Will Firefox & Opera Make It To The iPhone Now?
Jan 14 2009 
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According to a recent post by Mac Rumors, Apple has begun to approve 3rd party web browsing apps for the App Store. After a quick check of the list and the App Store, sure enough all four web browsers that were mentioned in the article are available in the App Store. Fantastic, but I still see a problem.
Where’s The REAL Competition?
None of these apps are from any companies that would give Safari Mobile some stiff competition like Opera or Firefox (or dare I say IE?). I’ve never even heard of the browsers that were approved before today. None of these apps offer anything over Safari either. Clearly Apple is still blocking the competition. Can we say “HATERRR!”? Come on Apple, stop being a punk and take on the competition head to head on your own turf!
What A Joke!
As an iPhone owner, I have to say I’m a little pissed that Apple will still continue to block competition. I highly doubt Firefox or Opera will make it to the iPhone, despite these new offerings. To me, they’re all jokes to Apple which is probably why they were approved. Could Safari see a drop in its percentage of market share if Apple were to approve competitor browsers? Probably so if the competition’s apps crash less than Safari does. Despite recent offerings, I wouldn’t get my hopes up on this issue. Apple is playing this game dirty the entire way through.
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The apps approved by Apple aren't really new browsers; they are just different implementations and approaches to browsing based on Mobile Safari's WebKit rendering engine. In other words, the code that renders the web pages in these apps is Apple's.
There's no indication that this opens the door to FireFox or Opera. If anything, it just shows that developers can create new browsers for the iPhone without getting FireFox or Opera involved.
The description for the newly approved Edge Browser clearly states that it's basically a full-screen version of Safari:
It's pretty obvious by now that a 3rd party browser based on Gecko (FireFox's rendering engine) or anything else for that matter ain't coming to the iPhone anytime soon, or perhaps ever. Mozilla's CEO has already said as much.This is similar to how there's not going to be Flash or Java for the iPhone either, which I'm completely fine and okay with.
To understand why this is the way it is, you have to understand Apple and the iPhone. They care about the user experience more than almost anything else; anything that messes with that is a no-no. Mobile Flash hogging processor cycles and killing the battery? Nope. A rendering engine that might render code differently than WebKit (which by now hundreds if not thousands of iPhone apps use) and confuse users? Not gonna happen. From a business point of view, they aren't going to give their competitors control of the video/animation, runtime environment or web rendering on their device. That doesn't make sense.
When it comes to web browsing (at least the engine part), if it ain't broken, don't fix it. Some of the newly approved apps provide specific enhancements that will be useful at times; but they won't replace Mobile Safari for most users or render anything differently than it does, a good thing.
Corvida asks, where's the real competition? I'd say WebKit is kicking the competition's asses. WebKit is the rendering engine of every mobile platform that matters: iPhone, iPod Touch, Android and now the Palm Pre. (Some Nokia phones, too.) Neither Google or Palm went with Mozilla or Opera's (mentioning IE was a joke, right?) mobile offerings; that should tell us something.
Great reply Al!!! I loved reading this.
Thanks for being a good sport about my reply; my intention was to clarify the App Store stuff and explain from my perspective what is and isn't happening with 3rd party browsers on the iPhone.
You did a damn good job of it :D
You did a damn good job of it :D
You did a damn good job of it :D