Apple Approves Opera Mini For iPhone 284
andylim writes "Opera today announced its popular mobile browser, Opera Mini, has been approved for iPhone and iPod touch on the App Store. Opera Mini will be available in less than 24 hours, market by market, as a free download. Here's the download URL for when it goes live."
wtf (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:wtf (Score:5, Informative)
how did opera get this through the app store approval process!?
Because, as far as I understand, it is not really a browser, but rather a viewer for a remotely processed webpage: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/17/opera-mini-on-iphone-is-fast-but-why/ [engadget.com]
It allowed my old Sony Ericsson phone (can't remember which model, but it was not a smartphone) to have a Safari like zoomable web-browser of quite hight quality (:
indeed (Score:5, Informative)
Opera Mini is indeed a simple viewer for images remotely calculated on Opera servers.
This has the advantage of lowering the data transmitted to your phone (actually cost-effective if you are volume-limited), and the disadvantage of providing some unexpected behaviors whenever local things like active buttons etc. are expected to be loaded on your device (I say *some*)
In fact Opera also offers a full browser, named Opera Mobile, on all sorts of phones (on my Nokia for instance, aside Nok's one), but that one, Mobile, isn't ported on the iPhone. Wonder why ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
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It also has the advantage of dramatically decreasing latency and processor needs, which present serious challenges for embedded devices even when there is scads of bandwidth available. On my Android phone (Verizon 3G and local WiFi), Opera Mini consistently smokes the built-in browser.
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>>>Opera Mini consistently smokes the built-in browser.
Because of that impressive demo (speed), I was considering getting Opera Mini for my cellphone. That is until I saw how much my provider charges for web browsing. $5 per 10 megabytes! I'd end-up with huge bills.
Disappointing.
Aside -
I'm listening to a mother on CSPAN radio complain because she "only has dialup" and her son is at a disadvantage because of it. Of course she's asking government to give her free Broadband. Jeez. I have dialup
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>>>Opera Mini is indeed a simple viewer for images
Not even close to accurate. First off, having to download a full-screen GIF, JPEG, or Bitmap image would take a *long* time... longer than just processing the plain-text HTML directly. Here's what wikipedia says:
"Opera Mini fetches all content through a proxy server that reformats web pages into a format more suitable for small screens. A page is compressed, then delivered to the phone in a markup language called OBML (Opera Binary Markup Langu
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Opera Mini doesn't really do one of big no-no things on Appstore, "having interpreter to run external code", etc.; it's a custom protocol client to connect with the full browser engine running on Opera servers (yes, O Mini can act on few js events, but apparently it was insignificant enough)
Plus maybe Apple came to agree it's quite distinct in what it does from Safari - not as full featured (though it does give iPhone a tabbed browser now), but with its own strong points (largely conserving bandwith; BTW, m
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Gotta say, I love tabbed browsing as much as any bloke but in all honesty, The Touch (and iPhone) Safari's way to switch between pages is more than ok for a mobile device.
Now don't get me wrong, I was waiting for this and I'll get Opera Mini as soon as I get home tonight to see how it goes :) it's just that tabs weren't really a priority for that class imho
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I take it you'll be checking it out not only when at home, but also on Touch (and hence certainly WiFi)? In that case, I have to point out that it really shines primarilly when network connection is so-so.
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though it does give iPhone a tabbed browser now
Wait - surely the Iphone has a tabbed browser, right? This is an honest question - what with all the praise of the browser being the best ever, surely it at least has tabbed browsing? (The reason why I love Opera Mobile so much.)
Re:wtf (Score:4, Interesting)
No, the iPhone's Safari does not have tabs, not in the way desktop Safari does. It's closer to a "virtual desktop" metaphor: you click a button to view a scrollable thumbnail list of open pages.
Personally I think this works better than tabs, given the limited screen size and the sensitivity of the touch.
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I think that's "the same". I've seen how the iPhone does it, and it's functionally similar to tabs, thus can reasonably synecdochally be called "tabs". And I agree with you -- the tabs are implemented that way because it is "better" for the type of device.
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Fair enough. And actually, this is how Opera Mobile works - the "tabs" is just referring to the feature, but it still has the same advantage of not taking up space. I don't think the implementation should matter (it reminds me of when people said that Opera on the desktop didn't used to have "tabs", because it wasn't implemented exactly the same way as Firefox, even though it still clearly had the feature).
