Safari Killing Opera for Mac OS X? 168
analog_line writes "According to an article at News.com, the folks at Opera have given an ultimatum to Apple: Use the Opera engine in Safari or we'll have to rethink developing Opera for the Mac. While I know people who use Opera for the Mac, I find it hard to believe that Opera thinks they'll get any response other than, 'enjoy developing for one less platform.'"
Opera sues Apple? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple is probably planning on bundling safari with OSX. Granted, they probably won't integrate it. Is this right or wrong? Is it anticompetitive? Analysis?
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2, Interesting)
Are they using it to hinder others? I doubt it. Just making observations based on others.
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2)
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope I don't need to explain this further.
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:4, Interesting)
Monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
A monopoly is not illegal unless abused in some way. Microsoft's monopoly over Windows is not per se illegal. But their attempt to leverage IE by using their monopoly power was, obviously, improper. That IE is free changed nothing -- rather, it underscored that IE was getting a free ride thanks to the underlying profitable monopoly.
Now, within the market of Mac-compatible computers, I'm wondering how Apple bundling more and more products into its ubiquitous OS could not eventually cause the same sort of problem. Unlike what Microsoft was doing by "integrating" Windows, the Apple components are pretty easily to deactivate. However, the Apple products are clearly intended to be competitive, and at some point Apple might be said to abuse its monopoly over Macs to shoehorn in other things.
It's difficult to imagine, mostly because they're not Microsoft, but what if Apple were to squeeze out competitiors by embedding the free stuff or refusing to publish its API's and so on? The millions of Mac users can't just switch to another OS without getting a new computer, and their choices would end up being Apple's choices. [Now that there is a robust open source browser market developing, I don't think browsers will be the next battleground.]
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)
In what way, and for what reason, do you feel this to be so? What do you mean by "won't integrate it"?
After all, Safari already interfaces with both Rendezvous and AddressBook right in the main interface, and it offers simple gateways to helper applications like StuffIt, Preview, etc. Not only that, but one of the long term goals for Safari seems to be to make the KHTML engine available to third party application developers. If this isn't "integration", what is?
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
Need I continue?
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:3, Insightful)
Currently. Will that still be true if/when KHTML & any other aspects of Safari become part of the system libraries? Maybe the Safari interface to those libraries will be easily removeable, but will that mean anything?
Same objection applies -- the SoftwareUpdate application still seems to do HTTP communication and some kind of extraction of data returned from the web. Okay, so it's not doing real HTML rendering now, but if the library is just waiting to be used then why couldn't it be applied in a future version? (IMO, Microsoft just uses IE for WindowsUpdate just because it's so easy to put that info into a web page rather than having to keep a separate application on every instance of Windows they ship. The fact that Apple came to a different conclusion on this matter isn't very impressive to me one way or the other.).
A better example might be the help system -- that all seems to just be simple HTML rendering, and I don't see any reason that they wouldn't transition this to a KHTML based backend in a future release.
Quite true. So what?
Could you please? I remain unconvinced. You've given a handful of offhand remarks about how you can route around or remove Safari. That in my opinion doesn't refute the fact that Safari -- especially for a beta release -- is already remarkably integrated into the system, even if in a "loose coupling / tight cohesion" kind of way where, as I say, everything works well together but, as you say, components can still be removed or replaced without too much pain. I don't see any reason not to expect the cohesion among Safari and the rest of the system to get even tighter in post-Beta versions, and it remains an open question whether the loos coupling aspect that you're leaning on will remain part of the picture (though I think we both hope that loose coupling will still work well in future releases).
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
All you can look at is what Apple's situation is now, and what their general philosophy is. Right now, Safari is totally optional. It's safe to say it will be the browser on the dock on new machines once it is ready. It can simply be dragged to the trash to be erased. This isn't just the way Safari works-- if I want to delete Mail.app, iChat, iMovie, etc., all I have to do is drag the app to the trash. It is part of the easy and intuitive user experience that Apple has always had over Windows, and that has become especially strong in OS X.
Additionally, look at Apple's gameplan. Apple is trying to further the Mac OS, in order to further Apple hardware. They aren't trying to make Safari the dominant browser that crushes all others. Apple felt that a simple browser that is OS X through-and-through, and that integrates with the other iApps, was a very useful piece to making the OS X experience better. The other side-motivation that possibly exists would be to push away the dominant MS products and offer a worthy alternative. In this case it isn't to crush IE, but to keep MS from crushing Apple by leveraging IE.
So, yes, there exists a possibility that Apple could go counter to the way they have developed all their other applications and go against the general design of the platform, but until I start seeing some sort of evidence to at least suggest this is what they are trying to do, I don't see the point in arguing over it.
