> > Apple, in contrast, always treats itself better. (Try removing iTunes from your iPhone.)
> That’s the entirety of Wu’s second meaning of “open” — a comparison between a web browser and an operating system.
I think he missed the point here. In Firefox everything gets treated more or less equally, whereas on the iPhone certain apps get treated better than others. For example, there's the whole "only allowed to use Safari renderer" nonsense.
>Mozilla now has its own mobile OS, on which, I’ll bet, there are at least some apps you cannot remove.
I imagine the only apps on Moz you won't be able to remove would be ones that deal with system settings. To be seen, but there'd be no reason not to build it that way.
Try putting a different browser renderer on Firefox OS. You're pretty much locked in to JavaScript — unless you can somehow build WebKit with Emscripten, you're already behind what iOS can do — even with Apple's rules.
In Firefox OS, the browser is the OS. It'd be like saying you can't replace Dalvik in Android.
It's not about replacing the browser, it's about being able to replace things that you should be able to. There is no good technical reason to not let people replace Safari on iOS.
Not so sure about your last sentence. Can a replacement browser be any good without using JIT compilation somewhere? Is the sandbox going to allow it to jump into dynamically generated data? Are there any valid technical reasons for having sand-boxing in the first place?
> That’s the entirety of Wu’s second meaning of “open” — a comparison between a web browser and an operating system.
I think he missed the point here. In Firefox everything gets treated more or less equally, whereas on the iPhone certain apps get treated better than others. For example, there's the whole "only allowed to use Safari renderer" nonsense.
>Mozilla now has its own mobile OS, on which, I’ll bet, there are at least some apps you cannot remove.
I imagine the only apps on Moz you won't be able to remove would be ones that deal with system settings. To be seen, but there'd be no reason not to build it that way.