocal, especially on nerd sites)
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
How is this news?
a) Why would Mozilla build a browser Apple has already said it won't allow?
b) This same stance has been repeated by Mozilla multiple times.
Well, save for the fact that 'Chrome' on iOS is just a skin over Apple's WebKit with the slower JS engine Apple 'graciously' lets apps us vs the faster one their browser can access on the same device.
Choice of tablet is a fairly personal decision. Why are you worried about offending anyone? Just buy yourself the tablet you want and be done with it. Just be honest if asked. "This tablet does things I can't on the iPad," " This tablet has better specs than the iPad," etc. There are a LOT of reasons to want an upgrade from an iPad to something non-Apple.
Try to buy a non-MS machine at any retail store other than Apple..... Yup... That's called MONOPOPLY
No, it's not.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I switched to Firefox so many years ago for innovative features, but both Chrome and Safari have beat them out in performance and integrated capabilities. How many BS Firefox updates were there last year with nothing significant delivered. Once big fan and now I don't care what system they are on. Perhaps they should pull back and focus where they may be able to be good again. (my .02)
No, any company is free to fork Android. Take a look at Amazon. They seem to be perfectly content right now.
Oh wait, you're talking being in the inner circle where they're privy to what's being developed before it's released and dropped to the AOSP. Explain why anyone should help the competition? Putting the code to AOSP is currently miles ahead of most other companies.
Not the only competition, though, If that's a factor on your choice of phone, wait a bit and buy comething with Tizen, Ubuntu, Firefox OS etc. Because, from an user's - and society's - point of view, there's good and bad competition. And competition that litigates aggressively to ban competitors, like Apple, or to extort competitors, like Microsoft, is surely bad competition.
No, not according to the more pro-active EU competition/monopoly laws or similar US laws. Apple's market share is too small to fall under "monopoly" in any or all European countries, where the distribution is quite varied from nation to nation. Scandinavia is not at all representative of the European handset market as a whole, my dear neighbor.
Furthermore the fact that a product only supports its manufacturer's services is not a violation of any doctrine here or there. The cases involving Microsoft has confused the general public, it's not illegal to only provide your own service/software/accessories. It's when that affects the general market to such a degree that it become detrimental to competition in general. US laws treats and views this differently than the EU does.
In the EU a monopoly is by its very definition seen as detrimental to consumers and must be acted upon. Until Apple constitutes a monopoly or is the dominant force it's not realistic to imagine any action by the US or EU. Apple's great influence does not constitute market power. At the moment Google's Android has the clear majority of consumers in their hand, or rather vice versa.
What? The man who forced Microsoft to settle [the lawsuit Apple brought against them] in return for buying Apple shares, making Office for Mac and bringing Internet Explorer to Mac OS!
No, I'm sorry, Safari is just a "pet project", Apple needed it to for their O/S to stay valid - and avoid Microsoft's grip. The very reason Microsoft was forced to open up by the EU was because their own browser skewed and hindered the market from developing. WebKit is an open source project, as Google and now even Opera proves. Apple doesn't have any greater advantage than say Google Chrome on Mac OS X. What possible arguments do you have?
That's what I hate about perceptive generous people and their expensive and thoughtful gifts. They always manage to get whatever you need almost right. That "almost" part is enough to leave you slightly uncomfortable with what you have but not enough to invest money into something better, since your gains would now be disproportionate to the amount spent. Just give me a cheap, ugly fucking novelty tie I can throw away and we'll both be a lot happier.
I can feed trolls with the best of 'em. Burn, karma, burn!
The fact that the rendering engine would be Gecko on their PC and WebKit on their iPhone just doesn't fucking matter.
Apple limits third party IOS developers to UIWebview, while Safari gets to use the Nitro JIT javascript engine. It's an automatic performance disadvantage for any aftermarket browser. That fucking matters.
