Really, if their product can't survive with Apple offering their own browser, then it had too little value to begin with.

I don't see how it marginalizes them nearly as much as IE, OmniWeb and Chimera. But I guess when you have the opportunity to use someone as a scapegoat, you have to take it.

i like how this is their "out" - not, say, that opera under mac os x is almost as bad as icab.

The bottom line is that Mac OS marketshare is tiny compared to M$. And when Apple starts to make and bundle free apps it discourages developers even more, and it leads to a lack of competition, which leads to suckier apple products.

It's hard to justify developing for a niche OS, and it's even harder to justify developing for a niche application on a niche OS.

You make an ugly, sucky, and bloated product for a platform where users demand perfection and nobody uses it? Gee Whiz! Who'da thunk it?

Let me run this through my press release translator: "We're too lazy to make a decent competitive product, so we will take our punctured and deflated ball and go home."

So long, Opera. I can guarantee your bloat and ads won't be missed.

The only reason Apple had to make a browser like Safari in the first place is because all of the others have some sort of fatal flaw that makes them non-viable on the platform.

Omniweb and iCab can't render pages.
Opera and Mozilla are too bloated.
Mac IE is too slow.
Chimera has issues with native widgets and Quartz text rendering.

What else was Apple supposed to do? This isn't a case of forcing the third party developers out of business. Apple gave the third party developers a long time to get their act together, and none of them did, especially when you consider the scene 8 months ago or so. Mac IE was obviously in a holding pattern with little work being done on it. Chimera didn't even exist.

It's obvious that Apple had no choice but to get into the browser game, for the sake of the platform itself.

My comments exactly:

http://www.geeksrus.com/archives/000151.html#000151

I find it offensive that they would take offense at Apple releasing a browser that works for their own platform. Opera has always treated mac users as third classs citizens - when they were happily coding away for platforms that already had plenty of functional browsers that worked, Mac users were still suffereing to use browers that were not fully Java compliant, standards compliant, etc. If they'd focused their efforts a little better, they could have done extremely well in this space. OmniGroup is proof of that. And their suggestion that Apple license the 'core technology' of Opera is a laffer - Oh, sure, we'd all love to have that huge buglist as the core of Safari. Forgive me for not sacrificing virgins to the Opera gods for their benevolence in bequeathing us a shitty, ad-ware browser. I am so ahamed.

Opera just plain sucks. There's no way to put it nicely. Its ugly, bloated, buggy, and too quirky.

I still believe that Opera is one of the best browsers for the Windows platform. However Opera for the Macintosh has always been ten steps behind the Windows version with no sign of achieving parity. It is and has always been a pretty bad browser, often even worse than IE or Mozilla/Netscape. Half the versions I have installed crash on start up every time. And since it doesn't render anything like its Windows sibling it isn't even worth keeping around for testing purposes. I don't know any Mac user who ever really uses it.

All I can say is that this little cry-baby routine is pretty sad.

Whether you agree or not with Microsoft's argument of browser integration, it is hard to argue that a modern OS requires a browser be bundled with it.

If Opera wanted Apple to bundle Opera with the OS maybe they should have focused on making the MacOS version of Opera suck less..

This little whine session is ridiculous and annihilates my already low opinion of Opera...

-sean

it is hard to argue that a modern OS requires a browser be bundled with it.

s/requires/does not require

In my mind Safari's precedent is much closer to MacWrite than to the browser products that have come before.

MacWrite didn't introduce the world to the "word processor". Its 1984 introduction did little to erode the grip that WordPerfect had on the market. But MacWrite ditched many of the "high end" features of its kin so that it could experiment with some very elegant and revolutionary user interface ideas. Though other app writers didn't have access to some of the underlying code, many authors pilfered the interface ideas for years to come. But by giving away a free app that offered a fair amount of functionality for the average user, that kept some of the crappier pieces of software off the market.

Ugh, can't the guy boot up Opera on a mac and see how awful it is? I used to use Opera as my primary browser when I sat at work with my windows box. It was arguably one of the better browsers. So, imagine my surprise when I downloaded the latest version of Opera for OS X to my newish iBook. Blech.

