I just read about this. I can't believe that Apple would be so stupid to do something like this. Well...yes I can. Bravado seems to be something that Apple not only possesses in great quantity, but even endorses as an extra benefit of owning one of their devices.
But this is just plain wrong.
For those of you who haven't heard, if you have a copy of iTunes or Quicktime installed on your Windows computer, Apple is now pushing it's own web browser (Safari) using the iTunes/Quicktime updater.
photo credit: cnet
So, in other words, if you have iTunes installed, a window will pop up on your computer, telling you that a new update for iTunes is available. This is all well and good, but simply clicking the "Update" button will do more than just update your iTunes. It will actually install Safari on your computer...and make it the default web browser.
Admittedly there is a check box available...but by default that check box is selected to install Safari. At the very least, that check box should be unchecked.
John Lilly, the CEO of Mozilla (the company responsible for Firefox and Thunderbird) wrote up a nice blog post for why this sort of thing is simply bad for software vendors in general.
Now, some have accused Mr. Lilly for simply being scared of a little competition. And sure, there might be some of that there. But I believe that Mr. Lilly's post contains some excellent points that need to be considered before throwing the whole argument out, attributing it to "I wish we had some sneaky way of getting people to install our software like you do...but since I don't I'm going to poo-poo and shame you."
I think Mr. Lilly's response at the end of the zdnet article is revealing...and demonstrates some of the key points behind my previous open source article. If you're tired of it being all about the money--open source seems to be the best answer.
I would also like to point out that Mozilla is perfectly capable of pulling a stunt like this as well. Consider that Firefox is certainly not the only piece of software they produce. It's simply their most popular. Can you imagine, though, if a Firefox update installed Thunderbird and set it as the default mail client? Same sort of thing as what Apple is pushing now. But after seeing Mr. Lilly's response to Apple, I can be assured that Mozilla won't ever try something like this.
As a final thought on all this...if you're thinking to yourself, "What's the big deal?" like I was, initially, try thinking about this type of practice from a different perspective. For some reason, Apple as a company seems to be immune to bad feelings for this sort of thing. Kind of like Google (by the way...the whole google-toolbar thing annoys me in exactly the same way. Google...please stop it. It's not helpful). Just imagine, though, if this was Microsoft, instead. What if Microsoft started using it's Windows XP updater to start installing software you never asked for? The outrage would be deafening, I can assure you.
But, truthfully, I would have less of a problem with Microsoft doing that than Apple's current practice. In the case of Microsoft...it's their operating system. In some ways, I would almost expect them to use their own OS in this way. By using Microsoft's OS, you are almost implicity trusting anything coming from them. Even though, I still would argue against it. Apple is really acting like rogue software here, though. So, this is what I have to say--Apple, if you want to do this sort of thing, stick to doing it on your own OS. Okay? Thanks.
EDIT: Just one more thing to make this story even better!
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