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Opera 10.50 Beta for Mac Released, Performs Well in JavaScript Benchmarks

iPrep said:
Sorry to have to break it to you, but Opera's engine is one of the oldest in existence. It's older than Gecko, and certainly older than WebKit. If there is any engine that was "introduced", it was WebKit. If anything wasn't necessary, it must have been the most recent one, which is WebKit.
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I was going to make this same point, but apparently Opera changed engines (or at least overhauled) to Presto about the same time that webkit/safari were introduced. However, Opera and it's backend and much of the layout engine are significantly older than webkit, gecko and everything else*.


*well not everything else.
 
iPrep said:
It's interesting that Mac users are whining about Opera not being needed. Is Apple not needed either because Macs have such an abysmal market share?
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There is no comparison between OS X - the Gold Standard of operating systems that runs on the most beautiful and best-designed hardware in the business, and some POS free browser no one ever really cared about. Although in the mobile space it does well, but not because it's got anything on Safari for iPhone, but because it gets whored out to a tonne of lousy mobile devices, which doesn't do much for the Opera user experience. Opera on the iPhone might finally become a great mobile browser. That depends on whether Apple will approve it.

One is an operating system that is part of the best consumer computing environment ever conceived and brought to market, bar none - and which sells in record numbers even with its premium price tag. The other is . . . just a browser. A browser that has historically worked less-reliably than other browsers and performed poorly in key areas. Is it any different now? Let's say it is. It might have mattered three or four years ago, but at this point there's just not enough there to pull folks away from the Main browsers.

Sure, let's keep Opera. But there simply isn't enough differentiation between it and the Main browsers out there to warrant any serious attention.
 
*LTD* said:
Sure, let's keep Opera. But there simply isn't enough differentiation between it and the Main browsers out there to warrant any serious attention.
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Can you define what a "main browser" is? I'm guessing your definition ends at worldwide fourth place (where Safari's position is worldwide).
 
I've learned something today - people are awful snobs for some reason about browsers on their Mac. Why all the hate for opera? I use Opera 10.10 for all my browsing except for Amazon, which it doesn't render properly (annoying, because I use Amazon all the time)

Can anyone confirm with a link that the final build of Opera 10.5 will be able to run on PPC?

(Oh, before anyone says anything, I did look ;) I just haven't been able to find anything, and I saw a few people say that it would support PPC on this thread)
 
*LTD* said:
I don't give a sweet damn about Opera's history.

I'm using this non-Webkit mishmash from Opera thinking . . "wow, they've got a great history!"

Not.
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Seeing as you completely missed my point....

I was saying, why would you comment that "Opera has always..." when you don't know what Opera has always...
It's bizarre to comment on the something you clearly know nothing about.
 
*LTD* said:
There is no comparison between OS X - the Gold Standard of operating systems that runs on the most beautiful and best-designed hardware in the business, and some POS free browser no one ever really cared about.
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Apple seemed to care a lot about Opera since they borrowed features like Top Sites from it :D

And despite your praise of OS X, it has failed to gain significant market share for all these years. Funny how that works, isn't it? Clearly, your logic dictates that OS X is not needed due to its abysmal market share. You are in reality asking: "Who cares about OS X? Who needs it?"

If not, that is simply hypocrisy.

Although in the mobile space it does well, but not because it's got anything on Safari for iPhone, but because it gets whored out to a tonne of lousy mobile devices, which doesn't do much for the Opera user experience.
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Yeah, Opera did real, full mobile browsing long before Apple even considered it. They also did the overview/panning/zooming thing which Apple found to be a good idea and implemented it for the iPhone browser.

One is an operating system that is part of the best consumer computing environment ever conceived and brought to market, bar none - and which sells in record numbers even with its premium price tag.
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A 5% market share is not "record numbers". You can preach about how great it is all you want, and I won't disagree. But that wasn't the point, now was it? The point was your obvious hypocrisy in whining about Opera existing despite having a lower market share than some other browsers, and yet you are praising Macs for existing despite having a lower market share than other OSes.

The other is . . . just a browser. A browser that has historically worked less-reliably than other browsers and performed poorly in key areas.
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Opera has always been known as the performance leader. When Opera 9.5 was released it was so amazingly fast compared to everything else that Apple started working on the new JIT JS engine to beat them. Sadly, Opera upped the game and once against reigns on the performance throne.

Is it any different now? Let's say it is. It might have mattered three or four years ago, but at this point there's just not enough there to pull folks away from the Main browsers.
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Then how come Opera's user base more than doubles every two years?

Sure, let's keep Opera. But there simply isn't enough differentiation between it and the Main browsers out there to warrant any serious attention.
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Shouldn't you leave that up to each person to decide? Who are you to pretend to be speaking on behalf of everyone else?
 
I been using the previous version... this beta is a major update!
Less bulkier and faster!
 