As so many others have mentioned, sour grapes from a company unwilling to look at their own incompetence. Why is that not a surprise?

The bottom line is if Opera had ever had a OS X browser out of 'technical preview' 'not working' at all for any length of time then someone on the Mac might use it.

And even then it just looked like 'a-n other browser'.

To suggest that Apple should use there rendering engine just to keep them in the game is daft. They were never in the game as a Mac browser.

I love Opera on Windows. I just downloaded verison 7. YUCK ! Suffice to say that I'm back in 6.01 again.

Opera are loosing the plot bigtime, and I'm not particularly bothered about the lack of a Mac version. Good riddance.

Well personally I think perhaps Opera feels threatened by safari.. Opera's claim to fame is it's small size that can work well on mobile devices...well Apple has perhaps just awakened a tiny Giant called khtml... with gecko (aka Fatbastard) Opera still felt they could carve a niche against the competition...but with an open source petite alternative..the writing is on the wall for them...

sssh!

Better not tell them that Microsoft make a free browser for Windows OS.

I couldn't care less if Opera dropped Mac Support. It never rendered pages correctly for me anyway. I was constantly downloading their updates only to notice that Opera wouldn't even render the homepage of my employer correctly and none of the updates ever fixed this. Safari rendered it on the first go. So what.

I liked the fact that Opera was available to so many platforms. It is like a sign to me - everyone publishes for his native platform (and possibly click'n'compile for one more OS) but there are a few that go beyond.

You know like when you head to the download page and are frightened by its length the OS' names in it you never heard ;-)

But as hard as it is: Other than that, and on the mac specifically, Opera never evne played the second role. It wasnt working right with CSS (why many browsers have trouble with css2?), it was looking oddly strange (windows/NeXT mix?) and it didn't prove to be noticable faster.

Sorry Opera guys, there's just a new star risen - on thats even talking ;-)

I'm glad this was posted as I was struck by a thought when reading it that doesn't seem to be getting much play, so I don't know if it is just my imagination.

First note how down on khtml the comments from Opera are, and then consider their business model.

Opera sells embedded rendering components to people for use in phones, televisions, other larger desktop apps etc.

Mozilla is aiming for this space with gecko but is apparantly too bloated.

Enter Apple throwing enough manpower and mindshare at khtml to make it into a credible contender and suddenly Opera has a hissy fit and tries to have its own renderer take it's place.

Perhaps Opera are worried about this:
http://www.konqueror.org/embedded.html

or some kind of cross platform WebCore/WebKit more than direct browser competition on the Mac?

I've never liked the Opera browser, on any platform. Common opinion might be that Mozilla is too bloated but Opera is just a mess.

It's never been a player on the Mac and I won't miss it.

Bunch of friggin' cry-babies.

I'm sad for Opera, really. They give a ray of hope that we can overcome IEs dominance, but who realistically expects to make money from a software package that comes free with cornflakes from every other vendor?
Apple have taken steps to stop the Mac platform becoming a taken-for-granted commodity item, but it's too late for the web browser.

Add to that the previous points people have made that Opera is indeed ugly, slow and covered in ads and it becomes hard to sympathise anymore.

Maybe Opera expected Apple to get the chequebook out and snap them up emagic-style and solve all there money woes.....

Besides the fact that Opera's engine really, truly does SUCK (anyone else tired of writing the "be nice to Opera" hacks in their CSS), this is exactly the kind of "journalism" I expect from C|Net. They've been waiting for Apple to die for years now and can't seem to get enough of goading on the Apple faithful with what amount to flamebait stories. Maybe this will finally be the year that ZDNet and all their craptacular zines bite it for good.

Opera was never a viable browser on OS X. It's just too slow. I thought that this was a mac-specific problem until I used Opera (6 not 7) on Windows. It still had the same slow crawl network access as Opera for OS X. The rendering engine was light, but it couldn't compensate and it really wasn't an elegant renderer.