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Though what mobile Safari does might be called substandard, it seems; it not only limits greatly the max number of "tabs" available (which is understandable given the device), it's actually pretty quick to throw out the data of background webpages, necessitating reload (this one I don't expect the Mini to do)
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It does have "tabbed" browsing, in that you can have multiple browsing sessions going at the same time. However, they don't waste valuable screen real estate with a tab bar. In the regular tool bar there is a button that lets you switch between open browsing sessions. You can switch back and forth. Quite quickly.
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Is there anywhere in the Western hemisphere you can do that?
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Well, at least most of the UK is in the Western hemisphere. That place I'm sure of (about getting iPhone without contract), I wouldn't be surprised if there are more.
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How wouldn't they? There are already loads of browsers available from the App Store.
Really?
Do any if them do (Or make use of) ad blocking?
Opera and Safari are okay but give me ablockplus for faster, more pleasant browsing.
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Opera Mini can't really offer adblocker; many webapges would simply block Opera proxy servers, I guess (heck, even though full Opera browser does have one, it's not very, well, advertised (;p) or obvious)
But what Opera Mini does helps greatly anyway as far as "faster, more pleasant browsing" goes; that's one of its selling points.
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But what Opera Mini does helps greatly anyway as far as "faster, more pleasant browsing" goes; that's one of its selling points.
More pleasant? I don't that word means what you think it means. I loaded up GMail on Opera Mini and I almost threw up. You know, I would expect from a browser company that strives for openness and whatnot to at least include a browser capable of doing javascript properly. Oh and yes, it's faster ... because it doesn't have proper javascript support!
Avoid the waste of time downloading it, Opera Mini is a monkey feces.
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Uhm...what's stopping you from using mail app or Safari for few pages that indeed don't work very well on Opera Mini? But for all the rest, it is much faster and, yes, pleasant. Not only because of "lack" (it does support some) of js, also via reformatting of webpages and highly compressed binary format of transmission.
Re:wtf (Score:5, Informative)
You know, I would expect from a browser company that strives for openness and whatnot to at least include a browser capable of doing javascript properly.
They do - it's called Opera Mobile, which isn't on the Iphone. Opera Mini is written to run on all phones, even locked down feature phones. Their Opera Mobile for smart phones has full support.
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So why all the "Oh no! Evil Overlord Jobs will never approve it!" hype? They made such a big deal about the approval process of this app, it even included a press release. WTF? What does it bring to the table when you got something like Safari Mobile on the iPhone already?
Re:wtf (Score:5, Informative)
Realize that they made a big sacrifice to make it happen... In order to meet the App Store requirements, there is no local JavasScript execution. It's entirely server-side. While this is nice from a performance perspective (everything is downloaded/processed server-side and then sent over the slow cell network in one compressed chunk), it's severely limiting from a functionality perspective.
Opera Mobile could never make it through the app store with the current terms of service in place; the JS engine makes it ineligible.
Re:wtf (Score:5, Informative)
all other apps using browsers are using the webkit rendered to display pages, which is an iphone component, and while apple doesn't force you to use webkit it does forbid you to use any kind of generic interpreters, including the javascript interpreter required for browser to actually work
opera is the _first_ alternative browser to get published, and it does so not interpreting javascript on the iphone but serving already interpreted web pages (javascript stuff is run on the opera own backend and pages served after collecting the result)
so before posting your smartass "loads of other browser" opinion, please do some research. there are ton of other gullible people that find you "interesting", and now are as misinformed as you, thanks of the slashdot moderation.
Re:wtf (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks, that's a good point. My favourite mobile browser is Opera Mobile, which I love on my 5800; I guess the Apple phones will never have that.
Even for Opera Mini, it's interesting to note the idea of having to wait for approval, as well as not supporting open standards like Java (again, because of the locked down nature), so they had to presumably rewrite the application for Apple. I was using Opera Mini years ago on my Motorola V980, before the first Iphone was even released.
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...so they had to presumably rewrite the application for Apple
Hm, that's an interesting point. Because I think...they didn't have a chance to do that. AFAIK they were building Opera Mini on some kind of wrapper that allowed j2me app to run mostly unchanged, but that's forbidden for a very short time now, and I don't expect Opera was informed in advance.
