Think of Opera what you want, but those Norwegian guys and girls know how to get publicity. The company has announced it has submitted Opera Mini to the iPhone’s App Store, and it has launched a website with a count-up timer, following how long it will take Apple to approve it – if at all, of course.
The brilliancy of this move is twofold. First, if Apple approves Opera Mini, it will become the first alternative browser available for the iPhone platform. There are other browsers available in the App Store, but those are all wrappers around the same WebKit engine Safari uses, so it’s not much in the form of competition. If Apple approves Opera Mini, you can bet your sweet bum that it will be downloaded a lot, if only by people who want to see what it’s like.
Second, if Apple doesn’t approve Opera Mini, the Norwegian browser maker can cry foul, and receive a lot of free publicity that way – deserved publicity, at that, in my opinion. Competing browsers is a good thing, even if the competition in this case is a special one, since Opera Mini is the variant that reroutes all traffic through Opera.
This also happens to be the reason why Opera Mini may be approved where other browsers weren’t: since no code is being interpreted (it’s all done server-side), it doesn’t break that sacred App Store rule. If Apple wants to block Opera Mini, it’ll have to come up with something else.
“The Opera Mini for iPhone sneak peek during MWC told us that we have something special,” said Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder of Opera Software, “Opera has put every effort into creating a customized, stylized, feature-rich and highly responsive browser that masterfully combines iPhone capabilities with Opera’s renowned Web experience, and the result is a high performing browser for the iPhone.”
I have to admit, the video Opera has published to demonstrate Opera Mini on the iPhone is pretty impressive – I especially like the clever interface elements like how to switch tabs and the ability to tap and hold a link to open it in a new tab.
We’ll see how it all pans out. If Apple wants to score some major points, it should approve Opera Mini by the end of the day (or at least really soon), but my guess is that won’t happen. I’m not sure whether Apple will approve the browser or not, but if it does, it’s going to take a while.
… this duplicates core browser functionality. I hope it gets approved but realistically, it probably won’t.
Well Opera is publicity whore company so no suprise really. Doing this after Google just makes them look like Vanilla Ice, you might thinking you are original but you ain’t.
All companies are publicity whores. Why is it only bad if Opera does it?
Doing what after Google?
All Opera is doing is to try to get their product onto the iPhone, and get lots of PR in the process. Is that supposed to be a bad thing?
Duplicates, but also provides additional functionality (“mini” being the whole point of the browser), same as does Spotify, and countless other apps which got approved.
My guts says Apple will pose no problems and just approve it.
DENIED!
–Apple
Everyone knows that it’s fine for Apple to lock out other browser makers, because they’re not Microsoft.
“Everyone knows that it’s fine for Apple to lock out other browser makers, because they’re not [engaged in illegal practices like] Microsoft.”
Fixed it for you. It’s legally absolutely fine for Apple to reject it, but it’s going to be a tricky one to the PR people to spin.
Wrong, it just morally wrong for both to do this kind of crap.
And exactly when has legal been synonymous with moral? Moral is a relative value, legality is not.
It’s morally wrong to report someone for breaking the law? News to me.
johnnysaucepn snarked…
Nope, still broken. Let me fix that for you:
There you go…slightly more accurate, don’t you think by the way things have been heading? Glad to have helped!
–bornagainpenguin
I’d like to know about which illegal practices they are engaged in.
Edited 2010-03-23 22:19 UTC
Successful corporations with low geek-cred are guilty until proven innocent, didn’t you know that?
That Apple will allow Opera. I do not see why this will bring every troll out from under the bridge, but it will. Apple the Company is very concerned with the end users experience overall. Most of Apple’s actions (if you like them or not) make sense in that light. Apple is not evil it just wants to execute their Desktop Plan without having to be at the mercy of other ISVs.
-=-
There was a time in the late 90s when just having MSIE on the Mac made your unit unstable (their shitty fonts preloaded into memory + OS 8 & 9 memory model)- During the Browser Wars Microsoft wanted to have the Web be their own Active X platform – it Failed. I think we all learned from that experience.
-=- The Apple store is turning out to be a work in progress. Some of what we see is product of it being relatively new. I have Had Apps rejected. I Have worked on Apps and had Apple Release something similar (or even better). It could make me feel bitter but that is silly. Some of Apple’s Policies just makes sense — I do not see why I need adult content to prove my first amendment or my free market.
