That's just not fully true and you know it. You can't drop in a full replacement browser like on Android in iOS. All web rendering still has to be done using the native webkit.
Yet the others are full replacement browsers. I'd call Safari and Chrome (on desktop) entirely different browsers, because the browser itself is designed a lot differently in each case. The way Opera Mini works, I'd certainly call Opera Mini a different browser from Mobile Safari.
Who cares what the rendering tech is? Only Web designers and anal retentive people; everybody else just wants a browser experience, and doesn't give a shit. Honestly.
If only WebKit apps are permitted that means they're paying attention to securing just WebKit, which is good from my perspective even as a developer that supports open-source. I'm betting that in the future Android will be the Windows of yesteryear, where the first thing you do is install a virus scanner. Apple is selling me on closed platforms so far.
> If only WebKit apps are permitted that means they're paying attention to securing just WebKit, which is good from my perspective even as a developer that supports open-source. I'm betting that in the future Android will be the Windows of yesteryear, where the first thing you do is install a virus scanner. Apple is selling me on closed platforms so far.
What I'm taking away from this paragraph is that you're a developer who supports open source software, but not a developer who supports Free Software. Am I right?
And there are plenty of replacements for the core apps: mail, contacts, calendar etc.