Yes, mentioning Apple’s spectacular comeback in the 00′s makes the present situation seem even more surprising. Steve complaining about the media? Apple losing legal battles? How did we get here? And more importantly, what can Apple do about it?

Well, first of all, Apple and Google, stop being babies and burry the hatchet. You two were forming one of the most beautiful alliances in the tech industry. Don’t you remember the “uuhhs” and “aahs” in the audience, when Steve Jobs, during his first iPhone keynote, was showing off Google Maps on the touch interface? Let Apple distribute media, and let Google find it, there’s no need for wars. Android is a nice mobile OS, and even if it does not really threaten iOS, a little competition won’t hurt. Google and Apple can still be friends.

Apple should also surprise us again. The iPad is great, and will probably blossom into a full laptop replacement one day or another, but it’s not revolutionary. The concept has been around for ages, and people were expecting Apple to launch it.
I’m talking about something like the iPod. A life-changing device. Something that has the potential to revolutionize an industry. Again.

Keep prices high. I hate to say this, especially as a student, but there are a couple of good reasons to do it.
First, Apple needs to remain the tech underdog. Doesn’t matter if they make billions, a Mac has to remain a rarity, a premium product.
Second, a low market share is the best antivirus there is. As a Mac user, I fear the day when the first big Mac virus will infect millions of unprotected Macs. Not to mention all the goodies a cash surplus will allow them to spoil us with.

Tighten corporate security. The whole iPhone 4 drama spoiled the launch for us. Even though hype may boost sales at first, on the long run, it will only create a lack of interest in Apple’s products. So Apple, lock everything down, create your own CIA, but please, don’t let this happen again.

Do not even think about the ads business. Not only is this Google’s territory, but nobody likes ads. While introducing iOS 4, Steve Jobs spent a fair ammount of time talking about Apple’s new iAd, and to be honest, I was appalled. Since when are ads a feature of an OS? Ads are there to provide financial means of sustainability without having to charge the customer, and they should not become the center of gravity of an operating system. This is especially true in Apple’s case, where the share of payware apps is higher than in other online app-stores, and where customers pay a not-so negligible premium for their products. So please, Apple, don’t put ads in OSX.

Steve Jobs should also stop responding to every email he gets. It’s cute and all, the big-shot CEO taking care of customers in person, but the problem is that emails can be faked. Even when they are not, they’re just too easy to quote out of context.

One more thing: put some friggin’ bluray drives in Macs. It’s a stable, proven, and lucrative tech. Those magnificent Cinema displays are in dire need of good cinema.

Finally and above all, Apple should stay Apple. A dynamic tech company, creating revolutionary products, focusing on excellence and quality. Some people don’t need free software. Some people need the best software. And when it comes to that, Apple delivers, and will hopefully continue to do so.

Contact the author via mail

We would therefore like to officially launch our giveaway of 5 Apple iPads. That’s right, five iPads.

All you have to do is follow @TechHaze on Twitter, tweet “I entered the @TechHaze 5 #iPad #giveaway: http://wp.me/pI0wx-ET retweet and follow @TechHaze“ and as soon as we reach 100,000 followers, 5 of you will be randomly chosen.

Here are our official rules:

• You must be following @TechHaze on twitter when we reach the 100,000 goal.
• You must have at least one tweet containing “I entered the @TechHaze 5 #iPad #giveaway: http://wp.me/pI0wx-ET retweet and follow @TechHaze” before we reach the 100,000 goal.
• The winners will be randomly selected and notified by a direct twitter message originating from the @TechHaze twitter account.
• As soon as the winners are notified, they’ll have a 48 hours to reply to our message. If no answer is received after 48 hours, we’ll randomly select another winner amongst our followers.
• You must not live in a country under U.S. embargo: Union of Myanmar (Burma), Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Iran, Sudan and Syria.
• You may only use one Twitter account per physical person.
• You must be at least 16 of age when we reach the 100,000 goal.
• The prize is one of ten 16GB Wifi Apple iPads per winner. We will ship the iPad or email the US Dollar value equivalent (the winners may be required to have or setup a valid paypal account to receive cash equivalent). The winner is responsible for any and all fees associated with activating and using the iPad. The winner is responsible for any taxes associated with receipt of the iPad. We reserves the right to substitute the prize with another prize of equal or greater US Dollar value if the iPad is not available for any reason.
• By participating in this giveaway, entrants agree to release and hold TechhHaze harmless from and against any claim or cause of action arising out of participation in the giveaway.

And that’s it! Again, all you need to do is follow us on twitter and tweet “I entered the @TechHaze 5 iPad giveway: http://wp.me/pI0wx-ET retweet and follow @TechHaze” at least once before we reach our goal. This way, you get the chance of winning an iPad and you promote our blog at the same time! Don’t forget, the more you tweet about this giveaway, the faster we’ll reach our goal, and the faster you’ll receive your iPad.

