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Opera IOS Iphone The Internet Apple

Opera Slows Its Development On The iOS Platform (betanews.com) 61

Posted by msmash from the not-worth-it dept.
Reader BrianFagioli writes: After searching for Opera in the Apple App Store, I noticed something odd -- none of the company's iOS browsers (Opera Mini and Opera Coast) had been updated in 2017. Since we are almost halfway through the year, I decided to ask Opera what was up. Shockingly, the company told me that it no longer has a team working on iOS. An Opera employee by the name of 'Rosi' sent me a tweet this morning, making the revelation. While the desktop version of the browser is still in development, the company has chosen to abandon its efforts on iOS. To show just how bad it is, the Opera Mini browser hasn't been updated in almost a year. Opera Coast was updated in December of 2016, however -- almost six months ago.
Update: Opera has clarified that while they're not currently working on iOS, they still plan to support it.
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Opera Slows Its Development On The iOS Platform More

Opera Slows Its Development On The iOS Platform

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  • Somehow this is bad for Apple (Score:3, Funny)

    by TimHunter ( 174406 ) on Friday May 26, 2017 @09:49AM (#54490883)
    I haven't figured out how it's bad yet, but I'm sure I will. Just give me a minute.

    • Maybe Opera are partners with the 3.5mm headphone jack and this is retaliation for Apple's courage.

      • Good ideas, but no. I poked at the headphone jack idea but it's limp and floppy. And "courage" is now in the Old Apple Jokes home along with "rounded corners," "you're holding it wrong," and "Bendgate." I'm still thinking.

        • People can try to push those old jokes all they want, but the fact is that Apple did remove the standard 3.5mm headphone jack and they did call it "courage". If the technology to replace something is of lower quality than what it replaces, I don't call it "courage" I call it "stupidity".

          • People can try to push those old jokes all they want, but the fact is that Apple did remove the standard 3.5mm headphone jack and they did call it "courage". If the technology to replace something is of lower quality than what it replaces, I don't call it "courage" I call it "stupidity".

            How would a digital interface with the chance to use a better DAC than the iPhone has internally be better than an analog interface with a nasty reputation for intermittent behavior?

    • Well???
    • what is apples consumer relationship and sales like in china? quick search suggests it could be better. apparently they sparred with wechat a bit and in general the features of the iphone dont sound like things that the chinese government would be happy with. since opera was bought by that consortium over there, that has a less than stellar track record, it seems like abandoning ios shouldn't be a shocker. *shrug*

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      I haven't figured out how it's bad yet, but I'm sure I will. Just give me a minute.

      It means that Apple has just become another platform and it's not worth wasting a lot of resources over.

      The whole "app" fad is coming crashing down as most phones are more than capable of doing most things you want in the browser. Certainly Android has had this capability for years. This means a company only has to manage 1 website instead of a myriad of apps in different stores with different programming languages.

  • iOS "Browsers" are all Safari skins (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mrbene ( 1380531 ) on Friday May 26, 2017 @09:51AM (#54490917)

    Given that all browsers on iOS are required to use WebKit, and Opera's investment in Presto and fallout for supporting Blink, I can see why Opera would cut their losses and cease development on what is ultimately only a skin for iOS functionality.

    Also, I expect that the additional complexity of offering an app-specific VPN to iOS users factored in to the decision.

    • For me the very best everyday browser on my iphone was coast. so it's too bad.
      they did do mre than skin it by the way. They also compressed websites for faster transmission.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )
      Except Opera mini(?) which was a front end for a remote browser (good for slow connections). Not as necessary these days when most sites have mobile versions
    • Well, I'm not using the default iOS browser on my iPad-- and the alternative one I'm using provides a better experience-- so it's not like there's no room for improvement...

  • There are no browsers on iOS (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So-called "browsers" on iOS are just skins. Why would anyone think Opera's skin is relevant?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      Opera wasn't a skin (at least not for Opera Mini). The iOS requirement is misunderstood: it isn't a restriction on browsers or browser engines, it's a restriction on code execution (Javascript). Since Opera Mini ran the javascript on the server-side and not the client, it was allowed to use a custom layout engine.

  • Only Reskinned Safaru (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bing Tsher E ( 943915 ) on Friday May 26, 2017 @10:02AM (#54491035) Journal

    The only thing third party developers are allowed to do is reskin Safari, so it shouldn't be a surprise if the entities who make good, even better, browsers on other platforms just drop out.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Yes, it is a reskinned safari. On the other hand, a browser is much more than a rendering engine now. It is part of a tool chain, part of an 'ecosystem'. I do use chrome sometimes on iOS because it is separate from by Apple accounts.

