Mozilla's popular Firefox browser has long been available for Android smartphone users. Meanwhile, those on iOS are still waiting for the day that the app will appear on the Apple App Store. If you're a Firefox fan who happens to be using an iPhone, you should be glad to know that after months of painstaking beta tests, Mozilla has finally released Firefox for iOS.

But what took it so long? According to Slash Gear, Apple won't allow any third-party browser to be available on the App Store if the latter doesn't use Apple's very own WebKit engine. Sadly for Mozilla, Firefox relies heavily on its built-in Gecko engine. The developer was forced to choose between two business options. Adopt WebKit or stay away from the App Store. Well, now we know how that turned out.

As for the new Firefox for iOS, the app is open to basically anyone with an iPhone running on iOS 8.2 or newer. This shouldn't be much of a problem as Apple's marketing executive Phil Schiller told Wired last September that nearly 50 percent of compatible iPhones have installed iOS 9 within the first week of its release. Just imagine what the figures are now.

"iOS 9 is off to an amazing start, on pace to be downloaded by more users than any other software release in Apple's history," said Schiller.

Going back to Firefox for iOS, its features include Private browsing, Firefox Sync, and "visual tabs." Needless to say, the app is a free download so don't hesitate to give it a spin.

It was just this week when Mozilla updated the Firefox browser with improved privacy and security capabilities. The newest version of Firefox is called Firefox 42 and has a feature called Private Browsing with Tracking Protection. Unlike other browsers, Firefox 42 blocks parts of web pages that might potentially track browsing activity. It does this while also not recording browsing history, as per The Mozilla Blog.

No other big-name browser is offering the same capability. For example, Google Chrome's Incognito Mode does a great job of clearing search history, browsing history and cookies after pages have been closed. However, it does not stop web page trackers from possibly collecting information from when users visited a particular site.

"We care a lot about choice and control, so we're really proud of Firefox 42," said Mozilla Firefox product executive Nick Nguyen via eWeek. "Tracking Protection is a content blocker that blocks tracking elements from Web pages."

As for Firefox Sync, Mozilla's support page explained that the feature conveniently allows users to share data like bookmarks, history, passwords and even opened tabs across multiple devices.