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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.
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.
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)
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.
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.