My wife just reminded me that I have at least six browsers on my system (She does web and therefore I am a Guinea pig /debugging sled)
I SUSPECT that Apple will do it because it is the right thing not the thing that a select minority call right.
Well, I suspect one of two things will happen:
1. Apple will allow Opera, primarily for public relations points. I’m sure Apple are aware of how they are perceived in the tech media, and allowing Opera would shut a lot of people up for the time being.
2. Apple will keep it under eternal review without actually rejecting it. This is, if you believe Apple anyway, what has happened to the Google Voice app though Google has a different story to tell.
I’ll be surprised if Apple officially rejects it. This is a perfect opportunity to score some huge PR, and Apple doesn’t usually let these slide.
In fact legal matters particularly criminal are moral issues. Often civil are as well. To say otherwise is seriously mistaken. As for the time Apple approves, or not… Never. Apple is a very big baby turning away from good and very much into exactly what Microsoft was and became. Unfortunately, it took a larger critical mass and success from Apple for a majority of those in the niche market to tire of being mainstream to complain. Too late, and there really is no alternative that makes sense now.
As for Opera, and the iPhone giveaway. I thought it to be more apropos to give away an Android based device.
Well, if that video is anything to go by, it really beats the crap outta Safari as far as speed is concerned and I don’t doubt for a second that Opera is the fastest among the two: while Apple is usually quick to claim that their browser is the fastest of the bunch, Opera built a solid reputation over the years for making a lightning fast web browser (even if Presto was somewhat trailing other rendering engines from far behind on Javascript until recently).
I am just a little uncomfortable with the idea of all the traffic passing through an Opera-owned proxy somewhere. It just doesn’t ring well with the privacy nut in me. But it seems to be a formidable application otherwise.
Apple probably will deny Opera’s application to have it included on the App Store, though (bad PR notwithstanding) which is a shame. They simply can’t take the competition.
Edited 2010-03-23 19:00 UTC
How does Opera Mini handle js anyway? That would have to, at least in some way, be handled on the local client, which does give Apple perfect grounds for rejection. Like the terms or not, they are clearly stated and one such is that an app may not download and execute random code.
They could capture event and send them as POST to their proxies who in turn simulate true js interaction and send back the rendered page…
Or something along those lines. I’m no web expert but that can duplicate the functionality, though complex AJAX stuff would get slow like hell very fast :/
It does simulate simple click interactions using request response model.
Probably onload gets somehow implemented on the server.
More complex dynamic stuff (including ajax) is not supported.
Actually, it does support some Ajax.
It would be great if somewhere on the countdown page it had something like…
Tired of waiting for Opera to be approved?…. Click here to see how you can jailbreak your iPhone and run what you want to run, not what Apple wants you to run.
Well, if they are actually trying to get approved, having a link like that is probably a bad idea. I’m pretty sure Apple wouldn’t appreciate that, and it would probably lower their chances of approval below zero.
Right now Apple is in a bit of a jam because technically Apple can reject Opera browser citing two specific reasons. One obvious one they’ve cited prior is the duplication of functionality rule. Second not so obvious restriction is the application cannot have it’s own interpreter. This is reason why Commodore 64 emulator was not allowed to have a Basic interpreter. This opens the door for third party apps to run inside the interpreter. Javascript interpreter does indeed violate this rule.
An iPad will come with it’s own book store which means suddenly Kindle Reader or Stanza is in violation of duplication of functionality rule. Does that mean Apple will pull those apps for the iPad but allow it for iPhone and iPod touch? If Apple allows third party ebook reader apps for the iPad, does that mean they should allow Amazon MP3 store app too?
Apple App Store’s rules are already seen as very arbitrary and inconsistent as it is but it’s about to get even worse. If Apple cuts a content deal with National Geographics, what happens to naked african woman pictures? What about art magazines with classical paintings of naked women? Will they have a different rule for magazine and book content while keeping current “no sexually suggestive” content rule for apps except Playboy and Sport Illustrated swim suit app? How will they reconcile these conflicting rules or will they even try?
Opera mini doesn’t do any javascript on the phone though, opera’s takes care of all of that server side. So current justification they have for that is duplicated functionality. Also in response to the rest of your post, I don’t think apple is the least bit concerned with consistency or hypocrisy in its app store policies. There reasoning is that its there store and they can do whatever they want for whatever reason they want. And as long as developers go along with that they aren’t going to change.
