I'm not sure it's the same thing. It's an arbitrary and somewhat dubious limitation, but it's less like "IE gets to hook into the OS at a lower level than Netsc

I'm not sure it's the same thing. It's an arbitrary and somewhat dubious limitation, but it's less like "IE gets to hook into the OS at a lower level than Netscape Navigator can" than if the problem has been "Netscape Navigator can run on Windows but has to use IE's rendering engine." I think a lot of iOS's limitations come from a philosophical stance Apple took at the start of the (iOS) App Store -- iPhones and iPads should be treated like consoles, not general purpose computing platforms. Despite them marketing the iPad Pro as if it's a full-bore computer replacement -- and to be fair, there are a lot of use cases where it really can be (e.g., office worker, photographer, writer[1], even video/audio editor -- on an OS level, they've stubbornly stuck with the "Mac = computer, iPad = console" approach[2] and I don't think they're going to change it unless forced. [1] With certain limitations. I can use an iPad well enough for my fiction and non-fiction, but not for my technical writing. [2] The "Mac = computer" part of that is why I disagree with the prevailing opinion on HN about how Apple will "inevitably" lock down the Mac to the same degree they have the iPad; I think they continue to see them as fundamentally different classes of products, even as that distinction grows ever more arbitrary.