why would apple allow opera mini on app store? it would replace one of the core applications of the iphone… they had issues with google voice. opera mini is a web browser!

i wish opera focuses on the android platform. opera mini 5 is not released yet and the existing edition is pretty much useless compared to native browser on my nexus one.

Don’t hold your breath for it. It is clearly against the rules

So does this mean we can expect something like this on the ipad?

Apple will block that browser. They have to.
Since every other browser on iphone is based on webkit, they have full control over the User Agent flag. Which is necessary to identify iphone clients for blocking on regular newspaper pages(so they can sell their apps).
With Opera Mini Apple would loose that kind of control. It counters Apples closed world. Won’t happen.

Wait – one of the world’s most underrated browsers on the world’s best-loved smartphone? Oh, Duplicate Functionality Awesomeness!

Seriously: I love Opera. And I will enjoy using this on my iPod Touch so much.

(When I’m not playing Duke Nukem Forever in a frozen corner of hell, where I have a nice view of all the flying pigs, that is.)

If apple approves it… google will smile ;)

Not just duplicating the in built functionality. But it violates the iPhone SDK license:

“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).”

Apple will say HTML, Javascript & CSS are interpreted :-)

I have a strong feeling that Apple will allow it. I don’t see any reason why Opera browser would hurt Apple. Safari still be the default browser on iPhone, anyway.

What about the forbidden use of interpreted languages? The Commodore 64 app was banned from the store until the code was taken out. I assume Opera Mini allows the use of JavaScript, which is interpreted and would be against Apple’s rules.

If apple decides to keep studying the application, I would expect EU to smack them hard for anti competitive and childish behaviour.

Apple seams not to consider the Browser a core feature as the Phone (Google Voice).

They are approving other Browsers (ok,Safari based) in the App Store.

What if Opera find a Flash workaround….?
Sci-fi ? Likely. :-)

I hope apple approves it – Opera is great.
Maybe Apple will work on improving it’s own browser rather than discouraging competition…Apple is after all a company that thrives on its innovative technology!

Could this possibly open the door to browser-based Flash on the iPhone?

If Apple does allow Opera to be installed on the iPhone platform would they then restrict how the browser can be extended?

I think this opens a can of worms that Apple would rather keep closed.

Opera-mini and its intense proxy use (cross countries) is heaven for scammers and a nightmare for webmasters.

As I have limited time to handle these exceptions, I banned Opera ip range.

Why not ‘Opera mobile’ directly instead of ‘Opera Mini’?
iPhone is a Smart phone is suppose?

As far as I understand, there are at least two rules against Opera Mini on the App Store:
- It clearly duplicates Safari’s functionality.
- It contains a runtime environment that could potentially run any program written in Javascript. (Apple only allows its own runtime environments on the iPhone)

Opera quite evidently knows that, or they would already have submitted the app to the App Store – right now they are trying to mobilize the media against Apple rejecting Opera Mini.

I like ;)

If Apple blocks it, i hope they release for the jailbreak community

I use the beta Opera mini browser on a banged out old sony erricson phone and its fab. Glad to know my aging technology is faster than apple! ;-)

I can’t see them approving it, in the same way they refuse to have radio’s on their devices for fear of detracting from itunes..

Flash will **never** be allowed on Iphone and Ipad because developpers of stupid games/applications would not bother learning a new language and SDK and would shortcut AppleStore and approval process.

But no worries: with pure HTML 5 + javascript we can :
- do 95% of what users expect
- master the deployement
- master our product
- build one version for all phones with a browser

yeah, that´s why you´ve seen lot´s of those cases reported amomg the hundreds of millions of opera mini users

yeah, that´s why you´ve seen lot´s of those cases reported amomg the millions of opera mini users

I like the data saving angle, that’s sweet. However, it’s a cat-and-mouse game, just like we see with the energy suppliers — we find ways of saving energy and they charge us more for using less. So don’t expect the carriers to not do the same.