Not quite. The rendering etc is done server-side, but there’s still a minimal local interpreter because it needs to be able to intercept javascript events and act on them. Even if all it does is forward the event to their server and send back the changed content, that’s still enough grounds for Apple to reject as it’s possible to run random 3rd party code in a 3rd party app.
Personally, I think Apple’s controlling attitude is ridiculous, but the terms are very clear on this point at least. Many of their restrictions are arbitrary, but they seem pretty consistent with the no interpreters rule.
I don’t know if I’d call that an interpreter per se. I mean, Apple can bend their rules however they want. But associating a region on the screen with a URL, and processing the URL when the screen region is touched, is pretty well stretching it.
There are many apps that go to URLs when you tap something. That’s all this would do.
How is that different than touching an picture in iPod and having it flip over to show the song list? Or clicking on an persons name and having the system download pertinent details from the network and displaying them. It’s a reaction to an event.
Again, by the thinnest, weakest definition, yes, it’s an interpreter, but at this level all applications are interpreters.
Whatever it is, no matter how it’s implemented, it’s a far cry from any kind of “general purpose” interpreter, that’s for sure.
I don’t think it’s an interpreter.
Mini server can just enrich the page sent to browser in additional hot points when it should should download additional content.
There’s a bit of a difference between tits-out to titillate, and tits-out because you live in the kalahari desert. They are not the same thing at all.
eventually apple will have to take a different stance on this because not every country has the schizophrenic view on nudity/sexuality as the US of A have. at the moment apple’s just covering its ass against moronic litigations from even more moronic self proclamied guardians of decency and good christian family values (think of them as of the american equivalent of the iranian revolutionary guards). meanwhile guess where the world’s largest porn industry is located.
more on topic: opera mini would definitely get a fat stamp of approval if i were to make that decision. i do think they will eventually but it will probably take a while. they may get back at opera about issues in some details but eventually these will be resolved.
Edited 2010-03-24 09:40 UTC
I actually like Opera as a browser. Does anyone else here or is this just an Apple slamming sesson? That would make Opera one step closer to truly cross platform, no? That can only be a good thing…
hibridmatthias asked…
Opera is an also ran at this point. They were good once, back in the 5.x to 7.x days, but a refusal to listen to their users and willful sabotage of features like adblocking spelled their end as soon as people had something else to go to. Opera may have invented many of the features now popular on Firefox and other browsers, but their top down approach alienated enough users that they have very little chance of recovering their former position today.
These days Opera is to browsers what Palm is to PDAs.
–bornagainpenguin
Umm, ok, that’s one opinion, here’s mine..
I actually still think Opera is the best browser out there and the only other one that’s even coming close is Chrome. Firefox and IE are both way to slow for my taste (yes I think Firefox feels slowish overall) and both of them have a tab behavior I really don’t like. Plus a whole other set of reasons I won’t go into right now, except maybe the fact that Opera continuously introduces new stuff that other browsers later borrow.
I think it’s pretty awesome that they are the only ones with such a fast and effective browser for mobile systems. No other browser comes even close, and it’s not like Apple, Microsoft and Google don’t have the resources to do it. I bet Chrome will be there soon enough with similar speed and functionality, but Opera Mini has existed for years already.
Say what?
Opera has more desktop users than ever. About 50 million. It also has about 50 million Opera Mini users.
So Opera actually has at least 100 million users!
How did Opera sabotage adblocking?
And how did anything spell “their end”, considering that Opera’s desktop user base has been more than doubling every two years?
What former position? Opera never held a dominant position. In fact, Opera is stronger today than it has ever been.
Opera is the dominant mobile browser, and has 50 million desktop users. It also keeps inventing features that other browsers rip off.
And Opera 10.5 is the fastest browser out there.
Looks like you need to go back to history class, because you just flunked.
PresentIt spouted…
I’d love to know which exact nether region you’re pulling those stats out of. Perhaps their presence in the mobile market is quite high, but consider that in some of those use cases Opera is the only option available for the platform. In such cases having the user use Opera where it is the only option available means very little in the long run. It isn’t as though everyone who uses Opera on their Nintendo DS and then decides to start using it on the desktop. I’m sure it does happen occasionally, but how often is that?