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2)
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2, Informative)
Really I think the burden of proof is on you. If I drag Safari to the Trash it will be as if Safari never existed.
On my system Chimera is far more integrated than Safari. When I open an html file or webloc or tell another app to open a page, it opens in Chimera. (Chimera even appears automatically on my list of possible default browsers. OSX 10.1 only showed IE automatically)
The only real way in which the System and Safari are linked is that when Safari 1.0 comes out the system will tell me. Of course by the time it does I will have already seen it on VersionTracker and read articles about it on MacSlash and possibly Slashdot. And if I never want to see another Safari release in my life after that I can tell System Update to stop showing Safari to me.
The only integration is that Safari looks like an iApp and it accesses the same features provided to 3rd party browsers.
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2)
Excuse me? I'm arguing that Apple has with Safari aimed for & for the most part achieved tight coupling (system components work well together, including in this case Safari with the rest of the system) and loose cohesion (components are not interdependent and so can be arbitrarily swapped out or removed). To refute this, you're telling me that you can delete Safari. I know that. I agree with that. In fact, you're parroting half of my argument back at me while steadfastly ignoring the other part. SO what's this burden of proof crap? ;)
I think what you -- and several of the other posters -- are arguing is how heavily embedded Safari is or isn't in the OS. I'm not talking about that. That can play into the coupling/cohesion idea, but it's really not the same thing.
And that, if you'll put the flame thrower back down, is more or less all I was getting at in the first place.
Did I touch a nerve or something? Sheesh. As Frankie [slashdot.org] wrote elsewhere in this thread, Apple is not a convicted abusive monopolist, and WebCore is LGPL. And as an anonymous coward noted [slashdot.org], the other core technologies that Safari integrates with -- the open source Rendezvous API, the LDAP based AddressBook, etc -- are all generally open & libre. So when I talk about Safari being integrated, I'm talking about how this semi-open source application interfaces with these other open protocols in the system. That to me is integration. When I talk about Safari being integrated, I'm talking about how this application brings with it a web engine that can be embedded by any other application on the system, just like Rendezvous etc can. That to me is also integration. Not only that, it's obvious integration.
What is there to argue about here? Hold frickin' tempest in a teapot batman...
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2)
That makes sense. That arguement did not come across to me in your post (I'll admit to reading only your high moderated comment).
The confusion came from your definition of the word 'integration' which is not the one usually batted around here. And also from the fact that the integration with OSX of which you speak is not unique to Safari, and from the comments about tying together Safari or KHTML with other system apps.
if you'll put the flame thrower back down
oh come on. it's only a zippo.
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2)
I realized that the original commenter probably was using the definition of 'integration' that everyone else here is using, but my point has been that if you think of it in terms of cohesion/coupling (I'm not pulling that out of my ass, that's textbook software engineering kind of stuff) then Safari is already pretty well "integrated" -- even if not in the antitrust abusive manner that many of the others are banging on about.
Look at Be's role in the whole MS antitrust saga. You can make a pretty strong case that Microsoft's tactics drove BeOS out of the market, even though it was a very high quality product.
The Justice Department didn't overlook this -- the interviewed Be's CEO Jean-Loius Gassee & asked him to testify about Microsoft's practices at trial. And he was happy to do so, but there was just one thing: Justice wanted him to talk about how the integration between IE and Windows had harmed BeOS, but Gassee didn't feel particularly worried about that -- in fact, he thought that it was a pretty good idea [1]. He was more worried about how Microsoft's situational enforcement of OEM contracts prevented manufacturers like Hitachi from shipping a computer that could dual boot with BeOS: Be and Hitachi entered into just such an arrangement, but when Microsoft found out about it they were furious, and told Hitachi that any attempt to advertise BeOS alongside Windows -- mentioning it on the packaging, in the documentation, in ads, on the machine itself, etc -- would be a violation & so termination of Hitachi's contracts with Microsoft. As a result, Hitachi ended up shipping laptops that could dual-boot Win98 and BeOS out of the box, but if you bought that machine without somehow knowing that feature in advance (from a third party, presumably), you probably never would have figured out why half of your hard drive was unavailable after you booted up Windows.
*That* I object to. Knee-jerk reactions against integration as a feature of good software engineering seems a little silly to me. Accuse me of picking semantic nits if you want to (and obviously, you do :), but in that case I no longer feel that "integration" was ever the real problem, and I don't see how it's a problem with Safari today.
[1] And so do I, and from my reading of what Apple is up to now with Safari, they seem to think integrating the web browser with the operating system is a pretty good idea too.
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:1)
It's really hard to argue intergration is bad when everyone benifits from it; the thing is IE was more a netscape killer (because netscape was en route to making the os irrelivent) than a "better application" being offered.
