Opera had previously announced that it had submitted its browser to the App Store for approval back on March 23rd, in an effort to drum up support for its inclusion in the App Store. Back then, many suspected it would likely be rejected on the basis of it duplicating built-in functionality on the iPhone, namely the included Safari web browser. (Though some questioned this analysis)

Whatever the reason, this comes as a surprise to many, especially given Apple’s most recent behaviour towards potential competitors and development on the iPhone in general. Nonetheless, let’s give Opera Mini for iPhone a quick test drive!

The Opera Mini advantage

To begin, it’s worthwhile to understand that Opera Mini is not a regular web browser, in that it does not make direct connections to websites to retrieve their content, unlike Safari on the iPhone or any other desktop web browser. Instead, all requests are handed through a proxy server that Opera controls. This proxy server retrieves the remote web page, reformats the content for better display on a mobile screen and finally compressed for delivery to the end device. The format used is Opera’s own, called OBML, and furthermore the pages need not be delivered to your device over HTTP. (More information on this Opera Mini infrastructure is available here.)

Ostensibly, all of this work is done to improve the mobile browsing experience in at least two ways. Firstly, the size of each webpage is reduced, thus speeding load times. Secondly, the content is reformatted by Opera’s servers to allow for mobiles to better display content that was only designed with computer monitors in mind.

These features certainly made sense for a phone like the Samsung M510, my first mobile. But what about the iPhone 3GS and its larger, high-quality screen and faster HSDPA access speeds? In this case, are these optimizations even needed or helpful?

The iPhone Experience

The Opera Mini browser has the same general UI layout as Mobile Safari, which is unsurprisingly given the smaller real-estate of mobile screens – there are only so many UI configurations for a web browser on such a space and even fewer potential effective ones. There’s the address bar up top, with a web search field in the upper right corner. The list of search engines is also configurable. Standard browser buttons such as back/forward, reload and tabs are at the bottom of the screen.

When opening Opera Mini the previous state of the app is restored, so the current page you’re on as well as any open tabs you had when you closed the browser remain. This was pretty much expected – anything less would be a huge mark against the app. Opera Mini has a unique tab switcher, one that’s arguably better than Safari’s. When activated, it allows you see to quite a few more tabs than Safari, which just shows you the previous and next. Switching between them is pretty easy, as is opening a new tab.

When opening a new tab, the default page is Opera’s “Speed Dial” feature, something a heck of a lot more useful than the blank tab Safari gives you. It’s easy to configure what pages show up here.

Reading webpages with Opera Mini

The standard tasks of scrolling and zooming were okay, though there are some differences from Safari. In particular, it didn’t appear possible to click a link based on “small” text without zooming into the appropriate section; zooming is also accomplished with a single-tap, not a double-tap. I suspect the two changes go hand-in-hand. This is actually a decrease in functionality from Safari – Safari had some pretty good detection for helping you click smaller links with fat fingers without having to resort to zooming in on the area. Opera now forces the issue.

Opera also implements double-tap to zoom out. But it’s a bit more sensitive as to exactly what constitutes a “double-tap”. In Safari, you don’t have to double-tap exactly in the same spot in order to trigger the zoom out action. Opera Mini seems to be a bit more sensitive to exactly where you double-tap before it zooms out. This impairs usability somewhat.

Selecting text was straightforward; simply tap and hold a section and you can select text using a resizable box. The text can then be copied or used to search.

Other features

Because Opera Mini was going through a proxy server and dynamically reformatting the content before passing it to your device, I had some worries that websites would not properly detect the user-agent of the iPhone and thus would not redirect to iPhone-specific sites. But during my testing, thankfully this was not the case. Most redirected properly to their mobile versions, if available.

Opera Mini also two other features of note: Full screen and Mobile view. Full screen (see below for The Globe and Mail’s website) simply removes the bottom bar and gives you only the minimum amount of browser UI you’d need, saving you a little more space for the actual website.

Mobile view, which is far less useful, causes Opera Mini to reformat the entire website to “fit” the layout of the screen, rather than just text. I use quotes with the term “fit”, because the reformatting of Mobile view is in general, quite awful and results in a mangled look. Perhaps it made sense to do this kind of reformatting on the extremely small screens of older mobiles, but it simply makes no sense on the iPhone. You can see the results of this by comparing the CBC News website in normal versus mobile rending mode below.