PresentIt spouted…
Just read the Opera Forums! The subject has come up endlessly and the Opera developers simply refused to add adblocking capabilities to their application. (No, filter.ini or using admuncher do not count.) The worse offender was when a third party developer was working on a utility that would do Filterset G type blocking and the Opera developers started changing the APIs on him. I wish I could find the specific thread but this was almost five or six years ago now.
PresentIt spouted…
Simple. People who came to Opera asking for features were told no. When they informed Opera that Firefox had those features, Opera told them to use Firefox. They did.
PresentIt spouted…
Really? Then why is there such a stench of desperation about them? Why do I constantly see “Opera invented XYZ first” in any thread about Firefox on most tech sites?
PresentIt spouted…
LOL. Opera is only the dominant mobile browser so long as there is no competition? Sure, I’ll give you that. Of course you could argue that since Opera only reflows everything from their private servers and doesn’t actually render pages on the device itself it doesn’t really meet the requirements to be called a web browser…
As for speed? I remember the old days when Opera really was the fastest browser on Earth. These days that’s debatable. Besides it stopped being about browser start up speed a long time ago; now the key is being able to customize your browsing experience.
Guess which browser does that best? Hint: it isn’t Opera…
PresentIt spouted…
Heh. No need sonny. You see I remember it because I was there. Not my fault if webrot and a little phenomena called “the victor writes the history books” takes place and Johnny-Come-Latelys such as yourself miss it.
–bornagainpenguin
Not stats. The actual number of desktop users, as reported by Opera Software to its investors (which is also public information). This is confirmed by their desktop revenue (which is also public information)
Yeah, except the 50 million Opera Mini users are only the ones who use a version they downloaded directly from Opera. Preinstalled versions are not counted in those numbers.
So again: 50 million active desktop users who installed it themselves, plus 50 million Opera Mini users who installed it themselves. That’s 100 million users, not counting all bundled and preinstalled versions.
How does not adding feature A mean that they are sabotaging anything?
By the way, Firefox doesn’t have ad blocking either. You need to install third party software for that (AdBlock).
And you can use third party software for ad blocking in Opera too.
What APIs? Opera doesn’t have an extensions API. Fail.
Now you are making stuff up again. Opera never told them anything of the sorts.
And you just ignored the part where I explained that Opera’s user base has been more than doubling every two years, and Opera’s desktop revenue is growing as well.
So how does a growing user base and growing revenue “spell end”?
So because Opera users point out Opera’s leading role in browser features, that means the company is “desperate”? Your amazing logic strikes again!
You mean like Safari, Chrome, Skyfire, Bolt, Netfront, Iris Browser, and all the other mobile browsers out there?
Now you are just getting desperate. And what you are describing is Opera Mini. Opera Mobile is a full, standalone browser like Safari and Chrome.
Not really.
Aha? Opera allows you to customize just about anything without having to install third party software (extensions). Thanks for pointing that out
If you were there, you were evidently asleep or high on some strong drugs the whole time. Anyone who actually paid attention wouldn’t be spouting the illogical nonsense you are in this thread.
But back to the actual discussion:
1. How does a growing user base and growing revenue “spell end”?
2. What former position? Opera has more users now than they have ever had. The user base started growing when they removed the ads about 4 years ago.
3. Opera is the dominant mobile browser. How does that make it “what Palm is to PDAs”?
Opera runs on my Wii apparently, but I gave up on the desktop version since I ran Windows 3.1 (which I also gave up on some time ago).
It would be nice though if Opera came to the iPhone, although I probably wouldn’t use it as Safari fits my needs.
Opera mini 5 beta runs on my sony and android phones and my desktop computers using microemulator which looks like the version they’re using for the iphone.
The amount of data you save running this browser is amazing. You’ll miss out on a lot of functionality you get from desktop browsers but on a phone it’s perfect.
The iphone needs a browser like this and people on a shitty data plan will agree.
Hi,
can someone just comment on this?
“This also happens to be the reason why Opera Mini may be approved where other browsers weren’t: since no code is being interpreted (it’s all done server-side),”
Does this mean that the whole HTML interpretation and rendering is performed on the server side and the client app is nothing but an image viewer (to say it that way)? I couldn’t believe that this would be faster than Safari which runs natively.
Adrian
Yes, that’s correct. And you’re right in some situations, it could actually be a whole lot slower, depending on how it’s implemented.
