And its really just Safari. Apple forbids other browser engines in iOS so every third party browser in the app store is effectively a safari skin and not at all related to the product's true codebase. Real Firefox uses the Gecko browser engine. iOS Firefox is webkit.

To quote Apple's iOS dev guidelines:

"2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript."

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Most users don't care about the engine, they care about things like where your bookmarks are synched and configured, and the UI.

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

The engine is a method for apple to maintain control over the entire ecosystem. Is a web standard developing which could threaten native ios apps? By maintaining control of the engine they can prevent the standard from threatening them.

Users dont care about the engine until they cant use some web based thing because apple has decided so.

In this case, it's more like telling people that a particular Toyota was built by BMW.

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.

That's a debatable point but the result either way doesn't change the point of my comment. They were dismissing the parent comment because they didn't understand the true nature of what they were talking about.

Sure but in my experience the sync, night mode, and ad blocking are a lot better in firefox, although it is definitely a bit slower because of javascript.

Firefox on iOS uses WebKit for showing web content, it doesn't use Gecko or any other components you'd think of as "Firefox".

It does have some Mozilla added plugins and syncs with Firefox logins, but the meat of the application isn't really "Firefox".

It’s safari with a wig.

It's like if Microsoft had decreed in the 2000s that Mozilla can only make their browser as an IE6 toolbar, with IE6 still rendering the pages and enforcing weird rules.

Thankfully that would have gotten Microsoft in trouble with anti-trust regulators in the 2000s. In 2022 anti-competitive behavior from platform holders is unfortunately tolerated - both for Apple and Microsoft.

Sorry but the adblocking, night-mode, and sync make it a lot better for me than safari, so it's not just "safari with a wig" which would imply only the interface looked a bit different but otherwise it worked the same, which is not the case.

Firefox on iOS uses the Webkit rendering engine, not the Gecko rendering engine it uses on other platforms.

"browser engine" != "browser app"