I still like OmniWeb simply because of how beautifully it renders, but Safari is now my default. OmniWeb will probably go by the wayside (for me) when Safari impliments 96dpi. I have even tried Chimera after a few weeks of using Safari and can't use it. It just isn't as elegant and there isn't a speed advantage. A safari sidebar would be nice to open multiple pages (like Mail.app).

I think the article's reference to subsuming Safari into OS X is missing the point somewhat. When I bought Jaguar, IE was 'bundled' as the default web browser, much as it is on Windows. I downloaded Chimera and then changed the default.

Did the same thing (with Mozilla) on a Windows box recently. Well, sort of... IE won't relinquish its vice-like grip on file associations, on being the app that opens web links in emails, insists on providing 'jazzy' (allegedly) folder views....

Even if Safari gets bundled with OS X 10.3, people can still change it - so Opera really doesn't have much of a leg to stand on when claiming Apple forces them out of the market...

"We have contacted Apple and asked them if they want a third-party browser, and we'll see what the answer is," Tetzchner said. "They could say we want to use Opera as the core engine. If they want KHTML as a simple little browser, and also something more advanced, we would be happy to provide it."

Um, no thanks? I don't see KHTML as a "simple little browser" exactly. And I don't care how feature-rich Opera's product is, in my experiences it just doesn't deliver. Standards support is just as others said, almost as bad as iCab. Despite some CSS anomalies, Safari appears to have surpassed Opera in this department within the first public release. (hooray!)

Bitter indeed.

Jim Ray,

As a web designer, I find myself writing more hacks for IE [5.0+] than I do for Opera, and even then, the hack is to be mean to Opera 5. But then again, I develop in Opera [win] because whatever it displays bad/wrong, is usually mirrored in either IE or NS, or is the result of very bad coding.

In regards to banner ads (funny how a single ad makes the browser "littered" with them in the eyes of some of the posters here), a company that only makes a browser still has to make money. Apple, M$, and AOL have a big fat bankroll to fund "free" browsers and the open source guys do it for free because they want to.

Compare to OmniWeb's reaction: http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/omniweb-l/2003-January/009160.html

"And when Apple starts to make and bundle free apps it discourages developers even more, and it leads to a lack of competition, which leads to suckier apple products."

Total bullshit.

Why do you think Apple made iMovie? iTunes? iPhoto? Safari? Sherlock?

To crush third parties? I don't think so. I've been developing for Macs for 12 years and have never felt that Apple was making a mistake with anything from ClarisWorks or MacPaint or whatever.

They create these apps because there is no other solution. Or at least no other good solution. Apple would be monumentally stupid to rely only on third parties. They need to insure their own destiny.

If third parties want to compete, they need to offer superior value. And yes, you can offer superior value at a price vs. free (or very cheap) software. Why do you think I bought Photoshop Elements for $99 instead of GraphicConverter for $40. Because elements is better.

And don't whine about Sherlock/Watson. Watson didn't exist when Sherlock was started. Watson came to the table late in the development cycle of Sherlock and as long as they have a superior product they'll sell copies.

Well, after using Opera 6 for Windows for several years, and tweaking it to my liking, I personally think it's the best browser ever (for my needs). The only thing it lacks is intelligent pop-up blocking. It makes me mad that Opera, Inc. is handling this situation so poorly. I use Macs exclusively and I would love to have a good version of Opera for the Mac, and I would pay for it. I get the feeling that Safari (which I'm using exclusively now and I love) will never have the feature set that Opera has. I'd love to just have Opera and Safari installed on my machine, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Opera should be ashamed of themselves, especially because they cater to persons with disabilities...a point which people never seem to bring up.

To build off of what Bryan said, I've always seen what happened with the MP3 player market to show that third party solutions *can* thrive when Apple decides to get involved.

Look at MusicMatch. What did they provide that Apple didn't? I can't honestly recall anything. Thus, they perished.

Alternately, look at Audion. The biggest complaint with iTunes 1 was that there was no equalizer. Audion provided that, and a lot of people stuck with Audion because of that. Add in the skin support, the Ogg support, the internet radio broadcasting... The guys at Panic have taken what they see as the holes in iTunes and built their product to fill those gaps.

