[jeroenhd]

> You tell someone who's dying for a non-webkit browser on iOS

Firefox has struggled to get the sliver of market share they have today. I highly doubt that there are that many people like you and me who crave a real Firefox engine on iOS.

> which is what they should be testing anyway

Having a large part of your team be unable to reproduce bugs is a significant development issue. Some of these operating system features are simply not available outside of the EU.

If it were as easy as you're suggesting, Mozilla would have already done it. Google would have already ported Blink over, or Brave, or whatever browser you prefer. So far I think only Ladybird is really trying to go for a custom browser engine, though app store distribution will be an issue until they can pass enough tests (as Apple has decided your browser is not a real browser if it doesn't pass a certain threshold of existing tests).

[ghusto]

> Having a large part of your team be unable to reproduce bugs is a significant development issue

But I just said, they are free and able to use development builds, regardless of geographical location. As far as I know, the OS is exactly the same, just has certain things disabled depending on region (for example you can breifly see the iPhone mirroring in the EU the first time, before it disapears).

> Firefox has struggled to get the sliver of market share they have today. I highly doubt that there are that many people like you and me who crave a real Firefox engine on iOS.

Why bother with any of it then? If it's hopeless and not enough people want it, why even bother?

[wolvoleo]

> I highly doubt that there are that many people like you and me who crave a real Firefox engine on iOS.

Let's put this another way, would many people be interested in a full blown adblocker like ublock origin? Because that's what I have on Firefox on Android.

[jeroenhd]

With how few iOS users I see the existing content blockers already, shockingly few people as far as I can tell.

I want to see Brave and Firefox fight it off in an ad-blocking-mobile-browser competition to get some more market share, but it seems like iOS users are content with just Safari and ads.

Let me put it another way: why has no other browser company released a browser yet? Mozilla is only a small player, after all.

[wolvoleo]

Yes but current content blockers aren't very effective on iOS.

I think the things mentioned in that open source report, basically Apple making it as hard as possible, plays a big role there.

[RunSet]

> Firefox has struggled to get the sliver of market share they have today. I highly doubt that there are that many people like you and me who crave a real Firefox engine on iOS.

Egg on Apple's face for expending so much effort to deny so few people something they don't actually want.

[jeroenhd]

So far market demand hasn't pushed Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, or anyone else in this direction. It's not just Mozilla, who is often late to these kinds of developments.