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Apple’s Sneakiness Did Not Start Today

The entire blogosphere is up in arms against Apple, for their attempt to sneak the Safari browser onto Windows machines, via Apple Update.   Everybody is shocked, after all we’re more used to such behavior from the (Micro)Borg, but Apple are supposed to be the good guys…

Except they aren’t, and have never been.  The sneakiness hasn’t started today, it just went unnoticed for a good reason.  What’s wrong with the screen image below?

Safari selected as default?  Nope.  Nothing new there, that’s what everybody’s talking about today.  What’s really wrong is the selection of iTunes.  Wait! – you may say, this is the iTunes update program in the first place … Wrong!

I happen to be one of those weirdos who don’t have iTunes on my computer.  This is a Vista PC (no, I am not happy with it, but that’s another story) and I’ve never ever had iTunes installed. In fact I don’t like to have Quicktime either, for its stickiness (close to impossible to kill if off the systray), but I need it as some videos are only available in this format.  

But why is this thing pushing iTunes on my machine, without any config option to unselect it once and for all?  It’s just as much of an aggression as the Safari invasion today.

Now, it’s the top of TechMeme – but where is FSJ? 

 

Update (3/22):  A commenter below warned:

Be careful not to touch the “Thin Skin of Apple Fans”.:-).

Boy, was he right.  Look at otherwise reasonably objective Dennis Howlett come to Apple’s defense, who is turning it into a Mozilla issue, talks about “Badmouthing the competition”.  Dennis, you know Apple is out of line, if this was Microsoft, you and I both would condemn it, like we did in the past. 

 

Related posts: VentureBeat, InfoWorld, Asa Dotzler , MacDailyNews, InformationWeek, ReadWriteWeb, Brandon Live,

Comments

  1. In regard to your frustration with the Quicktime system tray icon and its “stickiness”, I would like to respectfully ask you to give me a bloody break. Now, I understand that it is annoying, and that there is no reason whatsoever wherefore it should be placed in startup. However, it is really quite easy to go into “msconfig” (just go to Start >> Run, and then type in “msconfig” sans quotation marks); from there, all you have to do is hit the “Startup” tab, and then deselect Quicktime. It shouldn’t give you any more trouble.

    Cheers,
    Ioannus de Verani

  2. Yes, it’s easy. Except that it comes back next time I start Quicktime and stays in the systray again… and doing the msconfig routine all the time is just ridiculous.

    (Btw. this is an issue on XP, not Vista)

  3. Hum. I run Quicktime all the time, yet it never shows up in my tray. It is possible that it is just some stupid mess-up that Windows is making. I have never known the operating system to be very consistent in its behaviour, computer to computer (unfortunately, I am unable to afford anything better).

  4. I’ve had this behaviour for years on two XP laptops, so I developed a dislike for Quicktime even though it doesn’t do this on the Vista machine. But clearly this was just a sideline to the main point, which is that while everyone’s crying foul for Apple pushing Safari, it has been doing the same with iTunes for a long time… but no-one noticed (since they have iTunes anyway)

  5. Be careful not to touch the “Thin Skin of Apple Fans”.:-).

    Article from NYT:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/business/22online.html?ref=technology

  6. Yes, I know it’s a religious cult:-)
    Funny thing is, I praise Apple repeatedly, simply for having the consumer in mind while designing their product. But it does not mean we should give them a free ride…

  7. Sure you can uncheck it every time it happens.

    Just like you can delete spam every time it appears in your inbox.

    This is spam.

    This is bad behaviour.

  8. we all know apple is just as evil as microsoft.

    the people who don’t know. won’t ever know.

    so why bother trying to tell them?

  9. @meh: that is really quite stupid. To assert that someone who has an opinion strongly is somehow incapable to recognising logic and proof is absurd.

    The only time when an opinion (such as, “Microsoft rules! Apple Sucks!”) cannot be changed is when the persuasive information given is not based on fact. Opinions cannot alter other opinions, but facts _can_ alter opinions.

  10. Sorry, I meant “of recognising”, not “to recognising”

  11. I did notice the apple update trying to install safari on my computer, did you also notice the little information bar telling you how fantastic safari is? Yeah i think i will stick with trusty old firefox!

  12. There is an option in quicktime config to remove it from the systray. It’s burried but it’s there.

  13. Divinis_Ira says

    You would hope logic and proof could influence those with a strong opinion but with Mac-Nazis and PC-Nazis that usually isn’t the case.

    Ioannus de Verani | March 22nd, 2008 at 11:43 am

    @meh: that is really quite stupid. To assert that someone who has an opinion strongly is somehow incapable to recognizing logic and proof is absurd.

    The only time when an opinion (such as, “Microsoft rules! Apple Sucks!”) cannot be changed is when the persuasive information given is not based on fact. Opinions cannot alter other opinions, but facts _can_ alter opinions.

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Trackbacks

  1. […] by default. This doesn’t stop at Safari either. Oh no, silly people! This has also happened for those that don’t have iTunes installed. Damn Apple! Is this how we do business now? Even John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, thinks Apple’s […]

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