Likewise (getting back on topic), third party browsers can survive IF they fill the gaps that Safari is missing.

Because, hell, isn't all that third parties are doing to begin with is filling in the gaps that the core operating system leaves out?

All I can say is this. Boohooo. Souns like their so mad because Apple wouldn't write them a check. Why Don't they wine like this to Microsoft. They have a free broswer that's bundled with their OS. Woopdeeefrickindooo. Man, just because your hurtin for money doesn't mean Apple owes something too you. Now if you actually made a good browser on the Mac and did for many years. Then Apple appeared with a semi-good browser and bundled it into the OS so you couldn't kill it. Wait, isn't that some other operating system did. Don't see them crying about that. If you don't want to use Safari do what some people I know did. Delete the App from your hard drive. Wow....try that in windows..

Dave, I agree totally with your comment. IN fact, I made the same observation the other day: http://www.jayallen.org/journey/2003/01/#the_fat_lady_sings_for_macs_opera

All I can say is: Fine by me. That's one less browser combination I have to code for.

By the way, is there a reason you're not allowing HTML in comments or at least auto-linking URLs (both of which MT can do)?? This is the web after all, no? :-)

If you're worried about rogue HTML/javascript, Brad Choate wrote a wonderful plugin called MTSanitize that is VERY easy to use and gives you complete control over what is and is not allowed.

Goodbye, Opera. If anyone misses you I'll be surprised. You were by far the worst browser available for Mac OS X, and given iCab's terrible rendering and IE's bloat and bugs that was a huge prize.

Good riddance.

"Specifically, Tetzchner said that he had asked Apple whether it would be willing to license Opera either to replace KHTML, or to supplement the current Safari version..."

Ha!
Ha aahhaha!
ahahahahahahahaha!!

I want what THEY'RE smoking!

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it deeply ironic that Opera sought to compete first against Microsoft on its home turf, and years later, came to the Mac. MS has bundled a free browser for a long time. Opera knew that then. When Opera came to the Mac, IE was already available for the Mac. Competing against MS on either platform did not dissuade them. But when Apple releases a beta (kudos, btw, for admitting it isn't finished) browser, it's all gloom and doom.

Yes, I agree this verbiage is more "let's see what kind of excuse we can use for withdrawing from a market where we haven't been able to develop effectively."

This kinda reminds me of the now defunct BeOS (which I thought was quite cool back in the day) and how much their CEO hemmed and hawed about not being able to support PPC hardware. He was just pissed that Apple decided to go with Next, instead of Be, for the foundation of OS X. For all the posturing about not being able to support PPC hardware that came from Be, the Linux folks managed to do a bang-up job.

I can't see Opera being around much longer...but they did raise an interesting point. Would it be possible to make Opera- or Mozilla-based versions of WebCore and JavaScriptCore? Even if the user had to choose between them via the terminal or something, alternatives are always a nice thing. Omni seems to be wanting to do the opposite manuever: replace their renderer with WebCore. If they can really make a better browser - or even a better renderer - let's see them try!

Oh, and thanks for the tabbed browsing.

What a bunch of crybabies.

The first beta of Safari was better than any Opera release has ever been. And they think Apple should replace it with their crappy stuff? I don't think so.

Having many third party browsers on the Mac was a cool thing. I'm sad that Safari will kill off some of this diversity.

The developers of iCab, OmniWeb, Chimera and Opera were truly dedicated to spend so much time and effort on a very minority platform that already had given the monopoly away to a freely distributed, Microsoft backed, product with good standards compliance.

Hopefully the best thing that can come out of Apple making a web browser is learning how to share services better. My Java virtual machine can't share cookies with my webbrowser. My Notes client has absolutely brain-dead "web browsing" features added in because it doesn't interapp communicate well. The way a URL in my spreadsheet resolves can be completely different than the way my word processor resolves it.

IF Apple can make good standards and behaviors that's very cool. If I can know that I can replace Safari with Chimera or IE and see the same integrated behaviors then I'll be even happier.

[snip]"KHTML is not a bad browser," said Tetzchner. "But we believe we have a stronger product."[/snip]

Exscuse me? Stronger product? Then why is a memory leaking (1.79 GB) beta browser better at rendering pages, especially those with css-layout, than Opera 6?

