Hell has frozen over, a squadron of pigs has just flown overhead... Apple have approved the release of the Opera Mini browser on the AppStore and it is now available to install for free.
The reason this is a surprise to pretty much everyone is that Apple has previously refused any browsers which didn't use the WebKit rendering engine that Safari uses, in fact the use of non-Webkit rendering engines was previously something which would guarantee the app was rejected, so it was generally assumed Opera submitted it expecting it to be rejected, after which they would launch an online media campaign of some sort (they already had a count-up timer on their website showing how long it was since they submitted Opera Mini to the AppStore to drum-up interest).
Apple may have called their bluff though as it feels very much like the v0.9 app never intended to see the light of day despite it being called v5.0 (as that is the current version of Opera Mini on all platforms). There are a number of bugs: for instance (and quite importantly) Opera Link fails to transfer bookmarks so you have to add those manually very tediously, though it does import the speed-dial links (effectively a top-9 list of favourites). It also always sends a mobile browser string meaning you often get the stripped-down mobile version of websites you visit, unless the site offers an alternative link to force the desktop version to be displayed instead (which can mean changing the bookmark). Zooming is limited to a fixed two-option fully-in or fully-out (unreadable whole-width preview), unlike the far more intuitive and superior smooth any-zoom level of Safari.
Having said that, it loads websites much quicker even on WiFi as much of the work is being done on Opera's servers, so as well as cutting down on network traffic, it is presumably also cutting down on battery usage when loading sites.
One to watch, and hopefully an update fixing the main problems is on its way, as if the above problems were fixed, Opera Mini could well be a superior alternative to Safari (at present I feel it isn't, despite my using Opera as my preferred desktop browser).
The reason this is a surprise to pretty much everyone is that Apple has previously refused any browsers which didn't use the WebKit rendering engine that Safari uses, in fact the use of non-Webkit rendering engines was previously something which would guarantee the app was rejected, so it was generally assumed Opera submitted it expecting it to be rejected, after which they would launch an online media campaign of some sort (they already had a count-up timer on their website showing how long it was since they submitted Opera Mini to the AppStore to drum-up interest).
Apple may have called their bluff though as it feels very much like the v0.9 app never intended to see the light of day despite it being called v5.0 (as that is the current version of Opera Mini on all platforms). There are a number of bugs: for instance (and quite importantly) Opera Link fails to transfer bookmarks so you have to add those manually very tediously, though it does import the speed-dial links (effectively a top-9 list of favourites). It also always sends a mobile browser string meaning you often get the stripped-down mobile version of websites you visit, unless the site offers an alternative link to force the desktop version to be displayed instead (which can mean changing the bookmark). Zooming is limited to a fixed two-option fully-in or fully-out (unreadable whole-width preview), unlike the far more intuitive and superior smooth any-zoom level of Safari.
Having said that, it loads websites much quicker even on WiFi as much of the work is being done on Opera's servers, so as well as cutting down on network traffic, it is presumably also cutting down on battery usage when loading sites.
One to watch, and hopefully an update fixing the main problems is on its way, as if the above problems were fixed, Opera Mini could well be a superior alternative to Safari (at present I feel it isn't, despite my using Opera as my preferred desktop browser).