“The free Firefox Home is more of a window to your Firefox browsing rather than a competing browser itself, which Apple’s software development kit prohibits,” Dolcourt reports. “Rather, the app relies on Firefox Sync, a cloud-based syncing technology that promises to securely sync your desktop bookmarks, history, and open tabs across Firefox browsers on desktops, mobile phones, and tablets. You’ll be able to view recent Web sites directly from Firefox Home via a WebKit viewer or by opening your previously-visited Web pages in the default Safari browser.”
Dolcourt reports, “On the coding end, Firefox Home’s URL viewer is based on WebKit, the same technology that powers the default Safari browser.”
More info in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If Perfect Browser (US$0.99) had AutoFill, it would be so close to actually being perfect that we’d use it instead of Safari. Until then, however, Safari Mobile is our iOS browser of choice.
Well,
If it’s not a browser, what’s the point?
Bookmarks in safari work just fine.
This seems like an entirely useless product.
“The free Firefox Home is more of a window to your Firefox browsing rather than a competing browser itself, which Apple’s software development kit prohibits”
That’s not true. There’s plenty of competing browser in the app store. Browsers that don’t use Webkit are prohibited. I guess it’s a small point, but I hate CNET and suspect them of taking shots at Apple whenever they can.
This will be just as successful as that Opera-thingy I installed and immediately deleted from my iPhone.
I don’t understand Apple’s ban on iOS browsers, or even how it’s legal. They could allow browsers, but have requirements saying it has to support certain technologies (like HTML5) to be approved. Safari on the Mac keeps getting better because of competition with Firefox and Chrome, I’d like the same thing to happen on iOS.
What I don’t understand is why FF doesn’t support h. 264 video. It forces you to create multiple versions of videos to use in HTML5. Apple and others really need to settle future license fee issues and work to have h.264 worked into the final HTML5 standard.
So what actual format is required for HTML5? I understand the old ways of uploading any old format to youtube for example and it would come out the other end as a flv. But what format does HTML5 like? mp4 or h264 or what?
“I don’t understand Apple’s ban on iOS browsers, or even how it’s legal.”
Browsers are runtimes that execute external code that cannot be checked by Apple’s QC, that’s why they are not allowed. It is legal, because it’s Apple’s product and they can do or say whatever they want. Developers must abide by an agreement if they want to develop for the iOS platforms. It could potentially be considered “unfair” if the iOS was a much larger platform that attained a monopoly like share of the market. However, only having some 20% of the mobile market, it is far from having a monopoly position.