Anyone remember Steve Christensen's SuperClock! for OS 6/7? Or apps like "Speed Doubler"? Or "Silk"?

All those apps used to be 'must haves'. I still have Conflict Catcher installed, but I don't need the most recent update.

OSes change and Apps that used to be required become obsolete. I'd rather that Apple kept improving their product. Opera may be making a good decision. I don't think Opera ever was much more than a promising idea on Mac OS X. I doubt that Safari is the fundemental cause of their decision, though.

Assume their direct competition is "value-added browsers that people will pay for." They're facing OmniWeb and iCab. The three of them are fighting for a share of what may arguably be a smaller pie, but if Opera wasn't last amongst those three, it would be better off.

It just doesn't have a significant value-add to it. Maybe they should add an RSS aggregator to it.

I can't remember for certain, but hasn't Macromedia been working with Opera to use their technology for the preview function inside of Dreamweaver? I'd much rather see Dreamweaver utilize KHTML using the Safari Webkit, but it still has to hurt knowing that they made this decision not that long ago.

You guys need a perspective switch.

I find it a hard pill to swallow being an Apple platform developer when I see other developers getting screwed. Opera may not be the best example, but Watson is a great one. I live in fear my day will come...

But I must say, where I do like Apples software work is in raising the bar. I sure work a lot harder to try and deliver software which meets Apples bar. That is the good side of this. The end user wins!

It's just, have a heart - think of those engineers working long hours to bring their product to the Mac. It is their baby. And you are calling them cry babies, and putting them down for being shattered. Put yourself in their shoes, try and imagine how it must feel.

And Dave Hyatt, mature blog. nice one, not.

Wow, that's rich.
Seriously, it's a playground situation which deserves a playground response.
Opera team is dancing around Apple saying 'please please please bundle our browser with your OS, pretty please with sugar on top.'
Apple says 'No, we'll roll our own, thanks.'
Opera team says 'WAAAAH WE'RE GOING TO TAKE OUR BALL AND GO HOME. NO MORE BROWSERS FOR YOU.'
If the Opera team are too softhearted to handle having competition, too freakin' bad. You act like Apple shot their puppies in the head and mounted the remains on a flagpole.

Hi Mac fans!

How many of you read the article before bashing Opera or patting Lord Hyatt's rear? I have no doubts that Safari is a great browser, or that Dave Hyatt does a lot of truly great humanitarian work, but some lines in the article really got my attention.  From reading other blog entries I have a slight hunch Hyatt doesn't even agree with half of you.  Picking out individual lines and claiming that some random stranger on the internet is your hero and shares your entire ideology is a bit of a stretch, after all.  And frankly, if I were Hyatt I'd tell you that I don't want Amway and am not interested in covert exchanges of information in dank, dark alleyways, thank you very much!

"We think Safari is one of the best and most innovative browsers in the world, and it seems our customers do too," the Mac maker said in a statement.  "No one is making Mac users choose Safari over Opera--they're doing it of their own free will--and Opera's trashing of Safari sounds like sour grapes to us."

Do you not find it strange that Apple is saying something like this?  Undignified, and downright impolite.  Sounds to me like they're encouraging you to flame Opera left and right.

But wait, that's not all!

The article is written by none other than Paul Festa, the same dude (d00d?) who pulled quotes from blogs and wrote a hideous article presenting Mozilla developers apparently bashing Mozilla and cheering on Safari.  Was this really an official Apple statement?  Or perhaps just a random employee's less-than-tactful email?  Ah, it ended with @apple.com; it must be a statement from the company! ...This is also the common fallacy of small sample, isn't it?

Were Apple's market share large enough, I think we can safely assume Opera would definitely have started improving their browser until it was as lean and mean as its Windows counterpart.  After all, there's little point in selling a product that sucks ass, and here's to guessing that there are plenty of Opera-win32 users who would like to use Opera if they were on an Apple PC...Halting Mac development of Opera is still a loss for the Apple community, no matter how horrid Opera is on the Mac at this time. Opera 7 was rewritten from scratch on win32, why wouldn't Opera 7 for the mac have been, too?

