Opera giving up on the Mac?
News.com has a story tonight saying that Opera may cancel its web browser for the Mac now that Apple has released Safari.
I don’t understand why Safari’s entrance into the market makes much of a difference for Opera. The News.com article essentially says that Opera doesn’t think its browser can compete with a free web browser that’s bundled with the operating system. But Mac OS X 10.2 already has a free web browser that’s bundled with the OS — Internet Explorer. It’s true that IE is really showing its age on the Mac, but Opera shipped its first release for the Mac before Mac OS X shipped, competing against what was then a best-of-breed IE 5 on Mac OS 9.
The only way in which Safari is different now from how IE was then is that it’s an Apple product and not a Microsoft one. That’s not much of a difference, though. And as the competitive browser market on Mac OS X has shown, it’s all but impossible to write a browser that’s perfect for everyone. The Omni Group believes that there’s still a market for a pro-quality commercial browser on Mac OS X. I hope the Opera folks will come to the same conclusion once they realize that today’s market isn’t very different from the one they entered a few years ago.
Steve Roy Said,
January 28, 2003 @ 5:53 am
The part I find the most twisted is that the article mentions that Opera feel they can’t compete with Apple but yet just the day before, Opera released a completely rewritten version of their browser for Windows, where there is clearly an even bigger hardship with IE being tightly bundled with Windows. I don’t see how this is different than for the Mac OS… Oh wait, I forgot. Market share…
Michael Tsai's Weblog Said,
January 28, 2003 @ 11:27 am
Opera and Safari
Chuq Von Rospach and Eric Albert are Apple guys, so they’re not impartial, but their thoughts on the News.com Opera article are dead-on. To me, what’s important about the article is that it’s a reminder of how much most tech journali…
verture.net Said,
February 13, 2003 @ 5:46 am
Nuff said!
Lidt interessante og velargumenterede artikler om hele “Opera stopper mac udvikling”-affæren, der på fineste dækker min holdning til den måde Opera har opført sig på: John Gruber - Operatic Dave Hyatt - A Night Away From t…