Apple is obviously trying to attract some new users to the Safari 3.1 web browser that was just released on Tuesday, but I would say that they are using questionable methods to do so. I’m not sure how well you remember the World Wide Developers Conference last year when Steve Jobs announced how they planed to distribute Safari for Windows. Here’s a 7-minute YouTube video to refresh your mind on that segment, and there was one part of the Safari presentation that I haven’t forgotten about as the months have passed by. It was when Steve Jobs said:
How are we going to distribute this? We don’t really talk to these customers, do we? There are over 500,000 downloads of Firefox a day. What are we going to do? Well, it turns out, there are over 1 million downloads of iTunes a day. As a matter of fact, there have been over a half a billion downloads of iTunes to Windows Machines. Over half a billion. And so we know how to reach these customers and we are going to do exactly that.
So Jobs didn’t come out and say that Safari was going to be bundled with iTunes, but I kind of thought it was implied from that statement. Up until now there had been nothing that showed Apple was following through with those plans, but apparently since Safari came out of Beta on Tuesday they are really starting to push the browser.
I have two computers that have iTunes installed, but I’ve never installed Safari on either of them. And yet yesterday both computers notified me that a new version of Safari was available via Apple Software Update:
Isn’t the Apple Software Update supposed to be for updating the applications you actually have installed? Most of the 500+ million iTunes users would probably click install thinking that Safari was already installed on their machine, and little do they know they are actually adding another browser to Windows.
What do you think? I would say it’s fair if they asked whether the user wants to also install Safari when they are installing iTunes, but trying to classify this as an update when it has never been installed before just isn’t right.
Happy bundling!! We are so happy that we are not Microsoft, so we can bundle whatever we want without being called EVIL.
Another example of the monopolistic practices that Apple has been allowed to get away with for many years. When will people realize that they are not the “happy friendly” company that want us to believe they are.
Apple has never been a particularly friendly company to users in general. Sure people love their products and their designs, but often issues will come up that just aren’t easy to solve and Apple does not seem as interested in solving problems as they are in getting products out the door. I doubt anyone could really have considered them as a monopoly until the last 2-3 years though. Until the iPod really took of they were just a niche player so they could do whatever they wanted. Now that they really are becoming a monopoly I would look for them to be investigated by governments around the world in the coming years. If anything happens I suspect the EU will play a big part of that ahead of the US. I just hate the idea of them pushing products on us just because they can. Just what we need another product installed that can be used as an attack vector.
This just confirms it, Apple is the new Microsoft, and will stop at nothing to gain market share. Their whole iPod/iTunes business stinks with anti-competitive practices and all evidences that their iPhone “platform” follows a similar path of lack of openness. They sure have a powerful marketing machine (just think of all the tv series and movies in which the characters use macs), and their ardent devotees and some tech pundits turn a blind eye to these practices and fervently promote Mac adoption, but it’s about time that the proper regulatory entities start doing something.
Personally, I love their design and think that their product are remarkable, but would never buy them on a question of principle. It’s bad enough that I have to use Windows, but at least I can buy what I want, upgrade it however I want and dual-boot Linux if I so wish.
Hands up everyone who thinks apple software update just became adware. From what I’ve heard safari on windows has major security concerns.
I got rid of Apple Software Update months ago also Quicktime and iTunes.
I never used or wanted iTunes but it came bundled with Quicktime so when Steve Jobs boasts there have been over a half a billion downloads of iTunes to Windows Machines you need to ask just how many of them were wanted and not a case of the user not unticking a box during an update.
My machine seems to work fine without any Apple software so that is how it will remain. The only website that uses Quicktime seems to be Apple now anyway so there is no point in it being installed.
Hopefully users will see that Apple and Microsoft are not all that different in that they both try to push their products onto users. I look at this the same way as if Microsoft was trying to push MSN Messenger for Mac onto any Mac user who has Office installed. It just doesn’t make sense, and if Microsoft was the one doing it there would be a lot of heads turning.
I’m really glad that many of you feel the same way that I do that this is an inappropriate way for Apple to try and spread Safari.
I use iTunes and recently after they had released a minor update which I didn’t install, I started to see the Apple Software Update window suddenly appear even when iTunes wasn’t open.
I think maybe the Quicktime plugin for Firefox caused this since I have disabled all the related helper programs and services iTunes want to install every time. This is very annoying and I ended up uninstalling Apple Software Update although I’ll probably need it the next time they patch Quicktime.
*Sigh* *Turns back*
This is a microcosm of all the questionable tactics Apple uses because they can’t get users to legitimately like their products.
