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Nitpick: they don’t ban competing engines. They disallow JITing JavaScript outside a WebView. Firefox or Chrome could include their own, but the wouldn’t be able to JIT the JavaScript. A distinction without a difference, but it’s a lie to say they ban other engines.

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Yes they do:

> 2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Huh. I guess I was mistaken. I could've sworn they allowed developers to use their own rendering code at one point.

Do you think it would be accurate to say that functionally or effectively bans competing engines by forbidding a major component? I believe Mozilla or Google would prioritize including their own engine if it was reasonably possible.

Yes. But I don't think its allowed to run a virtual machine of any kind in the App Store, which the browser javascript engine is/has been.

Apple is not a slave to or victim of their own policy. I feel like a browser is an important and unique enough piece of software that they could choose to make an exception, but obviously it doesn’t fit their business goals which appear to essentially the same as what Microsoft was thinking with Internet Explorer 6.

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