yes safari is preinstalled but on an iphone you aren't allowed to install another browser (in this jurisdiction) so there's technically no precedent yet
This is an artificial distinction. A browser normally comes with its own rendering engine.
In my experience, Firefox does not work as well on the iPhone as does Safari. It's obviously a rendering issue, because large pages will reload on their own over and over again while I'm trying to read them. My guess is it's a sneaky broken part of webkit which Apple knows how to fix in Safari and deliberately leaves broken for the other browser makers to suffer the consequences. Because, that's just the kind of bullshit which Apple is down for.
> This is an artificial distinction. A browser normally comes with its own rendering engine.
You're right that a browser normally comes with its own rendering engine, but I don't think it's an artificial distinction. There are plenty of components that most programs call out to the OS for—form elements, drop downs, save/load windows, file system access, and whatnot. The rendering engine is a much larger component, but I don't think it's cut-and-dried that it is categorically different.
> My guess is it's a sneaky broken part of webkit which Apple knows how to fix in Safari and deliberately leaves broken for the other browser makers to suffer the consequences
"Apple sabotages webkit for other Browsers" is a different—and to me at least, much stronger—argument than "Apple requires other browsers to use Webkit".
> There are plenty of components that most programs call out to the OS
Sure - user input handling, raster graphics, text formatting... HTML rendering and browser technology though? Apple made WebKit using FOSS desktop libraries, and then turned around to deny users FOSS desktop-grade competition. They TiVoized your browser.
Apple is going to have a tough defense, if they decide to steelman that particular point. The writing is on the wall, competition is coming with or without Apple's approval.
> "Apple sabotages webkit for other Browsers" is a different—and to me at least, much stronger—argument than "Apple requires other browsers to use Webkit".
Currently, anyone can create a new iPhone browser, but with one huge restriction: Apple insists that it uses the same WebKit rendering engine as Safari. [0]
And currently you can also delete Safari from your iOS device. An example of this is Firefox [1].
