Firefox wraps its gums around the iPhone
Spreading the experience, if not the tech
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Mozilla has skinned the iPhone's safari browser with a Firefox-compatible wrapper that synchronises bookmarks and history, and integrates search.
Once Firefox Home has been installed, searches can be typed directly into the address bar, with previous URLs and searches being offered as options just like on the desktop version of Firefox. But Firefox Home is no replacement browser, as it stays within Apple's latest rules.
Those rules don't dance around the subject with talk of locally-interpreted code and such. The latest update explicitly states that "Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework", so Firefox Home is not a web browser but a wrapper around the existing application.
Safari is a perfectly acceptable mobile browser, so adding synchronisation features makes a lot of sense, and integrating search is only sensible for a company that makes a proportion of its income by recommending a search partner.
Mozilla has provided a video running through the new features, and a link to the iTunes application store for those who want to download the free enhancement. ®
COMMENTS
Competition
To answer the questions about why Apple isn't getting hammered like Microsoft did, I believe (IANAL) that one of the pre-requisites to being charged with those types of anti-competitive behaviour is that you have to be in a dominant market position. Apple aren't dominant in either the smartphone or OS arenas, and so can't be behaving anti-competitively.
Bother away...
And if you don't have MobileMe (and don't want to pay for it)?
Surely the reason why Firefox bothered is in your statement that the problem is with Apple - Firefox are drawing attention to the situation in a clear but non-confrontational way.
Probably because ...
Probably because Apple are not in a dominant or monopolistic position in the smartphone market, unlike Microsoft's position in the PC home operating system market.
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