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Opera Mini Not Rejected From iPhone (Yet)
danaris writes in to inform us that John Gruber has done some digging on the reported rejection from the App Store of Opera Mini, and has written up his findings. Some choice excerpts: "My understanding, based on information from informed sources who do not wish to be identified because they were not authorized by their employers, is that Opera has developed an iPhone version of Opera Mini — but they haven't even submitted it to Apple, let alone had it be rejected. ... If what they've done for the iPhone is [to get] a Java ME runtime running on the iPhone — it's clearly outside the bounds of the iPhone SDK Agreement. ... What Opera would need to do to have a version of Opera Mini they could submit to the App Store would be to port the entire client software to the C and Objective-C APIs officially supported on the iPhone. It could well be that even then, Apple would reject it from the App Store on anti-competitive grounds — but contrary to this week's speculation, that has not happened."
...would they port the JavaME version? Doesn't that seem a bit circuitous when Apple provides a sophisticated toolkit to compile their Mac codebase down? It's not like the iPhone is underpowered.
Something doesn't quite seem right here.
I know little about Opera, but:
it works like this: You request a URL in Opera Mini. Opera Mini makes the request to a proxy server run by Opera. Operaâ(TM)s proxy server connects to the web server hosting the requested URL, and renders the page into an image. This image is then transmitted (in a proprietary format called OBML â" Opera Binary Markup Language) to the Opera Mini client. Opera Mini displays the rendered image on screen. This may sound convoluted, but apparently the result is very effective â" itâ(TM)s faster to transmit, because only OBML (a compressed binary format) is transmitted to the mobile device over the phone network, and far faster to render on slow mobile processors.
Opera Mini is probably a Java app, so it can run on the most number of phones. Porting a JVM that only needs to support a few select bits is vastly easier than porting a full-blown rendering engine from c/cpp to obj c.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Having read the article in greater depth, I see that the author has made a few incorrect assumptions. One of them appears to be that if it's not Opera Mini, it is therefore Opera JavaME. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Not only does Opera have their Opera Mobile product that is designed to run on a variety of non-Java smartphones, but they also have products like the Wii Internet Channel. The Internet Channel is a stripped down version of the desktop browser running in an environment that's not too dissimilar to the iPhone.
So take the information in the article with a large grain of salt.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Why exactly is Apple worried about people making different browsers/media players for the iPhone/iPod touch? They already paid the ~$250 for Safari/iPod player so why does it matter if they want to use VLC instead and use Opera to browse? They bought the hardware. I could understand them rejecting such projects as an Amazon MP3 store or something, but media players and browsers? Come on Apple, we already gave you our $$$ for that.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
There's no question that Apple's iPhone/iPod touch behavior is anti-competitive. As Apple gains market power, rising toward #1 in the smartphone market, such behavior might also be illegal in at least some jurisdictions. Apple needs to tread very carefully here.
Correction to myself. I misunderstood what the author was saying. He was saying that Opera Mini is a JavaME browser, not that anything other than Opera Mini is a JavaME browser. My mistake.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Slashdot is getting more FUD and hate-articles lately, might that be? First announcing something bad about a company, practically begging for hating/dissociating posts, then clearing it with articles like this? At least we discussed ... very insightful. I used to like posts that point out the FUD about companies and poke at flaws and inaccuracy in articles, evidence and arguments.
This topic earlier
In between: Have we discussed how awesome the new Ubuntu is often enough?
Mod this troll.
Granted, he did ask that his post be modded troll, but it really isn't. Perhaps he picked a poor example. Here's another.
From the summary:
The folks at O'Reilly Media aren't immune, so they set out to discover just what is it about iPhones that makes them such bad RF citizens.
Cute. Lots of phones are 'bad RF citizens', but gee, this sounds like the iPhone is special in this regard, right?
More from the summary:
The iPhones aren't the only bad apples in the cell phone basket and there's not much you can do about the problem.
So... lots of cell phones create RF interference in some devices. Did that make article make it to Slashdot because of the interesting topic of RF interferrence, or did the line about the iPhone not being a good RF citizen cause it to be approved? Did both of the Opera stories make it without the words "Apple rejected..."?
It's fashionable to smack Apple around, but seriously, it's not like the AC was wrong.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The article says...
That's totally different from saying it was rejected. It may well be the case that they read Apple's agreement and understood that Apple would not allow them to release it... and thus they didn't need to submit it.
In the same way, I already know that the US Government will not allow me to sell marijuana-laced brownies. I don't need to apply to the FDA to find that out, since it's already well understood from the law.
I'm surprised nobody pointed this out earlier.
See, that's also confusing. When you have a fully featured browser already in the phone, why compete with a substandard browser that's incapable of surfing anything more than static sites?
I can clearly see that you've never used Opera Mini. I've used Opera Mini to read and post on Slashdot. It works just fine.
My blog
if it's FUD it's all based on Apple's already accrued bad reputation.
first, they lock down the iPhone and prevent 3rd-party apps from being run on it. then when they finally open it up they require all applications to be approved by them and distributed through the App Store. then they reject 3rd-party applications that might compete with their own software. and finally, then they make all developers sign an NDA that prevents developers from speaking about App Store rejections.
but if you want to assume that this is all an elaborate Opera PR stunt designed to spread FUD about Apple then go right on ahead. it's not like this so-called FUD isn't based on what people already think about Apple as a result of their own recent actions.
See, that's also confusing. When you have a fully featured browser already in the phone, why compete with a substandard browser that's incapable of surfing anything more than static sites?
Are you just making things up as you go along, or..?
Opera Mini supports a great deal of JavaScript / "AJAX" functionality (I frequently use it to access various Google services, including the full Gmail), and for many users might prove more favorable than the iPhone Safari due to its proxy/caching features.
If Apple still refuses Opera's app in native (non-JVM) form, this can't be called anything other than anti-competitive.
Opera Mini is faster because it gets highly compressed data. It's also a lot cheaper if you pay per MB.
Nope. Opera Mini actually has a place on the iPhone because it offers something truly unique with its compression. That makes it cheaper and faster than Safari for a lot of people. And besides, Opera Mini was ported to C/C++ more than a year ago, and considering that Opera Software makes a living porting browsers, there's no reason to doubt that it was ported.
Clever signature text goes here.