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Apple Approves Opera Mini For iPhone
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."
how did opera get this through the app store approval process!?
...all powerful application overlord, for your unending generosity. How shall we ever repay you?
For creating such a buzz around their browser. They've accused Apple for not allowing their browser on Apple's platform, but in reality they've never submitted an app for review until now. And it seems it hass passed without any hassle and is now available for everyone, so there's really nothing going on at all. But nonetheless everybody is writing about it like it's a freaking miracle, which is of course great for Opera.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
nothing to see here, it's opera MINI - moving on
The summary suggests that this has yet to be released, although the reviews on the linked site are all negative and all complain that Opera isn't as good as Safari. How do they know?.. Am I missing something?
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.
Finally, the tyranny of the Apple App Store has been beaten. More power to the Free Markets... :)
Civil Engineering Projects
With the [internet browsing] improvements that the Opera browser brings, maybe iPhone users will have less chances to notice how flaky AT&T's service is, thus raising the overall satisfaction level with Apple and AT&T.
Opera has unveiled a new line of browsers for Apple's line of iPods: Opera Mini for the iPhone, Opera Medium for the iPad and Opera Max for the yet unannounced iSurface.
Soon Apple will regret this, and make up some sorry excuse to yank Opera Mini out of App Store.
I've used it on Windows Mobile, Symbian, BlackBerry OS, Android and will definitely try it on iPhone OS later this day. So, with Opera Mini you may get consistent browsing experience no matter what smartphone (or featurephone) you choose.
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 ;-)
Herve S.
...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.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
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.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
I have Opera Mini installed on my Android phone, and I believe it is no threat to the Safari browser, as it does not support multi-touch and is generally not as sophisticated. It is very useful when only a slow network connection is available; however, I feel that if that is not the case, Safari will stay superior.
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...
Herve S.
The only thing worse than a Linux fan boy is an Opera fan boy!
If you guys want a better browser download the 99 cent Atomic Browser. It has tabbed browsing (and opens tabs in the background if you want it to), and you can load as many tabs as you want. With Mobile Safari you're limited to like 8 "windows" I think. With Atomic Browser not only can you open as many as you want, but when you switch back to the first tabs you opened it doesn't reload the page like Mobile Safari does (Safari kicks old windows out of RAM to make room for new ones, forcing you to reload when you return to the page, Atomic Browser keeps them all loaded. This is more noticeable with the iPad where you're lucky to get 4-5 pages before Mobile Safari starts reloading old ones). The only downside to Atomic Browser is that when you close the app and open it back up, it reloads every tab. I spoke with the developer about it, and he says it is a limitation of the iPhone SDK, but the new "saved state" feature in iPhone OS 4.0 may allow for him to keep the tabs between sessions without having to reload them.
If you don't want to pay the buck download the free version which has some limitations but it gives you a good sense of the browser.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with this developer I just recently found this app and am telling everyone about it because it is leaps and bounds ahead of Mobile Safari.
Trying to install now but have 92 page license to read through first.
Is it just me, or are all the reviews on the app store purposely giving it less-than-great reviews?
somehow Apple will make using Opera a royal pain, some URL handlers or something in there so that those that try Opera will eventually ditch it and think "why did I ever think it could be better than what Apple force feeds me already?"
just watch, you'll see...
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
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.
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.
[
If I'm understanding it correctly: Apple historically has rejected any app that duplicated functionality of their own included apps. I'm no expert, but I think Opera flows pretty close to Safari as far as functionality goes, back-end tech or not. So why did A allow this one to pass through the filter? I think it's simply because it received a lot of media coverage, and the outcome was going to be scrutinized by the tech community. Everyone was ready to make a martyr of Opera Mini and Apple sucked the wind out the potential bad press. -- If they had denied it, it would've caused an uproar - Opera would've gotten tons more coverage as David, and Apple would've been shown in the light of Goliath.
I thought I had ads disabled.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
But for how long? I mean, it's not like they can't just pull it anytime they want later, once some of the PR that Opera stirred up has settled down.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
2008:
http://www.unwiredview.com/2008/10/30/opera-mini-for-iphone-rejected-by-apple-from-app-store/
Now you know more.
What's the difference between a browser running javascript and another application running actionscript? I thought Apple didn't approve this sort of apps.
I am trying it right now.
It is fast on rendering, but you must wait to see the entire page.
So the overall speed is comparable to Safari.
It is possible to save login/password pairs: so it is a plus
-- Giovanni Daitan Giorgi http://gioorgi.com http://www.siforge.org
A quick search yields several articles from 2008 that mention Opera Mini being rejected from the Apps store.
Someone from Apple is getting fired for mistaking an internal April fools joke in Apple, and actually approving opera.
oh oh... After using it for 20 minutes and LOVING it, first problems arose:
1.- I only got "Internal server error" pages during 30 minutes. Maybe Opera's servers where saturated?
2.- When it worked again, I couldn't post it in my Facebook!! As Opera servers are in Norway (I'm in Spain), an alert appeared when connecting to FB: "Your account is blocked, somebody tried to hijack your account from another country".
but when it works... it's simply the best
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.