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Edit: contest is closed. See this post for more details.

Interface and design

The first thing you’ll notice after Opera has started is the speed dial – a signature function feature on the desktop version as well. The speed dial is basically a screen with 9 icons on it, each one of these representing a user specified website. The icons are filled with a screenshot of the website, but the results can be a little off: in TechHaze’s case, only the “aze” of haze was visible, and there’s no option to resize or change the icon.
On top of the screen is the navigation bar, in which you can type an URL. The bar remembers your previous trips on the net and also displays the websites you’ve saved on the speed dial, which is a great time saver. On the right is a search box in which you can specify the search service. Included are Google, Dictionary.com, eBay, IMDb and wikipedia. You can manage the search engines, but there’s only an option to remove some, not add them.
Right below is an other, rather irritating input box, “Recommend to a friend”. I did try to recommend to a friend to see if the box would then disappear, but it does not. This isn’t a good thing, as every pixel on the small iPhone screen counts.

On the bottom are five icons: two arrows for back and forward during browsing (one of which transforms into a zoom out button in case you’ve pinched and zoomed into a page), a reload button, a setting button, and a tab button. That’s right, Opera handles tabs. Not in the same way a desktop browser would, but it does a fairly good job at showing you the webpages you’re browsing on. Basically, a small popup shows up when you hit the button, displaying the websites just like the speed dial does. The settings menu opens a world of options:

• Bookmarks, as you may have guessed is a bookmarks manager. No surprises here, the usual folder/add/delete functions are here, but I do miss the ability to display favicons in the list, as the default bookmark icons looks like a corrupted windows file icon.

• History is also very familiar, displaying your previous browsing activities. There’s a handy little “Clear all” key for those of you who just refuse to follow Apple’s anti-porn crusade.
• Start page takes you to the speed dial, but without opening a new tab.
• Saved pages allows you to save pages for offline use and browse them.
• Settings is another submenu that will allow you to choose wether you want to load images or not, choose the image quality, the font size, fullscreen, mobile view, to set privacy options such as password memory and cookie acceptance, to activate “Opera link”, a bookmark synchronisation service, and to access advanced options such as http or socket protocol selection.
• Find in page is a handy page searcher that will highlight content matching your input.
• Help will display a not so helpful menu displaying version info and copyrights.

The overall UI is well designed and quite snappy. The grey interface reminds me a lot of the desktop version, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, there are few flaws – the lack of control on the speed dial icons and the “recommend to friend” field spoil the experience a little. I prefer Safari’s simplicity, and I also prefer the way safari handles the multiple open windows.

Browsing experience and speed

But an good UI and good bookmarks management isn’t all users are looking for in a browser: if it takes ages to load a page, the best user interface in the world will be useless. The browsing experience is a complex mix of usability, speed, responsiveness and good settings management.

First of all, it’s worth pointing out that Opera Mini has one big roadblock for iPhone and iPod touch users: Apple doesn’t allow you to set any other application as the default for web browsing, so if you’re opening links from other applications, like Mail, you’ll still launch Mobile Safari when you click that link. (To use Opera Mini, you’d have to copy the link, close Mail, open Opera Mini, and paste the link.) That’s not so convenient, but it’s not the end of the world, especially since more and more apps display links in-app unless you explicitly choose to open a link in Safari.

• Boot load time is a little bit tricky to measure because Safari is conserved in the iPhone’s RAM once it has been opened, giving it a clear advantage for warm starts. Opera, on the other had, performs much better on cold starts.
• Browser speed difference leaves no room for error: Opera is really faster than Safari, which can be explained by the fact that it uses a proxy to connect itself to a server that will size the requested website down before sending it to the phone. Tested while connected to wifi, average of 20 pages such as BBC.com or NYTimes.com.

The proxy system may speed things up, but the sad truth is that the website display quality suffers from it immensely. The gradients are broken down, CSS markup is messed up, text is not displayed correctly and when in zoomed out overview mode, it forms tiny black blocks that are just not readable. Safari may take a few more seconds to load pages up, but at least they are displayed correctly (Safari left, Opera right).

Verdict

I still have hope for Opera. After all, they’ve been on the iPhone for just one day, and they have plenty of time to make improvements till the release of iPhone OS 4. One of its strength is the speed, and this may appeal to people who live in areas with poor network connections or who would like to cut down on roaming data costs. If you’re looking for a desktop-like browsing experience though, you might want to stick with Safari for the moment.
Opera Mini 5 is free. Here’s a short video, enjoy:

Contact the author via email