Apple's iPhone developer programme: still full of fail

Opera Sings an Ode to Browsers Everywhere - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com.

"Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser."

And please, don't anyone try and tell me that this should be expected, and Apple is within its rights blah blah blah. If someone is too stupid to see that stifling competition is a bad idea, then frankly I don't have much time for their opinion.

UPDATE: It doesn't happen often, but I'm in agreement with Dave Winer about this:

"The web was designed as an open system. That means the user has a choice of software he or she wants to use to browse the web. Even when it was at its peak of monopolism, Microsoft never went so far as to prohibit the installation of the competitive browser on Windows, they just bundled one with the OS."

There simply is no excuse for rejecting an application that "competes" with yours, especially when both applications are free to the user. To anyone inclined to defend Apple on this, I'd ask a simple question: what would you have said a couple of years ago if Microsoft had done the same thing?