Yeah other reasons I've heard of include the obligation to adopt iOS-specific APIs for features like scrolling and text inputs; developing a separate app for these markets and therefore loosing their existing userbase; and signing a pretty crazy contract, among other things.
But the bigger the market they can reach, the bigger the reward, and so at some point it may justify investing resources to work around those roadblocks and accept the drawbacks.
> Yeah other reasons I've heard of include the obligation to adopt iOS-specific APIs for features like scrolling and text inputs
TBH I'm fine with that. Applications, browsers or not, should use the operating system's components and APIs for things for a unified experience across all apps and interactions. On the desktop side of things, I hate when an application breaks convention for the OS it's deployed on. If I'm using macOS, for example, I want every app on my mac to look and behave like any other, consistent with the rest of the OS.
I’d say it’s even more important on mobile than it is on desktop. Third parties re-implementing things like the keyboard and IMEs are unlikely to do those anywhere near as well as the OS does, not to mention how custom implementations would break password manager integration, user-selected third party keyboards, etc.
Don't expect Apple to just open the gates and say anything goes as far as the browser is concerned. Instead, look for an Apple build of Firefox and maybe an Apple build of Chrome that you will be able to install.
But the bigger the market they can reach, the bigger the reward, and so at some point it may justify investing resources to work around those roadblocks and accept the drawbacks.