Finally, every time I hear that Mac users have a supportive community I start laughing. As a very satisfied Windows and part-time *nix user, I've always wanted to try out OS 10.x for awhile to see if I like it, but the sheer amount of bull that fanatics toss at me is rather ... intimidating. Seems to me you have to join in the taunting and name-calling of other platforms in order to fit in. I've seen my colleagues' PowerBooks, watched them do work on the things. They certainly don't look to me like they were sent from heaven to obliterate all other computers in sight, no matter how much I may like them or fondle their smooth silvery cases.

How 'bout realizing that you're only a customer of Apple, and that you probably don't have half a clue of what's best for them? Apple marketing confuses the hell out of me. Why are they trying to wow the already-fanatical, already-supportive fanbase with large quantities of hogwash, when it only alienates enthusiasts who don't have Apple systems at home?

Went on a bit of a tangent, didn't I? At any rate, I'm sad to see Opera go.

Do tell -- how is the cease of development on a crappy, ugly, bloated, slow browser a loss to the Macintosh community? We already have enough browsers -- iCab, Netscape, IE, Phoenix, Mozilla, Chimera, OmniWeb, Safari. What in the world can another crappy browser add to this landscape?

I'm sorry you don't think my blog is "mature." It was largely in response to the extremely insulting comments by Tetzchner. It's understandable to be upset over the appearance of a new rival, but it's quite another thing to publicly insult the newcomer. Compare the response from Tantek of MacIE fame to Safari, or Mike Pinkerton of Chimera (he said kudos) or Ken Case of OmniWeb. They all reacted with maturity and respect. Tetzchner acted like a spoiled child. Big difference.

You don't see Mike Pinkerton and me exchanging insults about Safari vs. Chimera, do you? Of course not. That's because we each respect the efforts of the other. Omniweb, Chimera, MacIE, Safari: they all have the same goal: making a great browser for the Mac platform.

if you were all good at being politicians, you'd be politicking professionally; but you're not, you're trying to build stuff from electrons and ideas. i wish i were smart enough to do that. if i were, i might be happy i was that smart and not worry about where in the pecking order i was. seems to me the sour grapes come from those with a high order of ability to build but a lower order of ability to make money from it... letting one spill over into the other and then letting politics get the better of them just goes to show why people should stick to what they are good at and get on with it, or admit failure and shut the f*ck up.

not to say i'm not enjoying the blog, btw!

Y'know Mike, I think you're the one missing the perspective - No offense. The first thought I had when I saw Safari was: "Crap, the guys at over at OmniGroup must be opening the window to the ledge". I felt bad for them, just as I felt bad for Watson.

But Y'know what? Opera is a bad browser. I appreciate the fact that the guys at Opera tried, but they didn't do well enough. The browser stinks. I guess I'm sorry for them that they didn't even manage to get it together, but the fact that this guy at Opera comes out and tries to basically blame Apple for it, well, it gets the responses people have given above.

It is worth remembering that the guys who work on Opera for Mac aren't the same person making the dumbass statements about Apple, so it's worth keeping that separated.

1) Opera is not a bad browser.
Yes, you can flame me for basing most of my opinion on the Windows version, but I'm confident in the Opera developers to catch up (check the opera.mac newsgroup) if their given support from their company.

2) Opera's response to Safari is childish.
Clearly, the people who run Opera are idiots in regard to the Mac platform. This does not mean that the developers are idiots. Ian's distinction in his last paragraph above is a good one to pay attention to.

The arrogance of some people in regards to software they didn't even write is astounding. I take it you people enjoy kicking starving children in the street when they ask for food (ooooh flamebait). I'm not talking about Hyatt, here, who has handled the situation well, IMO.

Opera 6 is a slow, buggy browser, but it does have the best feature set, especially for persons with disabilities. So get over yourselves and wait for a situation which we have no control over to run its course.

