Oleg's Blog

Would Opera Software, the only company that puts the Web on any device, announce that Apple, Inc. has selected the Opera Mini browser for it's iPhone?


I think it would!

I've recently stumbled on the Steve Jobs presentation at the WWDC 2006. I'm a Windows XP user right now, but i'm also a big Apple fan and a Mac OS X fan particularly.

The presentation itself is about the brand new MacPro (based on the new Intel Xeon chips) and about the Apple's upcoming operating system - Mac OS X 10.5 Lepard. The last one must be released in October.

Now i'd like to talk about the Lepard and it's new features. Here's the quick look at some of them:

• 64-bit and 32-bit "Top to Bottom" support
  
• Core Animation - helps developers to make rich media applications much more easily and quickly
  
• Emproved functions for people with the accessibility problems
  
• Better parental control
  
• Boot Camp is now the part of the OS
  
• Added some great features to the iChat
  
• Added multiuser interface to the iCal
  
• New great features in the Spotlight and Dashboard
  
• Added Spaces - analogue of the Virtual Desktops in Linux
  
• Added superior backup utility, called Time Machine
  

There are many other, but the most interesting for me was the Apple Mail. As mentioned Steve Jobs, there are:

...major enhancements in Mail for Lepard

And some of them maked me feel some kind of "déjà vu".

Let's look a little closer... There are three major enhancements:

• Stationery
  
• Notes
  
• To Do's
  

So, the first one is Stationery.
Stationery is some kind of themes, templates or skins, if you like, for an e-mail message. And, of course, as it's Apple, you can just drag'n'drop images to the choosen stationery (there are plenty of them) and in a few simple clicks make a nice looking, stylish and at the same time fully standard HTML e-mail message.

Great thing, I should notice... By now Opera doesn't have something like that (except of the Message templates from Notes). Plain text message composing. Right until the v10, I think

The other two are the ones that triggered my thoughts about the similartity to Opera Mail.

Notes - Some kind of message that can hold notes in itself and positioned into the Incoming folder like other messages.
To Do's - You can select some note(s) or other messages and mark them as the To Do, add an alarm to it etc...

Both of it (and even MORE) could be made in Opera Mail with the use of Labels. Notes in Opera could be used too, but the similarity is in Labels. You can set up to 7 labels (or more, often integrated with the current Opera skin) for different kind of messages that gives you even more control.

There are such a default labels for your choice: Important, Todo, Mail back, Call back, Meeting, Funny and Valuable. You can alternate their names if you want. And, the most great thing - you can fast and easily find them later.

But, at the other hand, you can't assign an alarm to it or integrate with the OS, like Mail in Mac OS.