Slashdot Mirror
Opera Mini For iPhone Submitted To App Store Today
An anonymous reader writes "Opera Mini for iPhone was officially submitted to the Apple iPhone App store today. A select few first saw it at Mobile World Congress 2010 in February. Now, the 'fast like a rocket' browser is taking its first big step towards giving users a new way to browse on the iPhone."
Apple will say that it duplicates existing iPhone functions and will refuse to accept it.
But lets all keep saying Microsoft is evil.
Yeah, and Apple is going to remove it "fast as a rocket" too.
Steve doesn't compete. He tells you what you can have, and you either accept it or you don't. If you don't like it, go buy a Droid.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If Opera figures out how to get flash support into the damn thing, I expect that no amount of reality distortion will be able to protect Jobs from the wrath of the users should they reject the app.
Whether accepted or not, Opera has gained a lot of basically free publicity with this. That's what it is about, and good for them.
I am not absolutely sure that Apple will reject it. If I was Apple though, I would make them change the name to, for example, 'Opera Web Viewer', and not allow it to access https pages at all. Then they get to claim user-security and still let this thing in.
I love Opera and all, but I'm not sure I would use it myself. I'll look at it when it's available, no reason to worry until then.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
Just to clarify my point, it is practically a browser but it contains no rendering engine.
"Blah blah blah." - [citation needed]
I really hope Apple rejects it quickly so Opera tosses it up on the jailbroken software distribution channels (Cydia/Rock). All the more stuff to show my friends to get them interested in breaking Apple's chokehold on their hardware.
It's not like I'd refuse to use it if it was on the Apple Store, I'd actually be rather happy if it was for all the people who choose not to jailbreak, but I imagine that Opera is waiting to see if they get Apple's blessing before rolling it out by other means. And I bet that Apple will likely delay their "decision" as long as possible (indefinitely?) until people/media forget about it, then quietly deny it if pushed to a decision.
I'd give it a try if Apple 'blessed' it (which I doubt they will considering how 'fair' they are) but I don't know if it will ever match the speed of Safari considering they don't have access to the private API's that Apple does (and forbids everyone else from using).
What API's would those be? Safari uses WebKit, just like any other app on the iPhone that wants to serve up web pages.
As far as WebKit goes, what do you suppose it can do that some other rendering engine won't be able to do? It can be written in C, can use OpenGL (as well as things like CoreAnimation)...
So, really, what super-secret APIs are you thinking of here?
Apple keeps APIs private for only two reasons:
1. They aren't finished yet.
2. Security/Privacy.
As for the "fairness" of Apple, and whether they'll approve Opera, they probably won't. It's not because (like so many people think) that they don't want the competition, it's because they believe Safari is the best browser out there, and want to keep the iPhone experience fairly consistent in terms of core functionality.
So...
It complies with Apple's code of advertising then.
Just to be pedantic, users don't wait until a page is fully loaded before trying to use it, so getting a page to the point where it is displayed and barely usable is more important then having the whole thing loaded.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.