Almost nobody use opera-mini. But there is an over-representativity of scammers, 419, etc. using this web browser… ;)

Tron, I suspect you may not be aware of the X-Forwarded-For header:

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-mini-request-headers/

This will tell you exactly where every request is coming from. Opera Mini is not an anonymizing service.

there is no way apple will approve this app. no way what so ever.

The press release also mentioned “Opera Mobile 10 beta running on Android handsets”. Finally something more than Opera Mini 4.2 for Android phones.

I have to say that I can’t see Apple approving the app. As for the EU, I think Apple could put a good case against it because of the way Java Script could be used with in Opera.

“Almost nobody use opera-mini”

http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/24/mobile-web-usage-continues-to-explode-as-opera-mini-nears-40-million-monthly-users/

While you’re obviously free to make unsourced comments and pull facts out of thin air, I suspect you may be wrong:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-200902-2001002

http://www.opera.com/smw/

I reckon Opera might be counting with the European Union if Apple blocks Opera Mini in Europe. The EU surely would love it, they just need a push

Please Apple, see the light! You can’t keep your garden locked forever. The iPhone has grown to be a huge platform used by millions of people so you can’t claim its only yours anymore. Even with an open environment I’m sure you can keep the iPhone safe enough just as you did with Mac OS X (and even if not, come on, 90% of the users prefer to us Windows…).

Allow 3rd party installations on the iPhone and it’ll have a lot more than 140,000 apps.

I guess it’s good that you block IE as well…lots of scammers use that. Also, a few Firefox add-ons were found to be scamware. Better block it too for good measure.

Apple, unlike Microsoft, doesn’t have a market dominant position – so nope, the EU is not gonna do anything about it.

Somehow an extra 0 snuck in there. Here’s the correct URL:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-200902-201002

Windows had 90+ percent of the world’s desktop computers. Apple has, what, 10% or less of the world’s mobile phones?

It’s a different matter entirely.

Well, the FCC questioned Apple on the US for less (the google voice afaire).

You can bet if the EU finds the smallest thing they can grab to, they will use it

Apple won’t allow it to the app store, period. So unless they’re working on some HTML5 version (unlikely), nope, no Opera on the iPhone.

+1 – the first post that actually makes sense.

The html5 crowd is getting out of hand… this simply isn’t true at all.

1) HTML5+Javascript is NOT cross-platform for mobile. If it was, google, gowalla, etc. wouldn’t be releasing mobile web apps for specific phones.

2) HTML5 cannot come even close to doing the media rich stuff that flash easily does. I hate flash for the same reasons as most people, but html5 can only do basic animations with .

Couldn’t Opera release a Webkit based version of their browser just for the iPhone ? I know it’s not the same but that’s the only way I could see it being allowed into the AppStore

Really? What’s the dominant PMP brand in Europe then?

They do and they will. Opera know damn well this will be rejected. They’ll then cry to the EU like they did over IE.

The apple has allowed other browsers into the app store before, I remember looking at one, but nowhere near par with the native browser. Plus many apps have a browser built in (admittably, it is just apple’s drag’n'drop browser widgit). I hope this gets on.

The iPhone has 10-15% market share in the smartphone market. In the total mobile market, it has less than 1% or so.

The EU won’t do anything about a phone with less than 1% total market share.

What do you mean “cry to the EU”? Is reporting criminal activity the same as “crying”?

…except they are interpreted on the Opera Mini server, not on the phone…

Opera Mini’s page handling is done by a server, not in the Mini client.

- Spotify duplicates/replaces functionality, and yet it was allowed.

- Opera Mini doesn’t handle JS. The Opera Mini severs do, and then send the page almost like a static image back to the client.

Oh, and:

“right now they are trying to mobilize the media against Apple rejecting Opera Mini”

You are saying that as if it’s a bad thing ;)

HTML5+JS does work on mobile. Just because some services choose to create mobile-optimized layout doesn’t mean that mobile browsers can’t handle the full thing.

Why?

Sounds like a rather terrible idea. Opera is Presto, not WebKit. WebKit isn’t adapted to Opera’s needs. Why would one spend time adapting to a different engine when they already have one that does exactly what it’s needed to?

