A Swedish wolf in Norway

Microsoft has been bashed several times for anti-competitive behaviour, by trying to tout their own products over those of their competitors. Now it seems that Apple, in their trying to copy Microsoft’s success, is doing the same.

Håvard writes that Apple is blocking Opera Mini for the Iphone from entering their Application Store, since it competes with Safari. Apparently Apple doesn’t like competing software, just like how they don’t like competing hardware.

Another reason not to buy an Iphone, I guess. Not that I was going to, anyway. I was considering the Xperia, but it seems not to be compatible with the Sony Ericsson accessories I have, and I don’t feel like buying yet another set of chargers, docking stations and headsets. So I am stuck with my trusty ol’ P990i, which does run the latest Opera Mini, even if the latest Opera Mobile beta doesn’t work on it.

Nintendo today unveiled the DSi as an upgrade to the massively popular Nintento DS. There doesn’t seem to be any official information from Nintendo in English yet, and there are some conflicting reports on what the Japanese information actually states. Unfortunately, Nintendo of Japan’s site is using a Flash animation, so it’s impossible to use tools like Babelfish or Google Translate to translate it, and my Japanese is limited.

There are reports, however, stating that the DSi will have a built-in web browser (such as ITavisen’s article from earlier today). VG goes so far as to state that the browser is made by Opera. Some reports state that the browser is not to be built-in, but a free download. I haven’t seen any official pressrelease from Opera saying that it is Opera that will come with the DSi yet, but since Opera already did the ill-fated Nintendo DS browser, and the Wii Internet Channel browser, it sounds like the natural choice.

And the screenshot on Nintendo of Japan’s site (second-to-right tab, centre image) of the browser does look like a mix of the old DS Browser’s UI with the Wii Internet Channel’s buttons, so it only sounds natural.

I have a DS Lite, perhaps I’ll consider upgrading to a DSi. Having an easily-accessible built-in browser does sound nice, but it have better be faster than on the regular DS/DS Lite. That one has too little memory and is running on a too slow CPU to be very useful beyond browsing very basic sites. Unfortunately. There are limits to what you can make the such a small machine do.

Update: Opera Software confirms that the DSi browser is Opera.

Apparently Opera 9.51 happened while I was away on honeymoon last week. A friend of mine claims 9.50 is extremly crash-prone (and 9.51 just slightly less so), but I haven’t seen these problems myself, all my 9.50/9.51 installations have been very stable.

Also included in the 9.51 version is an updated language file, which means that the embarrasing incorrect string that crept in to my Swedish translation for the hot-click menu is now gone, while there still is an untranslated one in the Save Session dialogue. Hopefully that can be corrected for the next minor release.