I haven't actually tried Opera on a mac before, plus i don't plan on doing so, but it looks really good, if it's less ram consumption than FFox, and faster than chrome, that's a definite yes.
 
I've always like Opera and their Opera Mobile (mini is okay, but it's still a bit weak).

Hopefully they will approve this for the app store. They better approve or I hope they get cited for antitrust. If Microsoft is being coerced into allowing users to choose browser, so should Apple considering their market share.

*LTD* said:
…some POS free browser no one ever really cared about.
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Opera used to cost $15 or something like that; I remember paying for it.

Probably why it never caught on—if it was free back then I'm sure more people would have used it.

And please don't assume that no one cared about it. I've cared for many years and that alone will refute your absolute claims.
 
iPrep said:
I disagree. Opera has always been snappier. But ignoring that for a moment, are you saying that if another browser happens to be faster, Opera suddenly and magically slows down to be slower than it used to?
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Nope, I'm saying that since Safari 3 and the web browsers which have come after it, Opera has been the slowest browser in comparison to the others (especially after a few days of usage).
 
IntelliUser said:
Nope, I'm saying that since Safari 3 and the web browsers which have come after it, Opera has been the slowest browser in comparison to the others (especially after a few days of usage).
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I would still have to disagree. Maybe Safari has been faster at the artificial JS benchmarks Opera now crushes Safari at, but that isn't really relevant for real world performance.
 
iPrep said:
I would still have to disagree. Maybe Safari has been faster at the artificial JS benchmarks Opera now crushes Safari at, but that isn't really relevant for real world performance.
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Don't know where you've got those results. I'm basing everything on real world browsing experience, not stupid JS benchmarks. Opera has always proved to be slower in almost of the cases, especially after prolonged use. (Tested on a 512k, 1MB and 8MB). That's been some of my friends' (the ones who've tried it) experience also.

In fact, running the new Opera since yesterday, and I find it much, much slower than Safari and Chrome. It's pretty much on par with Firefox. I don't know where this "Opera is fast" story comes from, but it's always looked ridiculous to me.
 
*LTD* said:
There is no comparison between OS X - the Gold Standard of operating systems that runs on the most beautiful and best-designed hardware in the business, and some POS free browser no one ever really cared about. Although in the mobile space it does well, but not because it's got anything on Safari for iPhone, but because it gets whored out to a tonne of lousy mobile devices, which doesn't do much for the Opera user experience. Opera on the iPhone might finally become a great mobile browser. That depends on whether Apple will approve it.

One is an operating system that is part of the best consumer computing environment ever conceived and brought to market, bar none - and which sells in record numbers even with its premium price tag. The other is . . . just a browser. A browser that has historically worked less-reliably than other browsers and performed poorly in key areas. Is it any different now? Let's say it is. It might have mattered three or four years ago, but at this point there's just not enough there to pull folks away from the Main browsers.

Sure, let's keep Opera. But there simply isn't enough differentiation between it and the Main browsers out there to warrant any serious attention.
Click to expand...

I couldn't have said it better...
There is no reason for any one to leave FireFox, Safari and jump to Opera. Its just another option.

If you can give me a reason, I am all ears
 
*LTD* said:
There is no comparison between OS X - the Gold Standard of operating systems that runs on the most beautiful and best-designed hardware in the business, and some POS free browser no one ever really cared about.
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Credibility: lost. (again).

(weasel words don't really tell anyone *why* OS X is anything near a standard. If anything, that standard you are talking about was created some 20 years earlier by someone else).

There is no reason for any one to leave FireFox, Safari and jump to Opera. Its just another option.

If you can give me a reason, I am all ears
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For anyone? Really? I'll give you a reason: live your live and stop worrying about anybody else's choices. Better yet, stop trying to rationalize and justify your own choices by looking down on other people choice's.

Oh and... Opera has been consistently the safest browser around. The Windows 10.50 beta is definitely faster than Safari and Chrome on Windows. The unix releases I've tried so far are still slow.
 
For anyone? Really? I'll give you a reason: live your live and stop worrying about anybody else's choices. Better yet, stop trying to rationalize and justify your own choices by looking down on other people choice's.

Oh and... Opera has been consistently the safest browser around. The Windows 10.50 beta is definitely faster than Safari and Chrome on Windows. The unix releases I've tried so far are still slow.
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I am not sure why people are taking this personally
if you are happy using Opera or anything else, I am glad for.
I was just saying is this "Opera" has anything better over Safari,Firefox to make me even consider it?
If so please enlighten me,
 
kingmohd84 said:
I couldn't have said it better...
There is no reason for any one to leave FireFox, Safari and jump to Opera. Its just another option.

If you can give me a reason, I am all ears
Click to expand...

Alright, I'll give you a reason. I have been trying to find a decent web browser that suits my needs for a year now. I'm working on a 2008 White Macbook with 4GB of RAM.

