It’s not really mandatory, you can use other browsers on both iOS and macOS

Except you can't. Every browser on iOS uses Safari's rendering engine. Chrome/Firefox on iOS are effectively reskinned Safari. This is an apple requirement. The rendering engine being the important part here when talking about standards and such.

> effectively reskinned Safari

It's worse than that, even - IIRC the renderer that other browsers have to use is slower and more limited than the one Safari uses.

So other browsers are effectively reskinned hobbled Safari.

A rendering engine is not a browser. Are all the Chrome engine variants really just Chrome in a skin? I don’t think so they all have unique properties that set them apart. As do Orion, Firefox, brave, etc on iOS

I wouldn't consider other chromium browsers reskinned because they're using the chromium engine as a dependency, by choice. They can customize it as much or as little as they want (and I'd imagine they do to various extents).

Browsers on iOS can't - they are required (legally, not technologically) to use (a worse version of) Safari's engine. Chrome for iOS is not the browser that the chrome team wants to distribute, it's a browser Apple made that has been customized to the extent that Apple allows it to be customized. What is that if not reskinned?

The only browser that seems to be able to get around this is Orion. No idea how they are doing it.

Orion is WebKit. Safari’s rendering engine is WebKit.

I tried Orion (m1 MBP) recently. From about 3wks ago til a few days ago. I liked the UI. But there were a lot of pages that didn’t work correctly. I persevered for a while. But gave up a few days ago and went back to Brave.

I know it’s WebKit. But they are somehow allowing extensions, which none of the other iOS browsers has managed afaik.

Likely just emulating/providing the javascript interfaces needed for FF and Chrome extensions to run.

When there is will, there is way!

Every time this discussion happens a non-trivial number of people reveal they’ve fallen into this trap of believing other browsers are allowed on iOS. Feels like a consumer protection issue, at some level.

Safari is mandatory to have on iOS - it's preinstalled and can't be removed. It's also propped up in the sense of being built on apis and OS features that other browsers aren't allowed to use.

I mean, imagine if DOJ forced Apple to divest Safari and treat it the same as other browsers. What would happen? Parsimonious answer: the same thing that happened everywhere else.

It is, without iOS and related Safari, anyone doing Web can update their CV as ChromeOS Developer.