Comparison with Safari

The real question, however, is how does Opera Mini compare with Mobile Safari? After all, this is its main and perhaps only competition it faces on the iPhone, and furthermore Safari is entrenched with most users simply because of its strong tie-in with the iPhone platform. If Opera Mini hopes to win any market share, it can’t just be as good as Safari – it has to be a lot better so people will switch.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. In my opinion, Opera Mini is actually behind Mobile Safari in many areas. Furthermore, the main benefits of Opera Mini actually don’t matter that much on the iPhone.

Opera Mini uses its proxy server setup in order to speed access by compressing pages before they’re sent to your device. During testing, this benefit was minimal over 3G or Wi-Fi networks and in fact Opera Mini may have been slower in some cases due to the delay induced by having to wait for page compression on Opera’s servers. To be fair, Opera focuses on the comparative speed advantage on 2G/EDGE data networks, so if you’re in that situation it may have some real benefit.

But even considering this, the entire model that Opera Mini uses completely breaks end-to-end security, so accessing HTTPS sites no longer guarantees confidentiality unless you completely trust Opera and trust that Opera’s servers won’t be compromised.

But these might be implementation details – what do they matter? Unfortunately, the end user experience also suffers in the way text is rendered and formatted by Opera Mini. See the comparison of Engadget’s site below in Opera Mini and Mobile Safari:

At the fully-zoomed out level, all text is basically unreadable in Opera Mini, while in Safari this is not the case. Some images also looked aliased, owing to Opera’s compression of the page.

Even zooming in, we can see some differences. Firstly, Opera Mini seemingly switches the rendering of the website-specified font to a sans-serif one, while Safari maintains the actual font for the text. Safari also keep the original layout, allowing the text to flow around the image and still be readable. Opera Mini seems to just reformat the text to fit the width of the screen without regard for maintaining the overall layout of the site. In this respect, Safari better preserves the original look and feel.

But perhaps the biggest hit against Opera Mini is its lack of fully supporting JavaScript. This is again due to the proxy model it is using. Because of this, the functionality of web applications is severely impaired or even blocked. Meanwhile, Safari is a fully-featured browser supporting Ajax techniques and even subsets of HTML5. These differences are most apparent when looking at how Gmail renders in each browser:

Opera Mini cause Gmail to step down to a primitive version, something you’d expect to see on older mobiles. Safari, however, has access to an iPhone-optimized version of the web application, which Google has been available for some time, is being constantly improved and arguably better than the built-in Mail app.

The fact that Safari works so well for the web should be no surprise, since Apple’s original plan was for their WebKit browser to be the only “SDK” for the iPhone. That is, web applications would be the way developers would make apps for the iPhone – no App Store involved. With this in mind, Apple engineers put a lot of work in to Safari to make sure it would not only be a good web browser, but one that would be able to run the future of web applications, and look good doing so.

Because of this, Opera Mini had a formidable opponent to go up against. The fact that it couldn’t beat it is not a reflection of Opera’s ability, but more a reflection of the time Apple spent on Mobile Safari.

Conclusion

I may have seemed a bit harsh and some of the criticism of Opera Mini may have been unwarranted. After all, it’s a free download, so can you really complain? I just don’t think I’ll be using it to replace Safari any time soon and that its current popularity is simply a result of the drama played out in the App Store and exaggerated by blogs.

I’m a bit of an information pack rat. When I have an idea or something I need to keep track of, I have an immediate need to write it down or record it. In the past this has resulted in an assortment of post-it notes, notebooks or even loose papers lying around my desk, all used to document my thoughts. Eventually, I tried to move my note-taking over to the PC in an attempt to make it easier to manage, but over time the notes became spread over a variety of formats and storage mediums, from text files on my local PC to online services such as Google Calendar and Dropbox.

This sort of digital storage Balkanization was becoming a nightmare to manage and effectively neutralizing any benefit from taking notes, since finding and keeping track of what I’d written down was becoming a chore by itself. Clearly, a unified solution was needed. Ever since I got my iPhone last year, I’d been looking for an app or service that would allow me to easily keep track of todo and shopping lists (what most of my notes amounted to), while storing the the data online so that it could be synced or updated from my PC as well.

I think I’ve finally found that with Awesome Note.

What I was looking for

As mentioned, I love keeping lists. So what I needed was an app that could allow me to easily keep track of lists as well as allow me to backup or sync the underlying data in such a way that I could also work with the lists on my PC or online. The built-in Notes app didn’t meet my needs because you could only sync it with certain supported software, such as Outlook, which I didn’t use or care to use at home.

Browsing through the App Store was almost an exercise in futility. Trying to find a decent note-taking app (or any app, for that matter) is a time-consuming activity; I didn’t want to shell out any money without being able to first try the app out, so many apps were immediately ruled out.