Funny – you can only get Apples updater if you install itunes – if you are lucky enough to find the standalone version of Quicktime you’ll have to go and update manually. That was enough to bug me, but throwing a browser at people makes them worse than Realplayer installing Yahoo toolbar. I recommend Quick Time alternative if you need to play .mov or other files.
So I gave in, and installed safari for windows out of morbid curiosity. I’ve find safari somewhat feature lacking but very speedy on the fancy new iMacs at school, and while I know apple software tends to be clunky on windows, what the heck.
It’s not faster. Not even close. page loads are minimally faster than firefox, but start times and even accessing menus is sluggish.
But the real kicker, is that the whole thing is basically one giant OSX advert. It doesn’t mesh at all with the windows UI, they give it the OSX feel, with the blue shiny scroll bars, and even the out-then-down animated way dialog boxes pop up. Needless to say all this fancy rendering outside of the default leads to very slow performance, at least on this old laptop of mine. iTunes doesn’t do a fantastic job of blending in with windows, but it does enough to not be an eyesore (although your opinion on that may vary).
Needless to say, I’ve uninstalled already.
Sad how ruthless apple is becoming(already has been). I’d hate them as much as microsoft, but this iPhone here, damnit, it’s just so sweet.
Nothing new really, I only have QuickTime installed, and every time I launch Apple Software Update (manually), I see there the option to “update” to iTunes (NO WAY!). Thankfully, you can ignore it.
Besides this, Apple relationship with Windows is way better than in the past. QuickTime 6 and earlier used to push qttask in Windows’ autostart, while it stole ALL of your multimedia extensions (both in Windows and in browsers’ plugins), without asking, and then you have to re-register the extensions with the programs you use. In contrast, QuickTime 7 is a well-behaved citizen.
I try my best not to install iTunes because of how much I dislike it. When I need to add media to my iPod I use Floola [floola.com] For Quicktime there is Quicktime Alternative of VLC or KMPlayer. And of course Safari is not really necessary at all. One thing I noticed about iTunes that really annoyed me a lot was that it was putting the Bonjour DNS service on your computer. Just what you need another service running in the background to steal processor cycles and RAM. I think that’s what really turned me off to iTunes along with the helper task and all the other background apps it comes with.
Besides I know their computers come with background tasks that are supposed to be self healing mechanisms but can in reality work much like cancer cells do in the human body. The computer thinks everything is fine and starts replicating the bad hard drive blocks and before you know it the computer blows up. I have seen this happen to many people. It’s what has helped third party tools makers sell so much software for fixing Macs.
Anyway, that’s my thoughts on Apple software and hardware for the moment.
Well, they can get people to like some of their products, but I think Safari on Windows is a much harder game.
Next Wednesday we’re putting several of the mainstream browsers up against each other so we’ll find out then.
Huh, I never knew that. I’ve always installed iTunes with QuickTime so I’ve never seen that notification.
In the past I’ve tried to avoid it like the plague, but I bought an iPhone since I really liked the device and you have to install iTunes in order to get the darn thing activated.
Er, yeah. That’s it… nobody likes their products. How fiendish of them to have forced all of those products on everyone over the years.
Yes they should’ve used WPF. But no one does .NET mainstream today. :cry:
I was one of the users that update “installed safari”. It was 5am I was checking my email before I go to work, Itunes has an update. well I click ok on it without really reading it. well I get home from work and windows internet explorer just keeds crashing. I scan for virus/spyware I have 0 found, I restart my Pc and it still crashs. Well I notice I have new programs installed and its safari. I played with it then uninstalled it. now winddows internet explorer works fine. This is not good what they have done. having both will cause internet explorer to crash all the time.
Huh, it doesn’t cause my Internet Explorer 7 to crash. That’s really bad though if it was causing your IE to crash though, but submitting a bug report for that would probably just get ignored.
Maybe it’s not Safari specifically causing the crash. One thing iTunes/Safari bundle with the software is the Bonjour DNS service which some users have found to cause issues. I would think this the more likely culprit in this case. Safari is after all only a browser and as far as I can tell behaved enough not to cause issues itself. Bonjour however has caused me headaches on some of the computers on the network I manage.
I don’t like to update my iPod software and avoid connecting it to my computer. It is none of their business what music I play only for them to send me loads of spam based on the info they get from me. After my last update a while ago the music on the iPod and in iTunes on the computer started to skip. I googled the problem and it said: update software it will fix the problem. I did, problem fixed but I also ended up with an unwanted program called Safari.
Such manipulation is unacceptable they should be investigated and fined. This is my computer and I trusted Apple. I paid for the iPod and if I want to purchase some program called “Safari” I will do just that but they have no right to sneak some garbage software that I don’t want on to my computer.
Yes iTunes is adware and should be treated as such; but this is also what you get for running an operating system that allows these things. Switch to Linux, be free from all that.