> The need to remove the capability was informed by the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps to support alternative browser engines that would require building a new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS and iPadOS.

This rationalization makes zero sense, it's just opening a standalone browser window from a convenient icon shortcut. They could even ignore the manifest.json entirely like Android does half the time anyway cause the implementation is buggy as all hell.

I think the real reason was some kind of retaliation worthy of a baby insanity wolf meme because they were forced to stop reskinning Safari for all other browsers on iOS which was absolutely ridiculous in the first place.