Except that's Apple's fault, not Adobe's.
Basically, Apple doesn't provide the APIs required to allow Flash to take advantage of any hardware acceleration features. The Diablo III page embeds a small Flash movie to make the white things float around. Under Windows, that video is hardware accelerated. Since Apple forbids Adobe from doing that under Mac OS X, it's all decoded in software.
That's why it's so slow under Mac OS X: Apple doesn't allow it to be faster than QuickTime.
Flash runs just fine on my mac without any of these slowness issue, and none of this crashing FUD. It is stable, it works, and it's required on pretty much every major web site out there. If it's really causing your system to crap itself, you might want to consider reinstalling the OS, because the problem is probably your system rather than Flash. It behaves itself just fine on my iMac and on my Dell with Vista. I have NEVER seen it crash a browser since it was release nearly a decade ago.
Is IPv6 support still missing?
I can't wait for the day when the *full* user experience of Internet Explorer finally comes to the iPhone :p
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 surprising, I suppose. Apple basically does want to create a centrally-controlled economy around their platform, with them making all decisions for everyone using their platform.
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?
I had assumed he’d have contributed by now with a novel-length dissertation on how to saddle your iPhone with a 14mb hosts file — and that’s after using 0 as an invalid IP instead of using 127.0.0.1, because it is shorter and supposedly makes your hosts file more efficient — (sorry, garbage to follow) “to block out KNOWN bad sites &/or adbanner servers, for added layered security” and “I never even HAVE TO CALL ON DNS SERVERS, which might be poisoned... & it gets me the URL-to-IP address resolution FASTER anyhow too!”
Yep, you read that right. A 14mb hosts file makes URL-to-IP address resolution FASTER.
Opera Mini is a Java ME app on all other platforms so presumably this is written in J2ME as well. Now the trouble is that apple has just changed terms for iPhone OS 4 to explicitly exclude (disallow) anything not written in "Objective C, C, C++ or JavaScript". (BTW, if you didn't know, you can run J2ME apps on iPhone via J2MEPolish Janus).
So, what's the catch? Has Opera rewritten Opera Mini or have Apple just contradicted themselves?
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.
While I'm sure there's a moment of truth in your perspective, you need to see what Opera Mini is. It's, simply put, a free VNC client especially designed for web browsing. There are plenty of VNC clients on the AppStore right now and it's been the case for a long long time. Opera Mini is a web browser on your iPhone about as much as remoting into your WinXP PC from the iPhone is running WinXP on your iPhone.
As you know, Apple doesn't want to lose control of the platform experience and ecosystem, so they forbid apps that can load other apps. That's the big reason why a real non-webkit browser won't be accepted: it's a slippery slope.
If they did allow, browser "X", that browser could start adding iPhone API support for web apps little by little, and before you know it, it has creeped up to a full app platform that bypasses the AppStore completely. Instead, no JavaScript or Flash gets executed on the iPhone with Opera Mini, it's all computed remotely, and as such it can't easily be called an app platform on the phone itself.
For those of us on limited Data plans Opera Mini's server side compression is great, not to mention the increased speed. Mind you on my Non-Apple smart phone I have recently started using Bolt browser - it has similar server side compression but gives a more "desktop like" web page appearance.
After almost a month!
I'm
just
happy
to
have
a
browser
that
renders
Slashdot
comments
properly.
Are you listening?
the Apple approval also cc'd the Anti-Trust division of the Justice Department, as that is the only reason Apple allowed this.
I've got Opera Mini on my BlackBerry. I've "used" it quite a few times and it's never been less than frustrating. Mobile Safari is light years ahead.
The first thing I notice is you can't zoom to any arbitrary amount, it just jumps in and out to what it thinks it should, which isn't always right. However, I definitely like the "long click" (click and hold) to get the option to open in a new tab, although I wish they'd make them open in the background. Oh well. In any case, I really hope they make this for iPad. (Or Safari adds this feature.)
In other news, I'm really curious what's in this for Opera--not only are they developing a browser and giving it away, they've got to run the servers that process the content that feeds the browser. Why?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Funny how all the sycophants who whine about freedom and Apple's "control freak" nature are noticeably absent on this story.
They completely screwed over China with this release.
It doesn't work at all for any website. total routing discrimination, I have to use VPN permanently
What's worse. on every http request, they force you to a page where you are meant to download the chinese version.
I'll give you a hint: it doesn't exist.
Am I missing the point somehow? I've installed the browser and attempted to go to two sites: http://www.smh.com.au/ and http://slashdot.org/
Neither of those worked as I expected... it gave me the non-mobile version of the website which is _useless_ on a screen the size of iPhone's.
I don't see the point of this browser. Perhaps it's only suitable for iPad...
Please don't send a Word document when a text file will do the job.
actually, you should use the much more powerful/better browser opera mobile on symbian and win mobile. they are true browsers which can even replace the inbuilt browser as default.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
I don't know much about Opera mini but the best alternative browser for iPod/iPhone is iCab. Check it out.