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2)
I think you raise some good points, friend, but I feel I should point out a few things...
I see the direction of MacOS X/Cocoa development leading to more integrations like this. The difference IMO is that they are orthogonal enough that they can be removed without depriving the OS itself of significant user experience, and they are generally well-documented and public interfaces.
(that said, I have no idea if this was the case for IE, I never totally understood the case against IE on Windows... but then I'm not a windows user)
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
browser integration: MS vs Apple (Score:2)
- Apple does not illegally control 95% of the computer market
- WebCore is LGPL
- There is no step 3
And that's why Apple bundling/integrating Safari is not at all the same as Microsoft bundling/integrating Explorer.Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2)
> After all, Safari already interfaces with both Rendezvous
> and AddressBook right in the main interface,
Any third party can access both due to Apple providing APIs, and in the case of Rendezvous, opening its source. Address Book is now a system wide database.
> and it offers simple gateways to helper applications like
> StuffIt, Preview, etc.
StuffIt is a third party application that any browser worth its salt on the Mac provides access to.
> Not only that, but one of the long term goals for Safari
> seems to be to make the KHTML engine available to third
> party application developers.
It is already available, since it is open source to begin with. What Apple has done is make it possible for a third party to use the engine to build a browser around with more bells and whistles than Safari, and then be able to sell it if they want to. Hardly anti-competitive.
> If this isn't "integration", what is?
Tightly integrating your browser so bad that it "can't" be removed without disabling the operating system. Taking years in court to get to the position where you will allow the browser icon to be hidden on the desktop.
BTW, Opera is just a big baby. They didn't have any problem competing with IE bundled on the Mac. Why is Safari such a great threat to them?
Windows: "Go talk to my friend, an 800 pound monopoly-abusing gorilla!"
Mac: "And here's my good buddy, the 66,000 ton Godzilla!"
Godzilla: Stomp!
(Godzilla switched in 1993's "Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla 2".)
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft bundling IE is fine.
Apple bundling Safari is fine.
Microsoft integrating IE is fine.
Apple integrating Safari is fine.
Microsoft using it's Windows monopoly to control browsers is bad.
Apple using it's desktop monopoly to control browsers is bad.
To expand: Microsoft manipulating licensing agreements and fees to prevent OEMs from bundling Netscape or making Netscape the default is bad. Microsoft using mshtml in Outlook, Outlook Express, Explorer, Internet Explorer, is fine, but if they used their marketing muscle to prevent bundling/packaging of other software is bad.
In Apple's case, this is *plain* competition. IE is the default. Netscape/Mozilla is the popular alternative. Apple releases a competitive browser. Opera decides not to compete, Opera's loss.
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2)
Apple using it's desktop monopoly to control browsers is bad.
For the most part a good post, but how many times does it need to be said that APPLE DOES NOT HAVE A MONOPOLY. Last time I checked, Apple's marketshare was somewhere from 3-5%. Do they have a monopoly on operating systems? No, Microsoft does. Do they have a monopoly on computing hardware? No, they don't even make the CPU and a large majority of the rest of the system. If Apple wanted to bundle Safari, make it 100% removable from the OS (rather than making its removal as simple as dragging it to the trash as is the current state), and wanted to make it so no one could sell Macs if they didn't abide by these rules, they would have every right to. It would be a dumb decision, and I never see it happening, but they do have that option because APPLE IS NOT A MONOPOLIST
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2, Interesting)
The basic issue with Safari is that one day, someone at Apple (for the sake of theory, let's called him/her "SJ") wakes up and says "Gee. Web browsing in OS X really kinda sucks. Let's make a browser that doesn't suck."
In other words, they raised the bar. Previously, the browser that everyone compared themselves to was IE -- was it better or worse than IE 5.1?
Now, they've raised the bar. This is a good thing for users (by providing better browsers) and a good thing for developers (by giving them higher targets to shoot at).
Apple was backed into a corner... (Score:1)
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:1, Informative)
Another interesting aspect of this is that if you read Judge Jackson's findings in the Microsoft anti-trust case, the court defined Microsoft's market to be operating systems running on x86-based systems, explicitly ruling out other architectures (though they do note that even counting these other architectures, Microsoft still has an OS monopoly). Even though saying that any company with 3% of the market in anything has monopoly power is a bit silly, and an argument based on this would never be given the time of day in court (hopefully), still in this regard Apple theoretically could be accused of having a monopoly in PowerPC-based operating systems (server OSs don't count either, using the government's definition). In addition, one of the major benefits Apple will get from Safari is a system-level HTML rendering engine to be integrated into the OS and available to all applications (and they need since their current implementation sucks pretty hard). Microsoft wanted the same thing with IE, and it does add value to their platform, largely through DHTML extensions if my understanding is correct (e.g. full-featured Windows Help; free HTML e-mail message renderer; the "task bar" on the left of Explorer windows in 2000 & XP, if you have it enabled; and many other examples). Another similarity is that one of the prime government contentions against Microsoft was that they intimidated OEMs into putting the IE icon on the desktop rather than Netscape's. Since Apple is its own OEM, you will almost certainly get Safari on the dock on all new systems. So in these respects Apple's position and intentions parallel Microsoft's. And Apple has already done the same thing by integrating the Address Book with the system in 10.2. If third-party developers ever use this to any degree, it will be difficult to compete with Apple in this space, unless you're content writing your own front-end over their API & data store.