      Opera has always seemed to have a problem finding a place. When MS was still able to us the desktop monopoly to create a place for IE as an application front, and thus make everything compatible with on IE, Opera tried to get into the MS Windows browser space with a good b

  • Something to note (Score:4, Informative)

    by Schnapple ( 262314 ) <tomkidd@gmail . c om> on Friday May 26, 2017 @10:04AM (#54491063) Homepage
    The web browsers on iOS like Firefox and Chrome are actually using the WebKit rendering engine. Chrome brings the material design look and feel and both of them let you just keep the bookmarks and whatever other niceties but the actual renderer is no different than Safari on iOS.

    Opera, however, was different - they would render the page server-side as an image and then send that image to your phone. This let them ship a browser on iOS as well as get around Apple's no-rendering-engines rule.

    But you can see the issue with this, right? Is Opera caching the images on their servers? Probably not but you can't know. For all you know, JPEGs of your bank website are on their servers. SSL doesn't matter as much anymore because the rendering isn't being done on your device.

    So this is different than if they were abandoning an iOS web browser that was a WebKit wrapper like the others, this is Opera saying they no longer want to deal with this render-on-the-server mess.

    To say nothing about the fact that Opera as a company has to be struggling right now, they've got less desktop market share than Edge, which no one uses on purpose. They have less market share than Safari which is only on the Mac. I think their switch from Presto to Blink was less that they agreed with Google's standards and more that they just couldn't afford to keep developing Presto anymore. It must be so weird to work for a company that makes a product so few people use.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jetkust ( 596906 )
      I like Opera because it's basically Chrome without google's addon restrictions. And it's clearly faster than Firefox on Linux. Or at least the last few times I checked.
  • One of my gripes with iOS web browsing is the page reload when you context-switch back to it, which is a dreadful experience on an airplane via GoGo. I'd been looking into writing a browser better at caching, but the Apple requirements are that the browser use their WebKit. So you can't really change the behavior. Apple also restricts scripting, doesn't support a wide variety of languages, can't support TUN VPNs... but the corporate types like it for how bolted-down and controllable it is.
    • If proxy servers are still allowed, you don't need an alternative browser. I don't leave it up to the browser to "fix" what's wrong with the browsing experience.

  • Or maybe Opera couldn't switch their tool chain over to exclusively 64-bit iOS apps? Apple is planning to drop 32-bit apps from the app store. A friend who tests iOS apps told me that this is a big problem for some 32-bit app developers.

    https://9to5mac.com/2017/04/09/32-bit-apps-ios/ [9to5mac.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by davidwr ( 791652 )

      Apple is planning to drop 32-bit apps from the app store.

      In post-Soviet Cupertino, platform abandons YOU!

  • Since iOS 8, Apple recommends everybody uses the new WKWebView which replaces UIWebView: https://developer.apple.com/re... [apple.com]

    However, WKWebView is not as flexible as UIWebView; more specifically, there is no support for a custom NSURLProtocol. Basically to get the performance gains of using WKWebView, you can't do the things you want to do.

    For Opera specifically, this bug filed against webkit lays out the features they would like to implement, but are unable to: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_b... [webkit.org]

    Opera on iOS im

  • in other words, who cares? Opera was never going to do well on any platform. iOS is no different and the server side bullshit was a non-starter to begin with. Ill take Apple or Google's security over that any day. Besides who wants a Chinese browser anyways? Other than harvesting user data and selling it to advertisers I'm not so sure why other companies keep clamoring into the browser race. Either offer a major compelling feature or find something else to develop. Safari is a fast and able browser, so i

  • It's about time someone came up with an turnkey-solution front-end/back-end version of Firefox and Chrome.

    The front end would work on iOS or for that matter any other operating system and the back end - which would do the rendering and provide the any UI elements prohibited by Apple's rules - would work on the "back end." The back end would work on my PC/macOS/Linux machine or more likely a cloud-virtual machine.

    You say Apple wouldn't allow this? Oh, but they already do: Every remote-desktop/VNC/etc. too

  • No matter who you are, if you're on IOS, you're a wapper around Safari's Webkit implementation (even Firefox). Very difficult to do otherwise. it's just not an open platform.

  • The market share of iOS is below 20% worldwide anyway. On;y in the US it is still comparable with Android, but in all other markets it is nearly dropping to the level of irrelevant.

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