It really shows that Mozilla's focus is on themselves and software developers, not on the consumer end user, who has been running Firefox on their PC for years now and Safari on their iPhone for years now and just wants a Firefox interface and bookmark syncing on their iPhone.
No, it shows that Mozilla is smart enough to recognize and avoid pitched battles with Apple. Why fight to have a weird mutant version of their flagship project on a closed device, damaging their brand with artificially limited performance and a rendering engine that doesn't act like Firefox?
If that is Mozilla's focus, then they don't belong on iOS and good riddance.
Mozilla's focus is on opening up the web. You're right - they don't "belong" on closed, controlled iOS. They will, however, try to encourage Apple to let them in.
On iOS, the end user is at the top of the hierarchy, and software developers and content producers all work for the user. The user already has an HTML5 renderer in their iPhone, they already have a TCP/IP stack. You do not need to replace them to build a browser, and in fact, it is much better security that you can't replace them. That is what is best for the consumer: a secure renderer that is highly-optimized specifically for their device.
Who decides what's in your interest? If it's Apple, then Apple is at the top of the hierarchy, not users as you say.
As a user myself, I value the ability to use Firefox over Chrome on my Android device. With Android, I can decide what's in my interests. The defaults work for "most consumers", and for everyone else there is a measure of freedom.
There are plenty of reasons that software monocultures are bad, and Google is your friend there.
There are hundreds of 3rd party browsers on iOS, many with very innovative features. Like Skyfire, which converts Flash Video to ISO standard video on a server and essentially enables you to run Flash on iPhone or iPad. There are browsers that are exploring lots of gestures, or deep social integration.
Cute little user-interface experiments are one thing, but that's all niche-market small time stuff. Deep social integration and gestures? Tee hee. Calling a UIWebview wrapper a browser is kind of endearing.
Mozilla is missing out on all of that because they are pouty, entitled developers who want their feet rubbed and cheeks kissed before they deign to bless us with their bloated, mangled code.
You realize that Firefox is the best browser on the memory usage front, and near tops in performance right? If your gut feeling about Mozilla is based on a 2006-era opinion, you might want to look at what they've done lately.
And of course, Mozilla knows better than Apple what Apple users want. As if.
Most users want options and the ability to use their devices as they see fit. Mozilla has only ever supported users' rights. Apple can't say that.
And finally, Mozilla's hypocrisy: note that the one and only HTML renderer on Firefox OS is Gecko. And Firefox OS has zero 3rd party browsers as of right now.
Hey now, third party browsers can just wrap Gecko (actually, it's more like just opening an IFRAME, since the UI is all HTML.) In your world, using the system renderer is a good thing, right? What are you complaining about? /s
In all seriousness though, it could be done with some work. I
For poor friends ( which gets to be less as we get older ) I buy durable presents, but for any family or friends that have enough money to buy their own stuff, I always try my best to buy consumables. That way if it is something they like, they will enjoy it, but if it is something they don't like, they have an easy excuse for it being gone a week later.
...were I to own an Apple device, it would be like living in North Korea?
You are confused. It's Samsung, and it's not North Korea, it's South Korea. Apple devices make you feel like Southern California. Which is on an altogether different continent on the other side of the world.
My browser blocks ads and scripts, customizes pages with Greasemonkey scripts, and removes tracking elements on pages. The built-in Safari doesn't do anything like that.
You mean "writable executable pages," not directory memory access. The reason Safari is faster than UIWebView is because it can use a JIT to compile JavaScript into native code. Doing this requires the ability to create a writable page of memory that can be written.
Apps in the app store aren't allowed to do this. iOS loads the app into memory, marks all the text section pages as read only, marks all the data section pages as no-execute, and only then passes control to the program. This means that an App store program can't run the JIT because it can't create a writable page that is executable.
However, even given that, I find it impossible that there's no way Apple could give UIWebView access to the JIT. It would just take some amount of effort to architect it and write it, and the end result would probably make their own Safari more secure, but why bother doing that when you can just make every other browser on the platform be unnecessarily slower?
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.