I just read the story over at Cybernet News and thought it was worth commenting about. Apple apparently found a way to shove the Safari browser down the throats of Windows users by bundling it with iTunes update. They report a new version of Safari when a user searches in iTunes for updates. This happens even if Safari has never been installed on the system before.
The update menu states that the user should select the items that he wants to update and Safari is in that list. Many would call it gray-hat or even black-hat tactics to artificially pump up the installed user base of a product this way. Most of the inexperienced users won’t probably even realize what the are installing and assume that Safari is a part of the iTunes suite.
Apple already received some fire from the Mozilla CEO which is in my opinion justified. One should also consider that only a fraction of the users who actually download the Safari browser using the iTunes update will use it actively. If they do not know what it does why should they use it ?
Apple should definitely stop calling it an update and stop providing it in the Apple Software Updater if no previous version of Safari had been installed on the computer. It’s plain wrong in my opinion and lets to much confusion.
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8 Responses to “Apple bundles Safari with iTunes Update”
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[...] been a lot of gripe, grief and mayhem on the web in the last few days regarding Apple’s bundling of the new Safari 3.1 release with updates to [...]
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[...] version of Internet Explorer is nothing but bloat. On the other hand Apple has recently started bundling Safari with iTunes. So every time a user downloads iTunes or any updated version of it, he/she automatically gets [...]
iTunes = bloatware.
I remember cringing everytime I had to load itunes just to put some music on my ipod… I’m glad I switched to the zune.
Sounds a lot like the [insert name here] toolbar trick. This does surprise me coming from Apple though. I would have thought they would be above this.
I never used the Apple Update Software that comes with iTunes so what I do is I uninstall it.
well, iTunes already decided that I needed Quicktime to listen to music, I guess they felt the need to force more things onto their customers… It’s crap, but not surprising. Well, I don’t really need iTunes for anything right now, so off we go, bye bye iTunes.
Time to kill IE!!!
I like the way apple do it..(even it´s not ok) Microsoft is doing the same when bundle windows with all kind of crap programs no one is using anyway..
Don´t take me wrong here, but you know what i mean..
i know what you mean; you’re anti-microsoft and pro-apple. It’s perfectly fine when an upstanding company such as apple does this, why not? It’s apple, and they are perfect. But, it’s bad bad bad when a horrible company like microsoft does it. Get off my internet you stupid hypocrite