Re: Opera is not a bad browser

By almost anyone's definition, Opera is a bad browser on OS X. Few people want to wait for the Mac OS team at Opera to reach parity with the Windows offering, simply because nobody believes they want to achieve this. They certainly haven't displayed that much get-up-and-go so far.

Fewer people want to pay for a browser that feels like a beta release.

The promise of fixing a browser sometime in the future doesn't make it a good browser now.

Opera was ok on Windows. It may have been acceptable for Mac OS (not for me, but I respect that browsers are highly personal things).

Safari has obviously shaken things up, but Apple had a business decision to make. I personally wish they had chosen Gecko/Chimera for their default browser, but what can you do? If Opera needs to slim down their platform support to succeed, that is a business choice _they_ have to make. I think the feeling is that they didn't have to be so combatitive about it.

I've used Opera on the mac, a little. Just enough to discover I really disliked it. Which is too bad, because I know it has some worthwhile features. Opera on any platform has serious CSS rendering issues (as does Omniweb, sadly, otherwise it'd be *killer*) that force web-page authors to either jump through a bunch of "be nice to Opera" hoops or just be mean to Opera.

Interesting to note that on the same day I read this article on Opera's maybe-withdrawal from the Mac market, I discovered Phoenix for OS X.
http://www.kmgerich.com/misc.html
It's pretty rough, but it's there.

Actually, that's not quite true. The "Be nice to Opera rule" was only called such because at the time, Opera was the only browser at the time that fell into the category of supporting CSS2 selectors and the CSS box model (like Mozilla), but having the same problem as Win IE5.X parsing the voice-family hack.

Opera had much better CSS support than IE5 except for that one bug. Let's not pile on for false beliefs...

One cool thing about Opera is fullscreen support. I think it's the only Mac browser that has it. I guess we can't ever expect to see fullscreen support in an Apple-created product (besides DVD Player and QuickTime), but if they were going to make an(other) exception, I wish Safari would be it.

Ian,
Dave,
All:

To tell you the truth, I have never used Opera! :/
And I didn't really think much of the article or that guy who heads Opera. I was thinking more along the lines of the poor engineers working behind the scenes.

If you guys read my post again, you would see I said that Opera was not the best example. But it is on the same path Apple has been taking.

I have reread the cnet article, and you are right, that Opera dude was being an ass.

It just sucks he is the spokesperson for the whole company.

I'm happy to pay for a piece of software that works and works well. I paid for OmniWeb because I liked it. I now use Safari and it really doesn't bother me that my OW investment isn't being used. I got my money's worth while I used it. I tried Opera, and if it had been good, I'd have paid them to use it. It wasn't good, it sucked. So I stopped using it. If Apple starts to charge for Safari, I'll pay for that too. It's simple -- it doesn't really have anything to do with giving something away for free or charging. People will use what's best. Safari is best (for me) right now. Stop whining, Opera, and make a competitive product.

Don't fret, your OmniWeb payment hasn't gone to naught! They're going to embed WebCore (Safari's rendering engine) into OmniWeb 5.0, which means we get the speed of Safari with the features of OmniWeb! I just hope there's no upgrade price. :)

"I find it a hard pill to swallow being an Apple platform developer when I see other developers getting screwed. Opera may not be the best example, but Watson is a great one. I live in fear my day will come..."

Watson is indeed a great app. It will get better and will retain a loyal following, precisely because it is better than Sherlock 3. Furthermore, Watson's developer is a stand-up guy, who is unhappy about the situation, yet manages to complain without whining.

The Mac version of Opera, on the other hand, is NOT a great app, it's developers have a strong affinity for namecalling, and if they decide to move over to The Dell Guy's platform...Well, let's just say they know their proper audience.

As for the idea that Apple is screwing Macintosh ISVs, I don't buy it. Apple is setting a standard, just as they did with MacWrite and MacPaint. Meet or beat their standard, and you can make money and make friends.

The Mac market can't survive on half-assed software. You know that, or you wouldn't be a Mac developer. Apple is giving you superior tools on a superior platform.

Step up and do better. Apple's recent actions are forcing Microsoft's MacBU to do better. Will you do less?

Kate Bosworth renders pages better than Opera.