[0] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#sof...
there is no "Safari Webview" -- GP is being pedantic but he is right here. WKWebView is not Safari, anymore than Chrome was Safari before it forked off into using Blink. WebKit != Safari
How does the first sentence follow from the second? For almost all users, the engine is irrelevant, it's the chrome that matters.
My own primary reasons for using FF are 2 things:
1 - Use anything other than chromium simply to combat monoculture and preserve some possibility for things that Google and MS or other superpowers may not like and so won't be allowed in Chrome or Edge.
2 - For instance, actually functional, useful, powerful and and user-holds-the-power plugins, like ad-blockers that actually work and don't have un-closable whitelists for paying customers, page editors that can block or modify other things besides just ads like any sort of annoying thing like auto playing videos or chat popups etc. Url-cleaners that strip off all the tracking redirects in search result links and links in facebook comments etc.
Some of this kind of stuff is still possible in chrome/edge at least on the desktop, but only because there still is at least some small competition to compare to, and it gets a little worse every day, never better. Meanwhile I have at least some of this even on mobile. Some things if I can't get it in the normal FF, I can get them in whole other special purpose browsers, which couldn't be done with any browser at all on ios.
Much of this is core browser engine function, not just the visual style of the buttons.
The engine is all that matters to me. Certain sites work differently on different engines. The only reason I leave Safari is for a different engine that often works better on less popular or more niche sites (PKI and some other issues). I can't do that on my iPhone. I wish I could.
I know many people, not technologically inclined, that just try different browsers on their computers when a website doesn't work. They don't know they are trying different engines, they just know it works on their computer. They also don't know that this methodology doesn't work on iOS. They still try.
> …
> I know many people who…
Uh, why are the people you know more valid than the people I know?
Also no one brought up trying different browsers for compatibility reasons, and tbh, I don’t think anyone does that on their phone. It’s definitely the case that the two comments I’ve gotten are from people who personally care about the engine more than the chrome, but I’ve seen nothing to suggest the average person does.
I never made such a claim. I explained some subset of the population that is different than yours. I never made an assumption about the population as a whole, which “almost all users” from the original post does. I intentionally did not attempt to take my experience and claim it is representative of the population.
You further prove my original point by stating “tbh, I don’t think anyone does that on their phone.” You feel confident that your experiences represent the population that you can speculate about what they do? That you can speak for users in India, grandma’s in Indiana, and software engineers in Texas?
I see this logic often in policy debates and it affects outcomes which has the potential to hurt groups outside the advocate’s bubble, even with the best of intentions, simply because they think they understand the population, rather than being aware of how much they don’t know. Again, I never claimed you were right or wrong, I just pointed out you don’t have justifiable confidence, in a statistical sense, to make such claims.
To quote Apple's iOS dev guidelines:
"2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript."
This is like telling people that a lexus isn't a real luxury car, it's just a re-skinned toyota. Most people don't care- they just want materials, tech, and nice seats. The skin is the car
Users dont care about the engine until they cant use some web based thing because apple has decided so.
It might not seem relevant on the surface, but the underlying technical differences could pose an issue for certain user cases, thus it's an important consideration. Not all Firefox addons work with the iOS version just like not every Toyota dealership carries parts for a Zupr4.
It does have some Mozilla added plugins and syncs with Firefox logins, but the meat of the application isn't really "Firefox".