Anyone know why there isn't a Guardian-supported version of Tor for iOS yet?

[Arlen Holder]

*Anyone know why there isn't a Guardian-supported version of Tor for iOS?*

It has been *years* and there still is no official version of Tor for iOS.
Nor is there Guardian Project support for Tor on iOS.

Android has long been supported by the Guardian Project - but not iOS.
Why not iOS?

Normally, brand names and trademarks don't matter since what you need is
the *functionality* - but I've tried all the freely available amateurish
Tor browsers for my iOS iPads which all suck like you can't believe (IMHO).

It seems that the official Tor browser freeware is available only on
Windows, Linux, and MacOS, while at least Android is supported by the
Guardian Project (which maintains the freeware tor-powered apps Orbot and
Orfox).

Yet again iOS app support lags far behind all other consumer platforms.

Since iOS always seems to lag the rest of the world in app functionality,
the *closest* thing to an official Tor browser I can find for iOS is ther
amateurish (IMHO) https://onionbrowser.com written by the venerable Mike
Tigas (who is primarily an investigative journalist).

Mike Tigas begs, borrows, and steals (so to speak) "community support" to
bring this browser to the long neglected iOS users (via Patreon backers,
donors, and even some ad-hoc support from the Guardian Project).

While Mike Tigas is a saint for *trying* to add functionality to iOS, it's
still a vastly second-rate iOS "onion browser" but which is, at least, now
free (it used to cost money, which is ridiculous for a web browser), and
it's at least open source via GitHub (which is good), and at least it gains
"honorable mention" at the Tor site for simply existing for iOS users:
https://blog.torproject.org/tor-heart-onion-browser-and-more-ios-tor

Yet, there's no doubt that it's a second-rate effort, compared to that of
all the other platforms that either officially support the Tor Browser
Bundle (i.e., desktops) or that the Guardian Project officially supports
(i.e., Android's Orbot and Orfox).

Since iOS is notably lacking in official support for the Tor browser,
the question here is simply that of the subject line:
*Anyone know why there isn't a Guardian-supported version of Tor for iOS?*

[Arlen H. Holder]

On Thu, 6 Sep 2018 22:29:28 -0000 (UTC), Arlen Holder wrote:

> *Anyone know why there isn't a Guardian-supported version of Tor for iOS?*

Hint: iOS doesn't have 1/10th the app functionality of Android.