Opera Submits Opera Mini to App Store
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 23rd Mar 2010 16:26 UTC
Opera Software 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.
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Praxis
Member since:
2009-09-17

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.


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.

Reply Parent Score: 2

darknexus Member since:
2008-07-15

Opera mini doesn't do any javascript on the phone though, opera's takes care of all of that server side.


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.

Reply Parent Score: 2

whartung Member since:
2005-07-06

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.


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.

Reply Parent Score: 3

dsmogor Member since:
2005-09-01

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.

Reply Parent Score: 2