The first one I tried was one aptly named Lists. While it was functional and had support for lists and lists-within-lists, it was buggy and the UI left a lot to be desired. The next one I tried was Evernote’s app; while Evernote is a nice service, the iPhone app left a lot to be desired. While the web application or the PC software allowed you to take all sorts of notes, only basic editing functionality was available on the app, and it was suited for a more general note-taking approach rather than one for lists and the like.

I stumbled upon the free version of Awesome Note soon after, which thankfully was fully-featured but limited you to only a few notes. Nonetheless, I was immediately impressed.

Just felt right

Right off the bat, I was impressed by how easy it was to create a list and add items. When creating an item, you can use the “quick-add” functionality that allows you to nicely add a new item while staying on the same screen; if necessary you can later add a longer description on a separate screen. Furthermore, it’s easy to sort items by date, name or priority; more importantly, there’s a robust search function as well. Swipe-to-delete functionality is also nicely handled.

You can create multiple folders, each to store separate items, for example, a shopping list and a todo list. Each folder has its own view options, either thumbnail, lists or todo view, store separately so you can sort through different lists in different ways, each remembered by the app. Furthermore, it’s easy to convert an item to a todo item; you simply tap a box next to an item to change its state from done/not done and there’s no need to navigate complicated setup screens to change this.

There’s also a “Quick Memo” feature, which gives you a notepad to quickly jot down ideas that you can later convert into a fully-fledged note or item. It basically replicates the functionality of the built-in Notes app, all while providing some other nice features such as adjustable fonts, just like the rest of the app.

Furthermore, the UI was very polished; each folder can be identified by colour and an icon of your choosing. A nice assortment of these icons/backgrounds is provided, all of them looking great. In short, everything looks very well refined and well thought out, making list and note management very easy.

But most importantly, the sync worked great out of the box. I tied it to my Evernote account, and as a result I now have the unified access to my notes that I so badly wanted. I’d previously used Dropbox or even my own SVN server to get some semblance of cloud-based storage and access to my notes, but but neither was sufficient to properly work with my iPhone. Awesome Note now provides that functionality, with a great UI/front-end making list/note management a breeze.

I strongly recommend giving it a try if you find yourself using your iPhone/iPod Touch to take notes.

Well, I finally gave in and joined the cult of iPhone. At the beginning of this month, I decided to splurge and get an iPhone through Fido, Rogers discount brand. Why? I suppose it had something to do with the extension of the 6GB/$30 “promotion” or the fact that I was able to find a 3GS for sale locally, but mostly it had to do with the fact that I needed a new toy. (Note that the iPhone is hardly a novelty item, with >21 million of them out there)

Keep in mind that I didn’t have a mobile phone until late 2007, and even then I decided to only go with a prepaid provider (Virgin Mobile) because I didn’t have much of a need for a phone, but really just wanted Internet access. However, this past summer my phone got more use than usual, especially with regard to Internet access. With Internet browsing being anemic on most non-smartphones, I decided it was time to upgrade.

I narrowed my choices down to two: Either the Palm Pre or the iPhone 3GS. However, I wasn’t very pleased with what plans Bell had to offer and wasn’t sure if the Pre developer ecosystem (and thus the applications available) would turn out to be as varied as the iPhone. So, I decided to join the cult.

Another reason that led me down this path was the fact that I already had an iPod Touch from earlier in the year, and so I was already used to the iPhone interface. (I’ve since sold the Touch) And yes, I do realize in that very article I berated the monthly cost of the iPhone only to now end up doing a complete 180 on the situation. It’s not that I’m happy with what I’m paying, but rather that I’m willing to suck it up. Such is the power of the cult, and perhaps one of the reasons for the iPod Touch’s existence – to suck users into getting an iPhone. After all, Steve Jobs did describe it as “training wheels for the iPhone”, but perhaps “gateway drug to the iPhone” would be more accurate.

Fido actually had some okay plans; okay for Canada that is. In the end, I’m paying just about $80 CAD a month. (including taxes) It’s about $50 more than I was paying for my old phone, which is quite a bit, but the iPhone has been invaluable in the intervening period after moving where I didn’t have Internet access at home. We’ll see if it doesn’t lose its appeal in the coming months.

In the meantime, however, it’s been a blast. There are literally too many apps out there to try, so I’ve only had a chance to play with the more popular ones. Some of my favourites include the AllRecipies dinner spinner, Wikipanion, Restaurantica (which I’m surprised isn’t promoted more on their website), and of course, Shazam, the accuracy of which continues to amaze me!

But the most useful features for me have been the always-available easy-to-use Internet access and the access to Google Maps overlaid with GPS. It’s been invaluable, especially after moving to a new city. Without it, I’d literally have been lost more than once.