Or maybe new rules apply to next release of iPhone OS only...
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The other browsers on the App Store are simply webkit (Safari browser on iPhone) with a skinned UI.
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How wouldn't they? There are already loads of browsers available from the App Store. Now Opera has joined them. There's really nothing strange at all about this. Apple doesn't force people to use WebKit.
Yes they do. All those browsers you see in the app store all use Webkit. Opera is the first that uses a different renderer.
The reason why Apple allows this is apparently that Opera Mini doesn't execute javascript on the iPhone, but executes it on Opera's server instead.
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But that [Facebook app] uses webkit that is built in to iPhone OS.
Thank you... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Thank you... (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed - I just love that "Apple approves an application, when we thought they might not" is front page news. People are that thankful.
Just like Soviet newspaper headlines. (Score:2, Interesting)
My father grew up experiencing the highly-controlled economy of the 1950s and 1960s Soviet Union. I just showed him this Slashdot submission, and he said the headline reminded him of those he would occasionally see in the local newspaper of the town he grew up in.
Whenever the government allowed somebody to get a vehicle (apparently a big deal in small towns in those days), there would be headlines like, "<person's name> has been approved for a <vehicle's name>."
The similarities shouldn't be surp
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Indeed - I just love that "Apple approves an application, when we thought they might not" is front page news. People are that thankful.
Rather, it is like "Duh. Apple actually approved the application, we were so damn sure they would NOT that we had already flamed them earlier, so we better put out another front page story to salvage some credibility!"
Negative reviews? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Negative reviews? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Negative reviews? (Score:5, Informative)
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The summary was sumbitted yesterday...the browser is available now.
OK, thanks, that explains it. I should have remembered where I was reading this "news" ;-)
Posting from it now.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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And it seems to be incredibly fast. However, incredibly insecure from what I've heard. Also, the iPhone auto-correct for typing does not seem to work.
I've used it for a few hours now, and It's quite scary in fact. Where does the line go between my phone and Opera's servers that do all the processing? /:
Re:Posting from it now.... (Score:4, Informative)
Where does the line go between my phone and Opera's servers that do all the processing? /:
It goes through encrypted connection. Encrypted for all pages, at all times.
Re:Posting from it now.... (Score:5, Informative)
Because:
1) The main Opera browser doesn't operate the same way
2) You're already trusting everyone except Opera on your list when you browse HTTP anyway, and
3) Opera warns you that HTTPS transmissions may be insecure the first time you attempt it.
Re:Posting from it now.... (Score:4, Informative)
It's unencrypted too, as far as I recall
You recall incorrectly. Opera Mini since the "Advanced" 3.0 version use 100% encrypted traffic from proxy to the browser (they are up to version 5.)
Thats not to say that you get true point-to-point encryption with HTTPS, since that traffic gets unencrypted on the proxy and then re-encrypted with your Mini key.
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People use Opera for many different reasons. One of the main reasons to use Opera Mini in particular is that it's insanely fast at loading pages. And it saves you a lot of money if you pay for your bandwidth usage.
Re:Posting from it now.... (Score:5, Informative)
"Incredibly insecure" is a gross overstatement. Whole traffic between it and Opera servers is encrypted. Only at the point of the proxy there's hypothetical weak point - but really, I'd trust Opera Software. Braking that trust would cost them dearly, they've shown over the years they can be trusted, they come from a place with a somehow better corporate culture...
Or you can simply not use Opera Mini on the few webpages where the above might matter.
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I'd trust Opera more than any of the other browser publishers. Opera is in the browser business and that's just about it. They can't afford to put out a shoddy product like any of the other contenders....and they never do.
Re:Posting from it now.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I never trust companies to do the right thing, no matter how insane they'd have to be to do otherwise.
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I take you also don't trust iPhone version of Safari or...pretty much most operating systems and browsers out there? (if not all - can you trust the binary you got? The compiler? ISP? Clerks at the bank or in public office?)
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Granted, I don't 100% trust any company (or even non-profit - look at how the Mozilla Foundation seeks revenue). But for anything short of online banking or secret scheming against government entities, I think it's probably fine. Most of the browsing I do on my iPhone tends to be pretty innocuous stuff.
