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Yeah.. Apple hardware is awesome, but the software feels kind of obsolete and restrictive by now compared to Android phones.

But Mozilla don't allow any non-Gecko browser on Firefox OS; all apps are HTML, so are they not calling the pot black?

Where does Mozilla say they don't allow anything? Apple says it explicitly in their iOS SDK license.

The word implicit was added to the dictionary for a reason. I think you've stumbled upon a usage.

The limitation is implied, because the fundamental architecture of the OS prohibits it.

So what? ARM code can't run in x86 (without emulation) because architecture prohibits it. I don't have a problem with that. Apple forbids things not architecturally, but legally. If you don't see the difference - there is nothing really to discuss here.

Edited 2013-03-10 22:28 UTC

I think Kroc was implying that you can't run native applications in Firefox OS, so no other browsers implicitly as well. But it's a design restriction, not some sick legal prohibition so it's not comparable. It's like saying that JVM discriminates the native code.

Edited 2013-03-10 18:51 UTC

They always attempt to mask political reasons into technical ones. Which only added to their hypocrisy.

Ok, so just so we're clear, this is your conspiracy theory, right?

Oooook.

Here it's pretty clearly anticompetitive. Any kind of masking won't hide it.

There's no conspiracy to it. Just Apple's excuses for assholish behaviour. Forced obsolescence, DRM, anti-competitive actions, they and their fanbois will always make up semi-plausible excuses for what can more reasonably explained by profit motives.

Apple considers itself part of the trusted code base. FYI: Apple also uses other off-limits APIs you're not allowed to touch.

The entire point is preventing apps that have been certified to do X, from doing Y.

Then just issue a warning to the user and let the user choose. Most users know Firefox and trust it, in fact that's why they would want to install it.
It's as simple as that.

Microsoft's reasons were also completely technical : everyone knows that it was completely impossible to separate Internet Explorer from Windows OS. Yeah, Really.

at the same time, they didn't stop you from installing other browsers, they just stopped you from removing IE, the two are not even in the same country, let alone ballpark.

I provided the rationale, many times. If you (or others on OSNews) don't want to acknowledge that it in fact exists, then that's between you and your delusions.

Its not a policy decision, its a sentence! You see how stupid this is? It is a decision made on a technical basis. Apple didn't have a meeting and decide to wake up and screw Firefox.

That's a really good question in fact. I believe that the difference is that you can take Mozilla's Firefox OS and replace Gecko by the Web engine of your choice, provided that that engine implements the same Web APIs that Mozilla added to support the various things needed on a phone --- which has already started, with Samsung already adding some of these APIs to WebKit. By contrast, you can't take Apple's iOS and replace WebKit by the Web engine of your choice.

Not even that I believe, the only thing other browser vendors can do on iOS is use the existing installed WebKit library.

Yes, that's what I think. (i.e. only one browser engine) I wondered how they got rid of being sued as anti-competitive.

People forget that the EU punished Microsoft for abusing their monopoly, not just for their business practices.

Apple has no monopoly, the market share of Android is bigger and growing.

It is hard to sandbox this sort of thing. It would potentially open the door to apps doing things outside of what Apple's gate keepers certified.

An app could be a fart app, download and execute some code and become much more malicious.

That said, I think Apple (and MSFT) use a heavy hand here. On Windows Phone you can apply for a "Technical Exemption" which means, yeah I broke the rules, but I have a good reason for doing so.

1. competition is good.

2. I believe Chrome as any browser can only use the existing already installed iOS libraries. So there is no v8 on iOS. They all use the same rendering- and javascript-engine. Even worse, HTML5 hybrid-apps aren't even allowed to use the full capabilities as you can with HTML5 in the browser on iOS. Let's just say Apple is pretty strict.

3. There aren't many benchmarks, but the ones I've seen show Firefox on Android is actually faster than Chrome on Android.

4. Firefox on the desktop usually uses less memory than Chrome these days (Chrome memory uses has increased, Firefox has decreased). Depending on addons it is still possible that Firefox will leak memory though, but these problems have become less and less of a problem they fixed most of those problems.

So I wouldn't just blatantly dismiss it.

Edited 2013-03-10 19:31 UTC

Sorry, I'm tired, need to read better.

That was just a short-lived experience by one employee, not a company-endorsed thing.