Mozilla (Firefox?) app coming to the iPhone in "the next few weeks"
GigaOM interviewed Mozilla CEO Jon Lily at the Play conference, an event at the Haas School of Business at the University of Berkeley. There, Lily hinted that Mozilla would be submitting an app to the App Store.
“Mozilla will release an app to the iPhone app store in the next few weeks,” Lily said. “It’ll surprise people.”
While Mozilla's business is mostly browsers, they do other related stuff and they aren't likely to try to get a Safari competitor by Apple's App Store reviewers. Om thinks it might revolve around their bookmark synching service, Weave.
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Comments (23)
I say it won't pass...
If I could have Mobile Firefox, then I could sync bookmarks between my iPhone and my Mac without using Safari. Safari is great, but I'd still prefer to use Firefox and all of its plugins as well. I only use Safari because (a) it syncs with my mobile devices across MobileMe and (b) it launches quicker than Firefox does on my computer. Maybe this'll change that.
I'm guessing that mozilla will release something that includes weave and ubiquity in a browser. I do hope though that they somehow made a deal with apple to allow firefox onto the device...9to5Mac Noob
im not too bothered about choice whilst safari is the fastest mobile browser and syncs so well
are there any compelling reasons to use something other than safari?
Any time you introduce competition you fuel change. Both Safari & Firefox will have to bring more, better features to the table to maintain superiority. Competition is never a bad thing as the consumer gets more features and usually better, cheaper services... though these are already free.
On another note, the EU is a huge stickler when it comes to anti-competitive practices. Think Microsoft and Internet Explorer. Apple may have no choice but to allow an alternative browser onto its platform.
Yes - there are compelling reasons to not use Safari.
Safari's Javascript engine isn't compatible with some software out there. Our school uses an open source learning management system and Safari's javascript restrictions don't play well with the WYSIWYG and other Javascript functions that run the program - whereas with Firefox, no problems at all (even IE works better than Safari - choke - on this system). You could argue it's the system, but you could also argue that Safari be more compatible too...
How do you know mobile FireFox won't change that? ;)
If they released mobile FireFox, I would delete Safari if I could. I hate mobile Safari. When I jump between tabs, sometimes they refresh, and randomly it'll reset so I'll lost everything I had open in tabs (usually 3-6 tabs' worth of information).
The reason for the tab content disappearing is simply to save memory. It's a tradeoff that Apple was right to make.
Good point. But sometimes I load a couple of different sites into tabs at home over WiFi and would like to read those later e.g. on the train. Now when I switch between the tabs and I have to reload the tabs it can be a bit annoying. Especially when you where on page 5 here on 9to5Mac and when you reload the page you end up on page 1 again, hint, hint ;-)
Firefox with built in flash support...
Wouldn't that first require a flash plugin from adobe to be allowed into the app store?
No... note he said *built-in* flash support.
now THAT would be the killer app.
I'm sure there'll be some good ideas in mobile Firefox, such that mobile Safari may adopt them.
Safari is faster than Firefox, but I'm sure glad Firefox is around!
Its not competition when any browser developed for the iPhone is done so exclusively within Apple's guidelines and cannot include any new features that Apple has not already made available through Safari. Plus, any attempt to code a web browser, that has to use Safari as its base, is not a true browser, its just Safari, but slower.
The surprise will be Apple approving it, if they do.
The non-surprise will be that its completely worthless, as it won't add a single feature to iPhone web browsing, and it will definitely be slower than Safari.
Yawn.
Sweet, and hopefully AdBlock and other add-on's could be modified to work too.
yuck
I look forward to seeing how it turns out, possibly a Safari beater?
The bottom line here is that Webkit based browsers (safari, chrome, etc) are still riddled with rendering errors. Overall they've gotten better, but when it comes to page accuracy Firefox and Opera are still the best standards compliant browsers around (in my opinion).
Now Sound Off People!
I had a dream once that there was a WebKit Powered version of Firefox...That was a good night
Yes - there are compelling reasons to not use Safari.
Safari's Javascript engine isn't compatible with some software out there. Our school uses an open source learning management system and Safari's javascript restrictions don't play well with the WYSIWYG and other Javascript functions that run the program - whereas with Firefox, no problems at all (even IE works better than Safari - choke - on this system). You could argue it's the system, but you could also argue that Safari be more compatible too...