Even taking all of this into account, there are still big differences between Apple and Microsoft. As many have pointed out, it is and most certainly will be possible to drag Safari to the trash if you don't want it, and this point is absolutely critical. This is not possible in Windows with IE (or any of their bundleware, such as Windows Media Player). Apple has not colluded with other browser vendors to illegally divide the market between them. Microsoft did. Apple does not vigorously attack all middleware providers (Sun with Java, for instance) as threats to their OS, as Microsoft did. And so on.
However, that said there is still a good chance that Mac users will end up disproportionately using Apple's browser if for no other reason than because it is made by Apple (we all know the same herd mentality applies to most Windows users), thus sending a chill through the third-party Mac browser market. Whether that will be a good or bad thing remains to be seen.
And to respond directly to the point of this article, I've never used it but from what I've heard Opera on OS X is crap, so they've got some balls putting this as a pseudo-ultimatum to Apple. The folks in Cupertino are probably shitting themselves laughing.
Sorry for the long post.
Re:Opera sues Apple? (Score:2)
1. one of ms's defenses was that ie was an integrated part of the operating system. you couldn't uninstall ie without damaging windows. with safari, you just chuck it in the trash and it's gone.
2. os x will almost assuredly continue to ship with ie "on the desktop" (ie in the dock). this shows a level of browser agnosticism that ms did not display, thus prompting the suit.
3. apple is a widget vendor in a broader computer market and, thus, does not represent a monopoly.
Opera X dead? (Score:5, Funny)
Opera isn't dying! (Score:3, Insightful)
If anything, though, I'd think Chimera would be the one hurting Opera the most.
The fact that it costs money certainly doesn't help matters.
Re:Opera isn't dying! (Score:2)
What about KDE? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah it sucks when Apple releases a free version of your App... but it would suck more if there were less Macs to sell your app to. Apple releasing a web browser was a very neccesary step for Apple to keep tha Mac platform alive and to try and take away the Wintel market share. The more mac users, the bigger the market for Mac developers.
Opera has a head start on Safari... instead of giving up, they could just try and out-innovate Safari they way Watson has out-innovated Sherlock.
Re:What about KDE? (Score:2, Interesting)
Problem is, and we have seen it before, end users dont really care what browser they use ( or other applications for that matter), as long as long as they can check their webmail and surf. Lots of browsers do this just fine. Some do it better than others. But the fact remains that most end users will just use use what came with the system.
Ive used opera quite a bit on pc's and it's pretty fast. Bout a month ago i put it on my macintosh, a blazing 80Mhz runnin macos 9.1. It was dog slow compared to ie on that box.
Opera has to be competitive. (Score:5, Insightful)
And before anyone says anything, this does not mean that Apple has an illegal monopoly. There is nothing wrong with not propping up third-party developers.
-Brent
Re:Opera has to be competitive. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Opera has to be competitive. (Score:2)
Re:Opera has to be competitive. (Score:2)
No loss... (Score:2)
And I do like opera on Linux and Windows (especially Opera 7 on windows).
Re:No loss... (Score:5, Informative)
That's not to say there aren't other people with needs that Opera addresses just perfectly, however.
Browser market (Score:1)
Imagine every browser development company saying:
"we must rethink developing (insert browser name here) for the Mac."
We have to return to the IE browser? or we will have a only one browser plattform?
Re:Browser market (Score:1)
Basically what I'm saying is if I woke up tommorow and IE, Omniweb and Opera stopped developing for the mac there would not be great loss. You still have safari being made by apple and a fantastic open source browser with nightly builds.
Re:Browser market (Score:2)
Why all the fuss? (Score:5, Interesting)
Safari will probably take IE's place as the default.
Is Safari really already so much better than IE that Opera and others see no hope in going up against it?
Is the sole selling point of alternative browsers really just that they're not from MS?
I don't understand why there's a willingness to work on alternative browsers when the default is from MS, but not if the default browser is from Apple. If Apple makes a feature complete, windows version of Safari available for free, how many of the alternative windows browsers will close shop?