“The iPhone has 10-15% market share in the smartphone market. In the total mobile market, it has less than 1% or so.”

The iPod Touch is part of a product line that has 90% of the personal mobile media player market, and was judged worthy of a competition commission investigation before.

Seriously, Apple would be playing on very, very dangerous ground if they rejected this.

Would be nice I’d it had flash support and I would love to see those speed improvements they claim to have. I use safari frequently and don’t find it to be slow at all, I am on browsig the web on a phone after all.

In fact, if Opera think its browser will reach the App Store without any problem, it probably is a webkit-based browser.

What interest relative to the browser embedded natively on the iPhone, Safari? Well, according to the company, Opera Mini is six times faster than its competitor and would require ten times less data to display pages: http://bit.ly/c5Y6da

“Opera Mini doesn’t handle JS…”
So, does that mean that -for example- when I have Javascript that modifies a page’s content, (such as showing a menu) I get to “click” on the element (that declares an “onclick” attribute), the “click” request is sent to Opera’s servers, interpreted there, and the result is returned?
Does that mean that any Javascript-heavy site is sluggish in Opera Mini?

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/javascript-support-in-opera-mini-4/

First Google hit for opera mini javascript

There is no Flash support.

I assumed that Opera Mini was a full-fledged web browser, and being not based on Webkit, that its rejection was beyond reasonable doubt.

From that point of view, I saw Opera’s “Surely Apple would not disapprove that” as shameless manipulation – like “you know it won’t pass so you excite the press against Apple in advance”. And it was a bad thing because, the way I saw it, TechCrunch had taken and relayed that manipulation.

Right now, as I know more about Opera Mini, my opinion is no longer as clear-cut – maybe Opera Mini really has a chance to be approved.

What?!

What newspapers are blocked so they can sell apps? I have been able to visit every newspaper, large and small, that I have looked for in Safari on the iPhone.

Please provide a list.

Don´t think it´s going to happen. They probably won´t reject it right away, just consider approval for a reasonable amount of time like … let´s see …. 10 years or so ?

You raise a good point. I don’t think Apple would deny Opera mini based on the user agent, but, the fact that Opera mini overwrites the default user agent of a phone with something that makes the hardware or even the operating system completely unidentifiable is 100% UNacceptable. It makes me very angry.

Just another reason among thousands that Opera sucks.

Opera mini has ~10% marketshare. Not bad, but not great.

http://getclicky.com/marketshare/global/web-browsers/mobile/

Me? I’ll stick to the one that I prefer the most —Firefox will begin showing up on mobile devices at the end of this year. I got the chance to test a beta version of Firefox on a pre-release mobile device. The browser, code-named Fennec, is the closest thing yet to a real, desktop-class browser for mobiles.

Wow, its about time that Firefox shows up on our mobile-phones! More details: http://bit.ly/android-firefox-details

Where do you live that this is true?

“The iPhone has grown to be a huge platform used by millions of people so you can’t claim its only yours anymore”

And to this “(and even if not, come on, 90% of the users prefer to us Windows…)” Are you sure “prefer” is the right word? Or just that it is what they are used to and have no choice on the matter at work? Just asking.

They have posted the demo for us to try:

http://bit.ly/iphonedemo

you really do know how to make a man go moist.

If Opera uses the webkit rendering engine in the SDK it should have no trouble getting approved.

There are several webkit based 3rd party browsers on the app store already.

I forgot to say… I am in this country:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-CH-monthly-200902-201002

;)

You are totally right. But unfortunately you can trust this header only within your network. :(

Spoofing is really easy…

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5948

HTML+js are also not 100% cross-plateform in practice. It only depends on your code. Some websites work perfectly on all browsers, some not… :)

Same same.

But you are right on 1 point: for exemple, Apple blocks some functionality (upload) for commercial security reasons which may be a blocking issue.

Sean: Slightly US-centric, are we?

Clicky:
“Marketshare data is calculated from over 100 million daily page views across the 182,394 web sites that currently use Clicky Web Analytics.”

