It’s been a month since Apple started distributing their Safari browser to Windows users with rather questionable practices. Anyone that had either QuickTime or iTunes installed would receive a prompt stating that there was a Safari “update” available, regardless of whether it had ever been installed on the machine. That didn’t go over too well with the online community.
The thing that really irked me is that even if you unchecked the box next to Safari and quit the updater it would still prompt you later on that updates were still available. After some frustration I noticed that I could go to the Tools menu and click the Ignore Selected Updates option to push Safari into the forsaken abyss.
Well, Apple is trying to silence the critics out there with an update to their updater. The new updater has a section dedicated solely to software that has never been installed:
The other good news is that the new updater will not pester you with notifications for software that you don’t have installed. That means you don’t have to ignore the updates to hide the nagging popup, but the checkbox for any software that’s not installed will remain checked. The next time that you go to install an update to an existing Apple product could therefore result in having new software installed as well. So from my point of view Apple almost did the right thing, but to satisfy Asa Dotzler from Mozilla and myself they would need to uncheck the install box for new software by default.
[via eWeek]
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
I was so upset at Apple’s rude marketing strategy, that I decided to uninstall “Apple Software Update” from my hard disk. Out!
And everyone said Apple was better than M$….
The Apple updater is the most annoying updater of all time (ok, second only to the Adobe updater).
I pretty much consider installing an update a part of starting up iTunes at this point.
What I really hate is that when installing an Apple program if you uncheck the updater and tell it not to install it, the updater gets installed anyway. It completely ignores you, what is the point of having that option there in the first place?
I wasn’t happy, but I didn’t go as far as to uninstall Apple’s Software Update. Now I’m wondering how many people got as frustrated as you and did the same thing!
There are plenty of people on both sides of the fence, rooting for one or the other, don’t you think?
Very true Ashley. But it seems that a majority hails Apple as a Saint and M$ as the Devil.
Man, I’m disappointed in Apple. They’re more ignorant than I thought.
Did the same… although I went one step further and got rid of quicktime as well. Quicktime alternative provides the same functionality and doesn’t have all the nagging.
Never did use itunes, found it horrendously sluggish and totally uncustomisable. Foobar2000 ftw!
I’m never installing any apple software again as well. Talk about bloatware with the itunes installer at more than 30+MB whilst foobar is 2+MB and Safari above 20+MB while firefox is 5.7MB and opera is 6.35MB.
Ever since a few versions of Quicktime ago, I noticed that new Apple Software Updater. I did not wish to have this program running so I uninstalled it.
Everytime I manually update Quicktime for new versions I uninstall the Apple Software Updater. I would of been SERIOUSLY upset if I was affected by this darn Safari download thing.
Not often that Apple gets criticized now is it.
I don’t know if ignorant is the right word. They know exactly what they are doing and surely hear about the complaints, but just want to drive their software as much as they can. So not really ignorant, just set in their ways.
Nope, not too often. But it just goes to show that there are other people besides the fanboys out there.
I truly hope you’re right, but I do think this will hurt their image more than they currently realize, especially in the long term.