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Morning, all,

Remember our bright and sunny day yesterday? Today--not so much. Even though "Winter Storm" warnings have been forgone for full out blizzard conditions, we've met with news much nicer than yesterdays...well...for the most part. Stay with us for Opera's audacity, the Aperture update and Apple's (slight) concession to developers.

Opera to the App Store?
Apparently the people behind Opera are even whinier than us press-types. After causing Microsoft major headaches in the EU last year by starting the Internet Explorer browser battle the company wasn't satisfied and has set their sights on Apple.

They haven't started yelling yet, but if Opera Mini is denied by the App Store we'll betcha they will.

Opera Mini hasn't even been submitted yet, but a rep for the company said: "We have not submitted Opera Mini to the Apple App store; however, we hope that Apple will not deny their users a choice in web browsing experience." We don't know, guys...this would be the first well-known browser to gain admittance and we all know how Apple didn't learn to share like the other kids.

Thanks to PC Pro for the quote!

Aperture Update Released
And just in time for MacWorld. Nice work, gentlemen. This edition of Apple's popular professional photo editing software has over 200 new features...no simple refresh on this one. As is the case with lots of high performance software, Apple's engineers focused on getting maximum use with minimum effort.

They've added Faces and Places from iPhoto '09 with more control and the ability to limit recognition to one project instead of across your entire library of photographs; they've added a Brushes feature to paint corrections and adjustments right on to the photo; all the typefaces and windows are bigger, better and easier to read. Right there we'd say they've got a success. But the new features keep coming, and they include more slideshow editing options, output to Flickr and Facebook, full screen mode, library merging and management tools...yeah. All that.

Upgrades are $99, and Aperture 3 is $199 to purchase and runs in 64 bit mode on Snow Leopard. A free trial is also available.

Survey Says...
Developers have often been unhappy with the secretive way Apple's handled App Store submissions. Now after a particularly difficult 2009, it seems there's a survey available to rate the App Store experience...we can't imagine what some of those answers are like. We're hoping that instead of being snarky (like we'd want to be, understandably) developers put some time and thought into how Apple can make the process easier for everyone. After all, it's still a relatively new system, and that fact that they're even asking for input is momentous.

TechCrunch has survey images available here.

What would fix App Store approvals? Tell us on Twitter!

Till tomorrow, Newsies...