As any geek with an iPhone paying attention to any blog within an arms reach, you probably know by now Opera has been released as what can be considered a direct competitor to the iPhone’s native browser, Safari. And as any self respecting geek, like myself, you gave it a spin. I wanted to like it. I wanted to love it. I gave it a fair shot. I browsed. I clicked. I hated (almost) every part of it. Here are some of the key points of why I deleted Opera in under 30 minutes.
- Thanks for taking me to the mobile web before I had my iPhone.
- The rendering isn’t all that great, iPhone optimized sites are no longer optimized, scrolling is clunky and multitouch is nonexistent. Thanks.
- It’s not a browser, it’s a proxy.
- This is why Apple approved it. All the magic is done on Opera’s servers. Good idea, but it breaks https in order to properly render things remotely. So it’s great until you use a password or visit anything that needs encryption as you’re literally giving Opera everything. Thanks.
- Loss of precious screen real estate.
- The images below demonstrate a few things, but mostly the title hoarding as much as iAd eventually will. Thanks.
- It simply frustrates me when people take four steps back just to get a product out.
- I understand it. Hell, I’ve even done it before. But it doesn’t frustate me any the less. This is what I expected Safari to be when I first bought my 2G, not what it’s first competitor would be nearly 4 years later. You can search in a page, that’s cool. But not enough. Thanks.
It’s fun to see competition and hopefully this opens the doors for better innovation in this arena. However, if you want my opinion, don’t download it. And as a little ending visual, below are some screenshots of this here blog to demonstrate one last failing: I can’t even read the shit. Thanks.