Despite all the positive features, there are still some sore points. Firstly, battery life on the 3GS is atrocious, as reports have indicated. On a full charge, I can barely last two days with moderate data usage, some music playback and hardly any YouTube/video usage. Be prepared for the daily recharge should you get this phone.

Additionally, being an Apple product the iPhone looks very attractive but is a dirt/dust/fingerprint magnet. Even with the new oleophobic coating (fancy word for anti-fingerprint) you’ll still probably want to get a screen protector and case for this device. I’ve opted for the Speck PixelSkin, which I believe is one of the better cases out there, as it’s tough, rigid and adds a nice grip to the iPhone.

Lastly, there are no good default ringtones supplied with the iPhone! I don’t need some fancy pop-music ringtone, I just want something that sounds normal. Thankfully, a coworker directed me to the perfect iPhone ringtone, and I’ve since been happy with it.

I’ll leave you with some comparison pictures of the iPhone 3GS and the iPod Touch 2nd generation.

I finally bit the bullet and got an iPod Touch 16 GB, after months of telling myself I shouldn’t. And yes, I’m thoroughly enjoying my new toy. So why did I get an iPod Touch when I could have just got an iPhone for the same upfront cost? A few reasons:

• I don’t use my cellphone a lot. In fact, I’m on a pay-as-you-go plan with Virgin Mobile since my cellphone is basically for emergency situations. I still don’t like cellphones all that much.
• I don’t want to pay the exorbitant monthly fees that carriers in Canada charge to use the iPhone. Basically, the minimum monthly cost is $60, but this does not include the “System Access Fee” or essentials such as Caller ID, and adding those brings the total to over $80/month without taxes

I don’t want to turn this into a huge iPhone vs. iPod Touch debate, so let’s just say I don’t have the cash for an iPhone subscription at present. Anyway, here’s a few pictures from the unboxing. Enjoy!

Wait a minute!

Now, some of you will know that I’m no fan of Apple fanboys, (or fanboys in general), but Apple does get it right when it comes to usability – people generally find Macs easier to use, and more intuitive. While their current line of commercials (“Hello, I’m a Mac…”) may be annoying, they are in general correct for the majority of users who just want to “get things done”. This can be further seen in the success of the iPod – its control interface is second to none.

What’s wrong with the UI in Windows?

There’s nothing wrong with the UI in Windows – it works just fine for me, and I don’t find that it gets in the way when I’m trying to get things done. But, for some people, such things aren’t so intuitive, perhaps because they don’t live and breath computers like I do.

The quick launch bar that comes with Windows is okay, and so is the Start Menu – but an application Dock is bigger, more visible and thus is quicker to use for the average user, such as my Mom. (Though some would disagree)

The choices

It turns out there’s a lot of other people who also want a Dock like Apple’s in Windows, since there are a plethora of programs out there that accomplish this. The top three I found were MobyDock, RocketDock and Y’z Dock. I only had time to try out the first two, and there were many more that I didn’t bother to look at, but I was impressed.

Both programs support easy drag and drop operations, so you can add programs to the dock simply by dragging an existing shortcut onto it; removing the icons from the dock is just as easy. They can also be positioned virtually anywhere on the screen, with offsets from top/bottom/left/right being allowed. They also feature the nice “zoom” animations as featured on Apple’s version, and have a small memory footprint.

They’re also devoid of any confusing jumble of messy configuration dialogs – the settings pages are very simple and straightforward, and the apps “just work”, so you probably won’t need to even touch the configuration pages. This is the way software should work, at least software intended to be used by the masses. Too often, software comes with too many options pages, making configuration both confusing and tedious. Usability testing should be done to find out what’s intuitive, instead of making a bunch of cryptic settings.

Out of the two, MobyDock probably offered more features than RocketDock, offering built-in widgets for Weather, Screenshots and a Clock. However, it also seemed to be a bit buggy, as it crashed a few times, so I’ll be using RocketDock since it’s for the parents’ computer, and they don’t need to deal with that. MobyDock also seems to have stalled in development, with the latest version being put out way back on November 18th, 2003 – by contrast RocketDock still appears to be continually updated.

Kudos to the developers of these programs for not only making a useful piece of software, but also for making them freely availabe.

Before we begin…

Let just say, firstly, that I have no ill feelings toward Apple or any of their users. I don’t personally own a Mac, and my total time usage of Macs during the past few years is probably somewhere in the lower double-digits in terms of hours. However, I don’t think that Macs are “inferior”, nor do I think that PCs are necessarily superior. I have, however, found it interesting how Macs are very popular among those in graphic design or similar industries and believe Apple has done a lot to make computing more friendly to the masses. Additionally, it has been the many Mac users who are the designers and developers who have done a lot to make the web more friendly and usable.