And Opera mini is fast on the iPhone. And I do mean blazingly fast. Well worth the risk for general purpose browsing.
When I really want to be secure with browsing, like online banking activities, I'll do
Re:Posting from it now.... (Score:5, Informative)
It seems subjectively 3-4 times faster on average over wifi than Mobile Safari on my iPhone on several sites I quickly tested. Some sites were only marginally faster (maybe 20% to 40%) at initial loading, but the fact that you can go forward and backward without reloading and re-rendering the entire damned page like Mobile Safari does makes the experience sooooo much faster to skim through a site.
This is just based on some wifi usage - so mostly CPU and rendering bound stuff, not network traffic bound stuff.
Haven't tested it out over EDGE very extensively yet. I have an iPhone 3G unlocked, but use T-mobile so I'm stuck at EDGE speeds.
One other critical observation - seems to burn through battery at about half the rate as heavy Safari browsing does. Again, not particularly surprising.
2 mins of EDGE usage has me convinced about the back/forward without re-loading thing is a massive advantage in browsing when out of wifi range. Initial loading of some sites is still painfully slow as always with EDGE. But browsing of partially loaded pages is much smoother and actually works, unlike Mobile Safari where it often just hangs while it tries to finish loading a page on EDGE.
Rendering quality is definitely not as good as Safari in some cases (NYTimes.com, for instance). But it's not bad, and the speedup is generally well worth it.
As long as it doesn't provide for Flash... (Score:2, Insightful)
...it will probably be approved.
And to those not understanding the Flash issue, it really is about revenue. By allowing Flash, it removes authorization control from Apple. Like it or not, Apple maintains control, and will continue to maintain control. Anything that removes control will be rejected. Don't like it, move to another platform.
Re:As long as it doesn't provide for Flash... (Score:5, Informative)
For thos of us who have used a Mac, the Flash issue is about performance. Have you ever used Flash on OS X? The result would be much the same on the iPhone (given that the core of iPhone OS is the same as OS X), except now there's no 2GHz+ CPU to make it look acceptable and all you have is a little ARM chip and a battery.
If it was about control then they wouldn't be promoting Flash's replacement for the iPad and iPhone. It really is about performance.
Don't just take my word for it - google "flash performance OSX" for a vast number of complaints about it. It really is hideous. Not just sluggish, but banging a 2Ghz core at 100% usage for website animations and video streams - ie, it drains the battery on your MacBook Pro rather quickly, and is one of the few things that can get the fans on my iMac to become audible.
In fact, I just opened the Diablo 3 page and had it sit idle for about a minute or so and then had a quick look at the CPU use. This is a 2GHz Core2Duo, and whether it is that full-site-flash or a youtube video, or BBC iPlayer stream, the CPU usage looks exactly like this:
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/4771/flashosxperformance.jpg [imageshack.us]
Re:As long as it doesn't provide for Flash... (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed. Flash player on windows doesn't have this problem, but Adobe seems to have actually cared about creating a good windows flash player.
Flash Player on OSX is a resource hog. Adobe just isn't devoting the resources to it to make it work well on OSX. Steve Jobs wasn't kidding when he said that the majority of browser crashes on OSX come from flash. Anytime i've ever experienced safari crashing, it's because of flash.
Now, if the people at Adobe pulled their thumbs out of their asses and got to work on creating a small, lightweight, and resource efficient flash player for OSX, then Steve might reconsider. Until they do, then i'm glad that it's not on my iPhone.
Re:As long as it doesn't provide for Flash... (Score:4, Interesting)
Though OTOH, when talking about "little ARM chip and a battery", there already is Flash player for that architecture which works surprisingly fine. Apple doesn't want to allow it.
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If it was about control then they wouldn't be promoting Flash's replacement for the iPad and iPhone. It really is about performance.
Apple has learned the hard way the platform lock in Microsoft was able to achieve. This is the main reason Flash and Flash compiled into Obj-C will never be allowed on iPhone. Performance and other technical excuses are just that, lame excuses. Apple doesn't want apps that can be either ported easily to other handhelds (CS5) or already run on other handhelds (Java or Flash). If they allow this, nothing will stop people from ditching their iPhones when their contracts expire and get an Android or WP7 phone,
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I'm sorry, but it's about the ARM processor and not the OS. I have an N900 with the same CPU as the 3GS, and my phone has flash. It runs youtube fine. Games are obviously very slow, but performance is pretty acceptable.
