Apple's success with the iPhone hasn't seemed to dampen its enthusiasm from keeping all other companies away from its precious device, as it has apparently rejected the Opera browser from its App Store.
Opera CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner told the NY Times in a recent interview that Opera's engineers have developed a browser capable of running on the iPhone, but Apple won't let the App be released as it competes with Safari Mobile.
Protective
It seems strange that Apple would be so protective over a certain aspect of the handset. It happily lets multimedia playing applications through the App Store, even though the iPhone is so heavily built on the iPod structure.
Perhaps this is Apple's way of keeping its powder dry until the Mobile version of Firefox releases? Many within the industry believe the new browser is going to be pretty good, and although Safari Mobile is still one of the best ways to get the internet on your handset, the Mozilla effort could be the one mobile phone users are clamouring for in the next year.
Or maybe Apple just doesn't want to play with any of the other kids... seems equally plausible really.
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d.evans
November 2nd 2008
2. While I never used the mobile opera browser, I have just acquired some experience with the PC version of opera 9.61. and it's slick. I am doing some web page project development and as such I am viewing the project in different browsers Firefox(in the Linux operating system Environment and Vista operating system Environment) , Konqueror, Links, Opera and IE. Opera 9.61 tops my list of best of the browsers, its JavaScript engine is fast, it initializes faster than Firefox, altho I have a plethora of ad dons installed in Firefox, firebug, DOM inspector, Elasticfox, Webdeveloper, etc. Opera 9.61 also has the ability to sync with Opera mini, and lets face fact Apple knows that the mini browser war is a war that is fought on two fronts, mainly the web browsing on a mobile device and web browsing on a PC and then syncing of links, browsing history, remembering of passwords, etc between a PC and the mobile device. Apple rejection of Opera mobile is not surprising when you consider that Apple probably just drawing a line in the sand in anticipation for a more difficult fight with the Mozilla development team and their third party add on development allies.
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jmace86
November 1st 2008
1. It is a little odd that Apple will not allow the Opera browser to be released for the iPhone. Apple do not gain anything from having people use the Safari browser on the iPhone over any other browser, as it is not a browser that you pay for, it simply comes with the phone.
I am not hugely disappointed as I have never used an Opera browser before, but it does seem peculiar that Apple will not allow their users to have a choice about which browser they use with their iPhones.
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