Re:Why all the fuss? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Safari really already so much better than IE that Opera and others see no hope in going up against it?
Honestly it is so much better that it raises the bar of competition significantly. I have a very strange feeling IE7/win will try and adopt many of it's concepts (because to be quite honest for 99.99999% of the world [including most powerusers] Safari has everything you need in a nice clean interface)
Re:Why all the fuss? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for the three to ten percent of us who use Mozilla (and derivatives), Opera, or Konq, which all have TABBED BROWSING.
Re:Why all the fuss? (Score:3, Insightful)
Tabbed browsing does not belong in a clean interface. Peroid.
Re:Why all the fuss? (Score:2)
(By the way I do understand why avoiding MDI makes sense from a MacOS v. Windows perspective in other apps, but in a web browser where my primary activity is reading hypertext and following links, MDI is extremely useful).
All of them (Score:2)
I'd say all of them. First off I understand the question you meant to ask and I agree with you in that limited scope Safari would be "just another browser". In real terms though Safari uses webcore and Aqua. To creata a "feature complete" version of Safari for Windows would mean having Quartz for Apple and Microsoft would go on a jihad to stop that. You'd see Microsoft spending the kind of money on I.E. that they were in 95-98, and nobody can keep up with that. Its only because I.E. today isn't improving the way it was in the mid 90's that have managed to catch up and beat them in many areas.
Re:All of them (Score:2)
I can think of lots of things that web browsers could do differently. Why isn't i.e. fully integrated with Word the way outlook is? What ever happened to front pad editor? When I view source from i.e. why does it come up in notepad and not that frontpad/page editor? How come I can't develop more complex relationships for bookmarks than inclusion (for example keywords)?
As for the browsing experience, why not many more easy to change configurations? For example "safe site" which allows popups, while "noisy site" doesn't allow popups? Why not a toolbar construction kit? I'd love to have "amazon search" built right in. Why not have much better drag and drop for text, images, movies...?
Think about the feature list for Excel or Word and think about the feature list of I.E. Which do you think most people spend more time with; which is equivelent to asking which can people handle more complexity?
I think there are tons of features Microsoft could add if they wanted to.
Re:All of them (Score:3, Interesting)
System wide bookmarks would also be nice, as would the ability to have bookmarks in multiple folders. So too, would be the ability to remove menu items, and otherwise prune the interface down to what you want. Quick cookie swapping would allow you to change identities on the fly, without the tedious task of logging out / logging in.
But then we're talking about the power user, and not the simplicity and elegance of OSX. We're talking about Opera.
Opera: Baffling newbies since 1995
-C
Re:All of them (Score:2)
I was including that in the Word editor (since the whole thing was MSFT specific) but absolutely.
I like your cookie management idea as well. Explicit cookie management would be wonderful.
And BTW you can have power and simplicity at the same time. You just have one menu item that sets level of difficulty. As the difficulty increases the number of options increases.
Safari (Score:2)
As for the features. If people can handle word they can handle a more complex browser. I don't disagree the browser might need levels that turn off menu items.
Anyway my point was really pretty basic, that if Apple did X then Microsoft would do Y...
Re:Why all the fuss? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course.Are you new here? £:-)
From the article... (Score:5, Interesting)
Boy, that sure doesn't sound like someone in Public Relations would say. It'd be interesting to know just who it was at Apple who said this, as it seems more inflammatory than anything else.
Re:From the article... (Score:3, Insightful)
Think of it this way. Because of going to OSX Apple has access to tons of Unix software which is very good but suffers in the ease of use area. Apple as a software company specializes in making products more user friendly this is far and away their #1 skill. While they may have a very tough time beating the price of a barebones x86 machine for years to come, they aren't going to have that hard of a time beating the price of an x86 machine which includes: an OS, office suite including databases, digital entertainment applications, high amateur - low professional video, sound and picture editing, games, publishing suite.... In other words they can create a tremendous value add by bundeling in tons of software on their platform. If they do this however they will devestate the independent Mac publishers that survive on selling truly mediocre products in the $25-75 range.
Re:From the article... (Score:3, Insightful)
2 things about this... (Score:2, Interesting)
What does Opera think it will accomplish other than they won't have to spend money to make opera?
2>If this was to start a war like the early NS vs M$, I don't think Opera would have a chance. For one thing Safari is based on {GPL'd}KDE software and therefore Apple has released it's changes to the source code. It's a lot faster than Opera. Opera just sucks! I don't know what happened, it used to be the fastest browser around circa version 3. Maybe they need Helmar back in charge of Project Magic?
Is he still hanging out in Africa as was his last post to the Opera NNTP server several years back?