However, I have found that certain Apple users tend to be very hardcore about the ages-old Mac vs. PC debate, almost to the point of zealotry. Some of these people hate Windows, it seems, and argue with a zest that is second only to political and religious debates. This is entirely beyond me – but perhaps that’s because the debate goes back to before I started using the Internet. However, in general, I’ve not seen PC users debate with the same vigour. Some will say this is because Macs are so good that their owners learn to really love them rather than pull their hair out over some problem with Windows; or perhaps many Mac users have “converted” over after experiencing this with Windows.

If you make it, they will buy

However, while I could understand defending one’s choice in computers, I’ll never understand some Apple user’s pure fanaticism for anything the company releases. I am, of course, referring to some of the mice Apple releases. I won’t bother to talk about the hockey puck that once came with the iMac (even Apple users agreed that it sucked), but rather focus on more recent releases, such as today’s Wireless Mighty Mouse. Featuring laser tracking and Bluetooth connectivity, it’s certainly no slouch when it comes to technology; however, this is neither first nor only mouse to offer these options. Logitech has had a cordless laser desktop combo for Mac for sometime, a Bluetooth mouse, and their first laser and cordless mouse was released almost 2 years ago.

But, you need only to read the comments in the Engadget article to find Apple fanboys (and I use this term very specifically, not to mean all Mac users) rigorously defending against every fact thrown their way. Other wireless mice before this one? Wait, those weren’t truly wireless because you had to plug in a receiver to the back of the PC! The Mighty Mouse doesn’t require that because it uses Bluetooth! You’ll never have to lug around a heavy, 10-gram USB micro-receiver anymore! I bet you Mighty Mouse users are laughing their heads off at all the losers who are going to tire themselves out doing that.

Nevermind that there is already a Bluetooth mouse out there that doesn’t require a receiver – but hey, it wasn’t made by Apple, and hence, doesn’t have the official blessing – thus it’s not worthy of such a coronation like the Mighty Mouse.

What about the high price? Nevermind that either. Since Apple is apparently comparable to the likes of “Louis Vuitton, Gucci, or Ferrari”, you should be happily forking over your hard-earned dough to Apple, confident that it’s going to pay their workers to continue making such a fine product of pure design.

And, you have got to love this review:

I just got the mouse yesterday. I love it! I wouldn’t exactly say that it’s worth every penny… but if your able to afford a mac in general, then your probably willing enough to fork up the cash for their random accessories as well.

I find that the right click doesn’t always work perfect, but overall it’s pretty sweet.

Who cares that right click doesn’t work – it doesn’t have to, since it’s made by Apple. Also, who cares about all the other mice out there that have many more additional buttons – what can you possible use them for, besides back/forward, switching applications, volume up/down, or the many other additional functions they could do in games. That’s such a small list the idea of more buttons doesn’t even make sense.

Back to reality…

With some of the comments over there, you’d think that these supposed fanboys were agent provacateurs, planted by the anti-Apple movement in order to weaken or undermine the Apple position. After all, some of the statements were fairly over-the-top.

I was never sold on the original Mighty Mouse, and I don’t think I ever will be. The idea of the whole mouse being a button is just too weird, (and not in a good, “Think Different” kind of way) and as you can see above, it creates usability issues. I’m all for good design, but I think the Mighty Mouse places too much emphasis on this over functionality – and I don’t think the Mighty Mouse looks that great. It will, however, sell just as good as the original did, and maybe more, since it is better than the original after all.

I don’t think the new Mighty Mouse is a bad mouse; I just think that there’s already better options out there. However, as I mentioned, I don’t use Macs, so my opinion may be considered by some to be completely invalid, and, that’s okay with me.

And, I don’t think Apple is a bad company. Though I linked to their story above about the conditions in an iPod factory, Apple is not the only company doing this. The fact is, many companies contract out manufacturing jobs to companies in China, which are the ones who own and operates these factories with poor working conditions. Apple is far from the only company that may engage in this activity. In fact, I think Apple has done a lot of good things such as making the iPods, and the iTunes website, and I think they’ve been a good balance against the juggernaut that is Microsoft in the desktop OS arena.

And lastly, I don’t dislike Mac users at all. I dislike the opinions of fanboys who seemingly praise everything that goes with their line of thinking and criticize anything that dares to deviate. Fanboys exist in the PC world too, and are perhaps even more vehement.