
An interesting NYT Bits blog entry covers
Opera's mobile browser. Buried in the middle of the article is this quote: "Opera's engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won't let the company release it because it competes with Apple's own Safari browser." It also talks about Opera on the Wii and browsers in cars. A good read.
My Take: But back to the iPhone. As tempted as I am to just shrug it off, since Apple is free to run its App Store any way it pleases, as an enthusiastic iPhone user, I think Apple is shooting itself in the foot here, as it is with all the "competitive" apps being rejected. Apple does stand to lose some Google revenue by letting people use other browsers, but they have much more to gain by unleashing the creativity of the developer community and giving them the freedom to improve or replace core iPhone functionality. Hopefully competition from Android forces them to wake up.
Member since:
2006-09-30
iPhone-tailored www ???
The web is about _interoperability_.
That is, about providing *information* to everyone regardless the platform.
Even on the iPhone and its only browser shall I be free to force the font I want and other CSS values.
The only "compatibility" that should matter is the one to the W3C standards. Then Apple is free to implement features through a custom implementation of these standards for simpler use, but forcing formats on web pages makes them not web pages anymore.
Anyone thinking it's about providing something that *looks* how they want didn't understand what the web is.
Go read http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/
Edited 2008-10-29 23:04 UTC