Firefox is slow, it eats memory. It takes a year to start up. I use 2 plugins(download statusbar & adblock) on Firefox which for me are essential. Firefox is so slow for me at times that I decided to switch to Safari. (2 months ago)

Safari is great, fast, fine. It has no plugins that I would like. Download Statusbar is a must for me, I HATE having a separate window. Even putting that aside, I use favicons in my bookmark toolbar, and Safari just won't do that. (i gave up after a week of no productivity)

I switched to Google Chrome. Google Chrome is awesome. I'm not a fan of the layout, but it did the job. Other than Adblock loading all the damn ads and just hiding them(the point of that....?). Flash would bug out all the time. There was no autofill, and I did actually like the somewhat download statusbar thing they had going on. Still, the adblock being retarded, the lack of autofill, and Flash not even responding when I clicked on it(which I know is the result of a bad flash install, but it worked in all the other browsers at that point). After about 1.5 months, I saw this.

I immediately installed Opera 10.10 and was pleasantly pleased. It had all the features I wanted. I didn't have to worry about plugins because everything I think a browser should have, it does. Only thing kind of iffy was the interface. I then installed Opera 10.50, and yes it is buggy as all hell BUT, the time it takes for it to quit and reload all of my websites 5 times is the time it took Firefox to start up. The interface(in my opinion, of course) is gorgeous. It's extremely minimal, extremely customizable, and I absolutely love that you can make the icons as small as you want. This is my layout. It's so clean! I don't have a problem with reloading every couple of hours if the browser craps out or starts to lag a bit, because that takes a second, as opposed to Firefox crashing(as it has many times) and taking literally like a minute to catch its breath and load all of the tabs that I was in.


For now, I'm sticking with Opera. It's perfect for my needs, and none of those "main" browsers could even come close to fulfilling them.
 
*LTD* said:
There is no comparison between OS X - the Gold Standard of operating systems that runs on the most beautiful and best-designed hardware in the business, and some POS free browser no one ever really cared about. Although in the mobile space it does well, but not because it's got anything on Safari for iPhone, but because it gets whored out to a tonne of lousy mobile devices, which doesn't do much for the Opera user experience. Opera on the iPhone might finally become a great mobile browser. That depends on whether Apple will approve it.

One is an operating system that is part of the best consumer computing environment ever conceived and brought to market, bar none - and which sells in record numbers even with its premium price tag. The other is . . . just a browser. A browser that has historically worked less-reliably than other browsers and performed poorly in key areas. Is it any different now? Let's say it is. It might have mattered three or four years ago, but at this point there's just not enough there to pull folks away from the Main browsers.

Sure, let's keep Opera. But there simply isn't enough differentiation between it and the Main browsers out there to warrant any serious attention.
Click to expand...

Always good for a laugh. You sound like the Iraqi information minister. "The Americans are not here! (bombs exploding everywhere). Iraq is infact beating the Americans!"
 
iPrep said:
Probably that it has a history of being the fastest browser, regardless of your personal experience.
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What history of fastest browser? Opera has almost always been at the bottom of all the tests I've seen, one of the slowest I've ever used. I don't care how much it's javascript engine is fast if it loads everything much slower.

Opera has never been fast. It's given me the impression of being fast in the beginning, but I soon realized how awkwardly sluggish it was compared to Safari, Chrome or (marginally) Firefox.
 
I use Opera off and on when I get bored of the others. This new version definitely has some promise, just like Chrome. Had to setup everything again, bookmarks etc, after installation which was a bummer, but now all is well again. Haven't had any of the page display problems or slowdown that others have experienced. I'm still on Leopard so that may be why. Opera deserves a chance just like the others and I myself will give it that chance. Competition spurs on innovation, at least I hope it does. So only good things should come of this...in theory of course. ;)
 
Just did some testing with latest Safari (which comes with Mac OS X, no nighty builds on WebKit), Opera 10.50 Beta and the latest Chrome 5 Beta for Mac.

Safari: x1
Opera: x1.04
Chrome: x1.11

All browsers run in the same conditions. Chrome looks faster on my 4 years old MacBook.

With newer version of WebKite Safari might get some more speed. FireFox was tested, it is going to be one of the slowest, don't need tests for that.
 
Ok, so Opera is for a person who needs plug-ins and find it troubling to use FireFox, and does not want to use Safari.
I can see the market for it now.

May I suggest Camino instead of FireFox, its like FireFox built for Mac OS . I am not sure if you will like it, but its pretty decent, I am guessing its a lot lighter than firefox.
 
I've used Opera since well before Firefox was released. When FF fiirst came I immediately downloaded it and installed it since it, according to the hype, was god's gift to mankind. A few days later I found that not only did it not have any features that I didn't already have in Opera, it was also very much slower. Not to mention the memory usage. Evey time a new browser comes out I try it and every time I go back to Opera. Someone asked why you would want to change from Firefox or Chrome to Opera when the truth actually is that there is no reason whatsoever to use anything else but Opera. It's Chrome that is unnecessary, not the other way around.
 
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