I have an Idea, how about Opera, instead of trying to force it's outdated browsing engine on others, why don't they just go grab apple's changes and use those at _THEIR_ new engine?
Whaaa? (Score:4, Troll)
Seriously, though -- Opera must have a smaller "market share" than iCab, let alone OmniWeb, IE, Gecko-flavors or...well, smaller than ANYthing that browses on the Mac.
All I've ever seen from Opera is a delayed, three-steps-behind version that has been seemingly produced as a grudging, halting afterthought on the Mac. Why should I care? Essentially, we're being told "A product that nobody used BEFORE Safari came out is being discontinued because something else that IS popular has been released.". I'm supposed to care about something that is inferior, under-supported and over-priced?
Re:Whaaa? (Score:2)
Re:Whaaa? (Score:1)
To me it sounds like the truth. That was exactly my expericence.
Re:Whaaa? (Score:2)
This is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
poor loser (Score:2, Insightful)
The new kid... (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfair analogy (Score:2)
That's a pretty unfair comparison. ICab absolutely rocks, and is lightning fast compared to any other browser I have ever used, including Opera 3.62, Netscape 4.75, I.E. 3, and Konqueror. Opera has been competing in ICab's home turf now for some time, and with a ported codebase always a step behind the excellent windows version.
The problem, is that Apple is now bundling something that doesn't suck, thereby reducing demand for an alternative. Apple's bundling of iTunes reduced demand for Audion, an excellent alternative that does basically the same thing. Audion is every bit as good as iTunes, and a bit better, but people don't have a major need to switch. Microsoft's bundling of that horrible little video editor with XP has done nothing to hurt sales of other video editing suites, because other products on the market were significantly better. Opera really is being punted out of the Mac market, a move they should have expected with Apple's suprising propensity to attempt to satisfy customers and the absolute garbage that is I.E. for the Mac. Even if they are "a little bit better" than one of the best, if the best ships as default on most computers there is very little reason to change.
I'm personally in love with the amazingly configurable Opera7, that really does address major issues we have been complaining about since the inception of the project. All of the buttons on all of the toolbars can be easily interchanged, thereby eliminating several bars and making an efficient use of space. Unrequested pop-up blocking has been implemented, and the bookmark pane now combines folders and bookmarks into one view. Links can be dragged to the bookmark pane, entire sessions of windows can be easily saved and played back (finally, there is an easy way to do this). There is an inline print-preview, an inline find ("g opera" searches for opera via google, "f opera" searches for the text "opera" on the foremost window), a new mail client that is *almost* usable, a feat far greater than can be said for Mozilla's...
In short, it is very cool. Is it cool enough to lure people away from the default I.E.? Most definitely. Is it cool enough to lure people away from iCab? Probably not, but it may if they like the functionality. Is it cool enough to lure people away from Safari?...
That's the problem with Apple for small developers. MS is big enough to satisfy only the most base needs of its customers (wordpad? Paint?), but Apple has always had to strive to outperform. Apple tends to create and bundle the best software available for the platform with the OS... Which satisfies customers but pushes out developers. While I will be sad to see Opera leave OSX, I can understand both company's decisions, and just wish they had negotiated with eachother to make a modified Opera the default browser a long time ago.
-c
Big whoop. (Score:3)
I am not trying to troll here - I genuinely would like Opera to succeed. The company just needs to get their act together.
So Opera is Open Source? (Score:2)
Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
Riiight. Somehow I don't see Apple buying this, particularly given that KHTML is an arguably "better" renderer, and I'd imagine costs a lot less to work with than this particular "option".
Looks like Opera just don't want to cross-develop, and they're going to blame whoever they can for their reason. No great loss; there's heaps of resonable-to-good browsers on the platform, so I'm sure we can live without.
Rally to the flag! (Score:1)
Oh, and also: ??? Profit!
Scuttlebutt (Score:5, Interesting)
All guesses. But it does make Opera look less irrational.
Was back when I thought it took a great deal of time and effort to develop a high-performance browser, and bought Opera's performance claims. Then I met Chimera Navigator. Whatever happens, I think the for-profit model of browser development is dead.
Opera logic? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Note to opera guys - you make a browser for Windows, and so does Microsoft. A little consistency with your whining would be nice)
if its not as obvious as the dead-squirrel on Congressman Trafficant's (D) head - the real issue is that Apple, in about 5 minutes during Steve's demo at MWSF, proved to the world that they can flat-out out code Opera and beat the bajezzuz out of them at their own game of "lightweight, small, fast, easy to use broswers".
They are pissed that they got so soundly defeated by a "hardware" company.
Life's tough, get a fscking helmet. - Dennis Leary
And damnit, that goes for everyone else who's whining about Apple making applications for Mac OS X and are complaining that Apple is "killing" the "small developers.
