Linked by David Adams on Wed 29th Oct 2008 20:55 UTC, submitted by Geir Johasen
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.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
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Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
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"Opera in desktop is much, much, much better than Safari, there is no competition"
No way, Opera is slower, and its interface is an awfull mess... but if you like it, good for you. And anyway that't not the point that i want to make here.
" 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."
You are not getting the fact right. The fact that Opera Mini is being rejected has a little to do with Apple trying to avoid competition to its own written apps, that's not the issue here.
From the iPhone SDK agreement, it is written this:
An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).
In other words the SDK does not allow a third party application to have its own interpreter, in other words an application like a web browser can not have its own javascript interpreter.
Now, Opera Mini has it own javascript interpreter, and the version that Opera wants to propose on the iPhone has probably the same that Opera Mini has always had (a web browser without javascript support is pretty useless in our days), which means that THE REASON WHY APPLE IS REFUSING OPERA MINI ON THE APP STORE IS BECAUSE ITS RUNS A NON BUILT-IN INTERPRETER.
Well, quite different from the conspiracy theory saying that the big bad Apple is rejecting competition on the iPhone, isn't?
And that also means that Opera developers knew it form the beginning that their app will be rejected if they use their own javascript interpreter, this does not come to a surprise to them even though Opera Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner seems to act as it is a surprise.
One can agree or disagree with the fact that Apple does not allow for third party javascript interpreters (there are multiple reasons for that i guess) but please it is important to get the fact right.
Opera Mini is being rejected from the App Store because it violates the SDK agreement, period.
A lot of people does not have a clue of what is the SDK agreement, what it contains, and what it allows to do and not to do on the iphone (and most of people reacting here does not develop for the iPhone hence all the non-sense that i could read in the messages). but keep in mind that there is a SDK agreement that all developers wishing to develop for the iphone should agree with.