StatCounter:
“StatCounter is a web analytics service. As of 1 August 2009, our tracking code is installed on approximately 3 million sites globally.”

Anything that will help it go faster is a good thing

I think you’re getting things mixed up. I’m not talking about the User-Agent header, which tells you which browser the user is using. I’m talking about the X-Forwarded-For header, a separate header used by proxy services (such as Opera Mini) to inform the server what the user’s IP is.

There is no heaven or nightmare for anyone, a user browsing with Opera Mini is just as exposed as anyone else. You just need to make sure you’re reading the right HTTP header, blocking 40 million users based on the User-Agent header is foolish.

http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2008/06/02/3323.aspx

(Actually, the iPhone has 2.5% or slightly more market share in the worldwide cell phone market.)

http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/10/30/phone.sales.to.bounce.back.in.fall/

Sean:
Do you even know what you’re trying so hard to be angry about?

http://my.opera.com/community/openweb/idopera/

Opera/$VERSION (J2ME/MIDP; Opera Mini/$CLIENT_VERSION/$SERVER_VERSION; $LANGUAGE; U; ssr)

So presumably, an iPhone version looks something like this:

Opera/9.60 (iPhone OS; Opera Mini/4.2.13918/670; U; en) Presto/2.2.0

Furthermore, there’s the X-OperaMini-Phone-UA header, which reveals the UA of the native device client:

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-mini-request-headers/

Why would you think Opera is trying to conceal what device it’s running on, and what benefit does knowing this information bring you? You’re developing for the web, remember?

You wouldn’t want Opera to use the same User-Agent as safari because then you couldn’t customize your site for each app. That’s the whole point of those strings. And I’d imagine you can still get the hardware info you need as well if you’re trying to say sell different versions of your app or service for different phones.

what are people talking about, why would apple reject this app?

there are already over 20 web browsers in the app store for the touch and iphone (i personally own around 5 or 6).

i’m using the beta on my s60 nokia n82 it is a bunch faster the new face book is a bit slow and the chat is a bit buggy but works and it doesn’t support t9 but it really is faster even on a 80211g connection compared to old mini and native browser

I haven’t read anything about Opera Mini before, but it seems to be similar in concept to the iPhone application we are developing.

We remotely run a Firefox instance and send the display info back to the iPhone client. This approach even allows Flash and Java content to run.

“Are you checking your email?”

“No, I’m just looking at a picture of it.”

Oh wow, I can hardly wait for that!

RT
http://www.online-anonymity.cz.tc

I count at least 16 (distinct) web browsers on the US app store; I have iCab Mobile installed on my iPhone, although I rarely use it. Nearly all of the browser apps are rated 17+ simply because they’re web browsers, but at least one is marketed as kid-safe.

If Apple denies Opera, then it will have more to do with the specifics of the app or the relationship between the companies, not for merely being a web browser.

Well there is another web browser for the iphone called bolt, and it is on the itunes store, I have it installed on my iphone.

Not sure why they’d reject opera and approve that one. Everyone’s assuming that apple will reject but if anything it looks like it should be fine with them.

I’d guess that if it allowed users to install a flash plugin than it would definitely not be approved :)

Why wouldn’t they allow it? I’ve been using iCab web browser for about a year now. The tabbed browsing works awesome.

This would be a great addition to the app store. i personally find Safari to be slow on my 3Gs and would be excited to try out Opera mini at 6X the speed :)

And I agree with Sean:

“sean – February 10th, 2010 at 12:33 pm UTC
what are people talking about, why would apple reject this app?

there are already over 20 web browsers in the app store for the touch and iphone (i personally own around 5 or 6).”

Brilliant. Looking very forward to this.

And Steve, if you’re reading this, I hope you don’t fuck up here…

Nice predictions, everyone! “Status update: Opera Mini for iPhone was officially approved by Apple on April 12 at 20:56:00 UTC”

We probably wont see a rush of developers writing applications for google OS. The only apps you’ll find on it will be google apps, I can guarantee it. Google Clock, Google Scheduler, Google Maps.

Pure Cleanse