Good God... they GAVE you developers tools free with every copy of the OS, and have a website that guides you by the hand for FREE on how to make apps.
There are tons of tiny apps - PageSender, Watson, Interarchy, VueScan jump to mind - that are small, cheap, and GOOD!
At least guys like Waston have sack. They admitted that they were on their laurels, and - and this is the most important thing....
Watson is the BETTER thanks to Sherlock 3!
Its called competition. At all levels. As soon as someone makes a better video editor than iMovie - then bully for them.. i'll use it.
I might have paid "twice as much for my Mac as what i could get for a Windows box" but you know what?
i don't think or feel like i did, and things like Safari are the reason why.
Seems like heavy handed whining but... (Score:1)
It would also be a good PR move. Bundle Safari, Omniweb, Chimera, IE (yuck), iCab and even Opera (demo version) with the OS, and let people decide what they like best. Everyone competes on mostly equal ground, and Apple looks like the Good Guys(tm)
Safari is a Red Herring (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at Opera's history of competing with bundled browsers:
But, somehow, a beta product is going to cause Opera to leave the Mac market?
Please. The real reason is buried in the article:
Opera simply wasn't successful on the Mac like it was on Windows. I personally suspect that that's because Opera didn't make the switch to the Mac UI very effectively (hard to describe, but it just felt weird relative to using it in Windows), and didn't have the same feel for performance programming in MacOS, making Opera feel sluggish (unlike its trademark lightning-fast performance in Windows).I think Opera just can't compete on the Mac, knows this, and has made a token "hell why not" offer to Apple to stick around for big money to have an excuse to leave.
Re:Safari is a Red Herring (Score:3, Interesting)
(Windows at work because it pays the bills and Mac at home because all those Windows problems pay my bills quite well.
My default browser on my NT box at work is Opera 6. (I recently downloaded the Opera 7 beta and gave up the first day. They've got a long way to go with THAT beta before it's ready.) I made that decision because it IS fast and compatible and feature rich. I epecially like tabbed browsing, especially on Windows. It makes up for some of the other fundamental flaws in the Windows interface.
(For some reason, tabs are not nearly as important to me on a Mac. Haven't thought it through, but for some reason they're not as valuable. I've used Chimera but don't miss the tabs on my Mac. I've become almost dependent on them in Windows. It has something to do with the giant suckage that is the Windows GUI.)
On my Mac at home, I've tried them all and had settled on Omniweb (prior to the intro of Safari) because it had hands-down the best text rendering and most Aqua integrated interface. It was a true pleasure to use except that it sometimes choked on complicated (non-standard) Javascript and some CSS. I had to keep IE as a back up for the occasional site that OW puked at, but I used OmniWeb 99% of the time.
I tried Opera for Mac, but it was lagging WAY behind the Windows version and after a few days of use I could not find ONE compelling reason to continue using it. It blew goats. It had at least as many of the site compatibility problems as OmniWeb but wasn't as pretty. In fact, it was downright UGLY all the way around -- page rendering as ugly as IE with an interface even UGLIER than IE. It was not at all faster than OmniWeb. On top of all that, I had banners flashing in my face all the time reminding me I hadn't paid for this load of un-Mac-like crap. AND no tabs. (The primary reason I use it on Windows.)
When Safari was released, I downloaded it the first day but frankly didn't expect much because I knew it was beta. It has been my default browser since the evening of day one. I NEVER open IE anymore and rarely use OmniWeb for anything. I have recommended it to my non-geek mother and sister and they both love it. It's elegant and clean and pretty and FASTER than greased owl shit.
Opera for Mac sucked because those bone heads don't know how to develop for Mac, or don't care to. Either way, their Mac offering sucked and now they're pissed because even their Windows version can no longer honestly claim "Fastest browser on Earth."
If they don't want to develop for Mac anymore, I say good riddance. We still have half a dozen browsers to choose from on the Mac platform and they're ALL better than Opera.
I was an Opera user when I switched to Mac. (Score:3, Interesting)
Having mostly used OmniWeb for a while, when Safari came out I decided to try a bunch of different browsers again. Opera 6 looks a lot better than it did the last time I tried it, and I'm actually thinking seriously about switching back to Opera. I've also thought about switching over to Safari once it's not a beta and converting back to OmniWeb after it switches over to WebCore.
Personally I think that Apple's switch to Safari will help non-IE, non-gecko browsers and websites might adjust just a little to handle different browsers. One thing I can't help but wonder is... is this a tactic by Opera to get people to look at/buy there browser. After any media attention is good.
what nerve (Score:1)
Whiners (Score:4, Interesting)
If anyone thinks Apple is going to pull a Microsoft and start saying that Safari is an integral portion of the OS and cannot be removed, let's look at their track record on other bundled applications. iTunes can be replaced by Audion and still have iPod support. Apple does nothing to prevent this. iChat can be replaced by Adium. Mail can be done away with and be replaced with Mutt, Pine, Entourage, etc. iMove, iPhoto, etc. can all be deleted and other applications may be used in their place.