If you’re looking at a fairly static page, like news pages, then Opera will rip along (which is probably why they selected a news page for their demo).
If on the other hand you looking at a dynamic javascript/JQuery heavy page, like Facebook or online booking forms etc. then this will run like crap, (unless they have built in a local js engine as well).
Rendering HTML is not “interpreting” it. The whole interpreter limitation is to prevent executable code from being downloaded from the net running on the iPhone. The extreme case is a VM of some kind, and you would donwload a runtime, and talk to a completely separate “app store” (say, a Flash App Store). That’s the primary driver behind the limitation.
Rendering HTML is no different from rendering XML, and there are a zillion apps the render XML, JSON, etc every day. Consider any RSS reader, that’s all they’re doing, “rendering” RSS.
It runs faster, especially low bandwidth conections, because the app makes a single connection to the Opera master servers. These servers then fetch not just the destination page, but all of their artifacts, using high bandwidth, low latency connections. The result is consolidated in to a compressed markup, which is then sent to the mini-browser.
For example, imagine a page that has a single paragraph of text, with a bolded word in the middle, but the actual CSS file used is the one common for the site, and is actually 50-100K of CSS. The Opera server can look at the HTML and discover only the actual CSS necessary to render this specific page, and send the compressed markup with only the CSS rules that the page needs, dramatically reducing the overall payload size.
Similarly, it can resize images to the scale necessary for the device. That 10MB jpeg that your browser normally scales to fit the 100×100 size box on the page, is compressed by the Opera servers, and drops from 10MB to 40K, or even better.
All of these combine in to making the browser much faster, particularly for low bandwidth, high latency connections.
With higher bandwidth availability, and faster processors, the offloading of the processing is less important and will have less of an impact.
I think there’s only an exteremely simple image and text layout engine on the client.
2 facts second that:
1. mini runs (as java midlet) on quite simple phones (like SE K750i) that struggle to handle html native way
2. Reorientation to landscape mode causes a roundtrip.
Basically, technologically mini is WAP done right.
Actually, if Wikipedia is correct, Opera Mini *does* interpret *some* javascript.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini
Initial onLoad events are fired and evaluated on the server, whilst other events are fired on the phone.
It also interprets its own markup language called OBML (Opera Binary Markup Language).
Curiously, Mini is usually built on top of the Java VM, so they must have written something to get around this on the iPhone.
I don’t like the chances of this being accepted.
They also have a native client.
I don’t see why not. No code is executed locally.
Between iPhone OS versions 2.2.1 and 3.0, there were several security issues that went unresolved for months. That includes the browser.
Even if Apple decide to provide security updates, who wants to download 250+ MB for what should be no more than 5 MB (yes, it’s arbitrary) in fixes? Even Safari on Mac OS X, while large at ~31 MB for 4.0.5, is somewhat manageable. Mozilla Firefox’s 1.6 MB for 3.6.2 would be ideal.
I use Opera Mini on my phone and it’s quite capable, even if it’s a bit odd at times. Version 5.0 is somewhat broken, but they’ll have that fixed by 5.2. I would hope that Apple recognise the value of a secondary browser not tied to the same security risk and allow Opera Mini and Mozilla Fennec, if there could be one.
What’s broken about 5.0? It seems to work OK here.
For one, the GUI is broken so that the soft key labels don’t show up until you press the keys, just like 4.0 did. They’ll get it fixed. It’s just good that they didn’t move the key-function assignments.
I also can’t edit an already set speed dial entry.
I’ve run into another 10 to 20 other small items and they’ll all be fixed by version 5.2, I’m sure. I wish they’d take advantage of my full keyboard, though, and that just won’t happen but they have the fullscreen edit option, thankfully, so I can input numbers, something that didn’t work in version 4.2.
What do you mean by soft key labels? Shortcuts? That doesn’t sound very “broken” to me. More by design? Hardly warrants calling the UI “broken”.
You can edit Speed Dials with a long-click.
So it doesn’t sound like the UI is very broken to me.
If they fix them in later versions, as they did with 4.x, they’re hardly designed to work that way.
Here is an example:
I press the menu soft key and move over to the exit icon and press the menu/okay key. The left soft key should say “Yes” and the right soft key should say “No” but they aren’t displayed until I press one of the soft keys and then, they’re both displayed momentarily.