There’s even a way to get W^X memory regions on iOS by abusing ptrace: https://saagarjha.com/blog/2020/02/23/jailed-just-in-time-co...
It can’t be submitted to the App Store or deployed with TestFlight, but you can build and install an app using that hack just fine on your own device.
Open source browser vendors, like Firefox and Chromium, could provide builds that enable a full browser engine experience on iOS devices, were they to think it worth the effort.
This is why the iPad needs a way to disable SIP (and the additional security features) just like the Mac. I could give a heck about the iPhone, to be honest, there's maybe one time in my life being able to JIT Python or whatever would've been useful on my phone. But they advertise the iPad as a computer, and yet their software restrictions make it a portable TV.
https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/06/ios-14-2-brings-jit-compilati...
That's not at all true. It's not useful for some subset of what certain geeks want to use it for. It's very useful for all the other things a highly portable computer hooked up to a bunch of really cool sensors and a very capable peripherals ecosystem is.
Ordinarily I'm all for arguments that we, as an industry (software developers, that is) are laughable failures, but I don't think we've failed so badly that computers are useless if you can't—for any reason, including personal inability or lack of interest—run (e.g.) Python on them.
It's more of a death by a thousand cuts scenario at this point rather than major things being completely missing from iPadOS, which is why it's painful to watch as they sell extremely powerful hardware that could be used for something cool if not for the darned restrictions.
- Run full linux on it (both emulated X86 and via WASM magic, via A-Shell and iSH, both on the App Store)
- Coded Python, C#, Javascript and Lua on it (via Pythonista, Continuous, Scriptable and Codea) _and_ ran the code on the iPad itself
- Wrote blog posts for my old static site and pushed them to a git repo to publish them (via iA Writer for writing and Working Copy for Git)
- Connected via SSH and RDP to "real computers" (via the Remote Desktop app and Blink!, though there's many SSH clients on the AS)
- Used SFTP to transfer files to/from said computers/servers (via Secure Shellfish)
There's also an entire class of apps built upon the Shortcuts model, that allows you to extend and improve upon the Shortcuts (née Workflow, third party now first party) "coding model", which is very powerful and heavily integrated with the device and Apple services - though very different from "traditional" coding.
Is it a limited platform? Yes, absolutely.
Is it a general purpose computer? Yes, most definitely.
Can you do "geeky things" on it? Well, I've been doing them for years.
Can you run a full UNIX-like dev environment on it? Well, yes, with tricks. But why would you want to, when there's plenty of options that do it 1) natively 2) better? Use an iPad for what its purpose is, not for what a Mac's purpose is.
It's not actually usable for anything. It's also a completely arbitrary and needlessly-punitive restriction—if I've opted in to installing custom software, why limit me to three apps at a time, and why make them only last a week? What security benefit does that provide?
However, an Apple ID is needed, which requires an email and working phone number to get, along with additional EULA/terms acceptance. It's not really a mode, but an additional network service with its own terms and conditions.
Yeah; sorry - it really does - I vastly prefer Gecko’s rendering engine and notice it’s considerably speedier and more responsive on my MacBook Pro side by side to the newest Safari. The app even opens faster.
Not only that, but I imagine there are a ton of web devs here in the comments who have a requirement testing on the actual FireFox, not some light skin on top of the existing WebKit engine with bookmark sync support.
FireFox for iOS is the farthest thing from ‘FireFox’. It’s in name only.
I do wonder how the 12” iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard would compare. I haven’t used one yet, but I suspect it would be pretty good. The 12” display seems a little large for a tablet, though.
> Until I can run a proper version of Firefox on iPad
FireFox for iOS works just fine. The Gecko vs WebKit difference doesn’t really matter in practice.
If you want general purpose computing, just get a Mac. You can run Firefox and any other program you’d like. It would be great if there was an opt-in developer mode on iOS that bypassed certain restrictions, but I also understand why Apple chose to go with security and simplicity as 99.9+% of their customers have no need nor desire to go beyond the security and platform restrictions.
I have both an iPad Pro with keyboard case and a MacBook. Even if I could run whatever I wanted on the iPad, I’d still be reaching for the MacBook because it’s just a better physical platform for doing anything other than simple touchscreen and stylus work.