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The core APIs required to do all this are all right there in OS X and are documented - other plugin makers can do it just fine (and On2 even did it with Flash itself with their in-program flash player for checking the flash video encodes you just made).
This is not Apple's fault - their documentation is extensive.
Quicktime itself does not hardware accelerate H.264 (except on the 9400M GPU) in OS X and it plays things just fine at low CPU load. This is not about hardware acceleration or access to private APIs
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Ya, it sucks that mean ol' Apple has banned all those web apps...
Not a Surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
If you understand how Opera Mini works and why Apple bans other browsers (hint: it is not because they retrieve and display web pages) you would not find this surprising at all.
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followed by "What? Flash? Neverheardofit!"
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Even if Apple had a 100% monopoly, what they are doing would not be illegal.
I really hope you get over your irrational hatred someday. It's not healthy.
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There are a *ton* of alternative web browsers on the app store, although they all use WebKit. You can't drop your own render engine of choice on there, which I suppose Opera gets around with the new vpn-style system.
You could even have a version of Firefox on the iPhone, as long as it used the WebKit engine already there instead of Gecko.
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The app store is not a democracy, nor does it even pretend to be one, if you don't like Apple's rules, you are free to not participate.
Not all that surprising (Score:2, Insightful)
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Got It (Score:2)
d/ld and installed last night. first impressions: renders pages better than safari (faint praise), very customizable, has pressure issues with touch screen (iTouch).
verdict: good start but needs improvements, which opera historically provides in a timely fashion. will be using this extensively.
- js.
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renders pages better than safari
If by "better" you mean "faster" than I agree, but if you mean "better looking" then I wonder if you need a pair of glasses. To me websites look a lot better in Safari!
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I don't think the rendering quality is better than Safari. That's the only area where Mobile Safari sims to win though.
However, the rendering speed is significantly, significantly faster. And the forward/back buttons are so much faster it's absurd (why Mobile Safari has this horrific need to reload and re-render pages it's already processed, I will never know, but often pressing the back button on EDGE is followed by a 45 second or minute long wait).
... for now (Score:2)
With the release of any iPhone / iPad app, the announcement really needs to end with the phrase, "for now." That is, the app has somehow been accepted by the current byzantine App Store approval process, but a future byzantine App Store decision may pull the app and confuse developers and customers alike. It's happened often enough that this should be a clear footnote on all App Store stories.
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/., the land where Apple can do nothing right.
Before submitting for review: evil Apple will never approve our browser, but we'll show them.
After submitting for review: ahh, ohh, they approved our browser, umm, well, they'll pull some shenanigans to stop us, because Apple is EVIL!
Later: please pay attention to us! Look at us not being repressed by the system! Hello? Anybody?
Someone is getting fired.. (Score:2, Funny)
opera mini is a straw man (Score:2, Informative)
I just tried it and it's pretty clear why Apple approved it. Opera Mini is so vastly inferior to the built in safari that all of the non-slashdotites who try it will instantly lose any desire they had for alternative browsers.
Even the nytimes site that is in the default bookmarks is unreadable, and when you try to two-finger zoom in it moves you to some pre-set zoom level that's too far in.
still no IPv6? (Score:2)
Can't wait for Internet Explorer on the iPhone :p (Score:2, Funny)
breaking new agrement? (Score:2)
I thought the new Apple agreement says that the program must originally be written against Apple's API and not go through any compatibility layers.
If Opera runs on 10+ platforms, what are the chances that it doesn't contain any compatibility layers?
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Rendering Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm
just
happy
to
have
a
browser
that
renders
Slashdot
comments
properly.
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Opera had already submitted its Opera Mini browser for iPhone and it was rejected. ...
Get your facts straight before you start kissing Steve Jobs
Soon you will know more (Score:2, Insightful)
2008:
http://www.unwiredview.com/2008/10/30/opera-mini-for-iphone-rejected-by-apple-from-app-store/
Now you know more.
Re:Soon you will know more (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA and two links deep, the NY Times posted this clarification.
"So I went back to Mr. von Tetzchner for more details. He said that the development of the iPhone browser was more an "internal project" of some engineers than a product that management was committed to introducing. Indeed, development was halted after the company looked at the details of the license agreement in Apple's software development kit and realized that it would not be permitted.