I can drag Safari into the trash and it's gone. Should Apple release a version of Safari that links to WebKit frameworks installed in
The only thing that Apple needs to do... (Score:1)
I deleted IE straight away. It was an ugly Carbon bruise in the soft flesh of my Cocoa goodness.
bad idea.. (Score:2)
Very Important point being missed (Score:2)
Opera is a result of the duplication of a lot of the KHTML work, and they were relying on Mozilla's bloatedness to be their competitve advantage. All Apple has done with Safari is put a (very nice) wrapper around KHTML.
This is important. Many of the GNU uber alles crowd believe that its their mission to put the proprietary software vendors out of the intellectual property business. This is a success for them.
Oh yeah? (Score:3, Funny)
Ultimatum to my neighbor:
Start using my lawnmower to mow your lawn, or else I'm going to stop mowing mine all together...
or..
Ultimatum to my mail man:
You need to use MY shoes to walk up to my house to deliver mail or I'm going to have it delivered somewhere else.
Ultimatum to wife:
(Yeah, like anything I write here would ever fly)
First Chimera, then Opera, next... (Score:4, Funny)
Lynx developers decide to abandon Lynx port to Jaguar.
In a surprise move, Lynx developers feeling dissed by the fact that Apple didn't use the proven Lynx rendering technology have sent iSteve an email (from pine no less!) stating that if Lynx is not demoed at the next MacWorld, they will cease the release of their nearly complete port to MacOS/X. Said key developers, "what really surprises us is that we figured with names like Lynx and Jaguar, we were certain they were destined for each other. We were sure that chosen OS/X code name was a cue to us to continue our work"
BS (Score:2)
Right now, the only reason I use Safari is due to speed - but I'm also rather annoyed at it's lack of Tabs, and "Block Images From This Server" feature (which Chimera is also missing, much to it's detriment to UTTERLY USELESS status).
If Opera could beat Chimera on speed (not too difficult), offer tabs, and image blocking - I'm pretty sure that Safari will never have image blocking, just like Netscape and IE will never have image blocking - then I'd probably pay upwards of about, oh, maybe $10. Add in Flash and other plugin compatability out of the box, (another weakness of any browser other than IE) and maybe I'd pay $15.
Opera is killing itself. (Score:2, Insightful)
The basic idea of Opera is great. Lots of options, privacy protection, tabbed browsing, separate browser window, etc. I've tried to switch to it - but it's impossible to deal with all its quirks, bugs and slowness.
My biggest complaint is that it does NOT handle tables or forms correctly. I've included some examples to play with (there are many more, just do a search).
For many of these bugs to exist in version SIX of a browser is just plain crappy. Especially considering that Safari and Chimera in their beta versions are nowhere as problematic and render pages beautifully.
Opera is killing itself and they company is using Safari as an excuse.
Safari Killing Opera for Mac OS X? (Score:2, Insightful)
You know what's odd? (Score:2)
Safari for Jaguar only.
And probably a higher marketshare already. No wonder Opera is scared.
Re:I'm sorry? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ken Case, the CEO of OG and developer of the OW engine, said they would take a look at WebCore. I don't recall hearing anything out of Opera until now.
I think the most disturbing thing about this article is that CNET's treating Opera's whining as actual news.
Re:I'm sorry? (Score:2)
Opera 7 is probably more robust than KHTML, which is more robust than Opera 6.
In some ways, Opera 7 is more standards compliant than Gecko is.
However, their Mac version is a POS.
Re:uhmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
No, that was Omni (a NeXT software company that has moved over to OSX). They produce a different browser but are thrilled about the Webcore (open source) engine since in their opinion this will allow them to make a better interface without having to worry about the engine. Omni believe it or not actually is better at cool looking easy to use interfaces than Apple (which is saying a lot).
Then watch out, Apple! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Then watch out, Apple! (Score:2)
Re:uhmmm (Score:2)
Re:It's the MacOS user community's own damn proble (Score:2)
What are you basing this from? there is no KHTML 2.0 and 3.0? What are these magical version numbers for KHTML coming from?
Re:It's the MacOS user community's own damn proble (Score:1)
"3.x version" = that which shipped with KDE 3.0.x. (I haven't tried 3.1, as it's just released.)
Re:It's the MacOS user community's own damn proble (Score:1)
Re:ALL Third Party Software on OS X will die (Score:2, Insightful)