" 'We stopped the work because of the prohibitive license," Mr. von Tetzchner wrote in an e-mail message.' "
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/why-you-will-not-see-opera-on-your-iphone/ [nytimes.com]
The rejection was an assumption. Now you even know more.
You don't have to prove anything. (Score:2)
A quick search yields several articles from 2008 that mention Opera Mini being rejected from the Apps store.
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You have a variable standard of duty to know what the heck you are talking about. In this case, the duty is very small, amounting to only the importance of making a post on Slashdot. Nevertheless, in this case spending two seconds searching something like "opera iphone rejected" will turn up plenty of results. You failed even the tiny duty requisite for making a post -- and that's why we are mocking you. At the end of the day, getting mocked on Slashdot is small punishment for making a boneheaded post.
Re:Kudos to Opera (Score:5, Insightful)
it hass passed without any hassle and is now available for everyone, so there's really nothing going on at all.
Whilst the positive press around Opera's browser does certainly generate interest in it, it would be a mistake to conclude from this that Apple is a benevolent dictator which treats apps equally when they compete with its own. Did you consider that one of the reasons the Opera browser may have being accepted is because of the attention that Opera brought to the subject? It is certainly possible that Apple's decision to allow the app would have been affected by the fact that Opera is a European company involved in a high-profile ongoing EU antitrust case regarding web browsers. Rejecting the app would probably have triggered an antitrust complaint from Opera, and that is the kind of attention that Apple could do without.
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I take the point - but for antitrust issues to apply, Apple would have to have a monopoly on phones, which they most certainly do not.
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I take the point - but for antitrust issues to apply, Apple would have to have a monopoly on phones
No, European antitrust legislation applies to any "activity that aims to prevent, restrict or distort competition". It is not necessary for a company to be in a monopoly position for those conditions to be true.
Equally, it could also be argued that Apple has a monopoly on iPhone app stores, in order to show that they could exert undue control over what should be a freely competitive market.
It's not a huge leap to conclude that if Apple exploits their position as owner of the iPhone OS and app store to disad
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No, they had a monopoly on operating systems, which is what the suit was about (and, before you reply - monopoly in antitrust cases is the practical definition, not the theoretical "only one supplier" which rarely happens in the real world; Apple is not remotely close to either in the mobile phone market).
It's almost a freaking miracle... (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be a freaking miracle if Opera Mobile (the complete Opera browser, that exists for ALL smartphones but Apple's) would be accepted on the iPhone.
But indeed, Opera didn't even try to propose it. They dared propose a simple remote viewer, Opera Mini.
Contrary for instance to my Nokia N97mini which features the original Nokia browser and let me replace it with Opera Mobile, the iPhone is probably the only platform where no other browser will be allowed (nor even proposed).
So, yes, some call it freaking.
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You do understand that this is Opera Mini, and not the real Opera browser? There's a massive difference between the two.
There sure is. Regular Opera goes up to 11 but Opera Mini only goes up to 10.
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And why on Earth would anyone devote hundreds of hours of their time (and money) to developing a product that, according to the developer ToS, would never, ever be approved?
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Do any of the other browsers use their own rendering engines (and javascript interpreters), or are they just different frontends for the built-in WebKit?
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They all use Webkit, which is in the rules for the store.
I seem to remember the last time discussions of web browsers on the iPhone though, that the overriding "common knowledge" was that there were *no* browsers other than Safari on the iPhone, when a quick search would show that there were plenty.
You can't bring alternative render engines, you have to use the version of WebKit that is already there, but it's not like this is the first alternative web browser for the iPhone, as the summary is inferring. It
Re:Victory for the Free Market (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, so instead of Opera being the first alternative browser on the platform, you choose to define "alternative browser" in such a way that the platform already has a plethora of "alternative browsers", turning freedom of choice into a game of semantics. What's your point, apart from clouding the issue?
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So someone who uses Chrome over Safari on Windows or OS X is not making a choice, it's merely semantics?
The web browser is more than just the rendering engine.
My point was that it is a commonly held belief (based on the last article about browsers on the iPhone) that there were *no alternatives at all* on the iPhone, and that this article seems to be going the same way.
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