VentureBeat

Solacetech said:

Apple assumes they have a great browser and everyone should/will use it, or else!

bob said:

wwwohh thanks for saving the world from the evil evil apple! :-)

Macgravy said:

there isn’t anything sneaky about this..god, they have been doing this for years and for that ceo of a company that competes with Safari to get up and blog about this and for the others to actually cover this as some sort of news, just make me realize that there is some sort of mafia$oft plot to spread FUD again….just how much do yu’al get paid from gates and co..????…

all you stupid peecee people have to do is uncheck the boxes….god…how stupid you people are..

oh…i’m sorry, your peecee clones…you don’t know what to do unless billy and company tell you to do it….oh well

MG Siegler said:

@macgravy - that was more or less my point in case you missed it.

Wolke Snow said:

This is not a discussion about technical, but about business issues. (Yes, users could uncheck Safari installation *if* they would pay attention.)

Using a dominant position in one market to enter another has been ruled illegal in Microsoft’s case (and others) by US and foreign regulators. Apple dominates via iTunes. Why should it be allowed to bring Safari to every PC?

What would you say if Microsoft automatically installed Silverlight with the next Internet Explorer update? Right now it has to fund lots of expensive sites (Olympic Games, …) to get Silverlight market penetration. It is forced to uncouple the IE market from the Silverlight market, although from a technical and logical perspective these two are much closer than a music player and a web browser.

Cort Sims said:

I love Safari, hello, it is a great browser. I cannot say the same for IE. Apple can send me free programs like this anytime they choose. For the rest of you…uncheck the box! Apple is really trying to sell Macs here, not software, and in my case at least they will succeed the next time I buy a computer.

Julius said:

For one, it’s far superior to IE. Just view “nytimes.com” and compare what you see in Safari against what you see in IE (6 or 7). This is especially interesting because the Times was supposed to have gone into some “technology agreement” with Microsoft to present improved text on the web when their site is viewed with Microsoft’s own browser. Yet, in truth, the Safari experience is far easier on the eyes.

Now, for about the stealthy-ness of force feeding the installation of Safari when downloading iTunes, big deal. It’s no different than Google’s toolbar piggybacking on Adobe’s Shockwave installer. Is there a means to pass on the install of Safari? Yes. Is there a means to uninstall the software, post-installation? Yes.

Worse thing that can happen? You actually switch.

randomblurbs said:

I don’t really care if people get Safari installed on their PCs because they don’t read the fine print. Fine print is used by every company and everyone complains about it.

What I find interesting is how Apple fans have a double standard when it comes iCompany’s business practices.

Who only allows their OS to run on their hardware? Big Bad Microsoft? But iFans ignore this, and forget that everyone can’t afford a shiny $1700 laptop.

Who locked out developers from their iGadgets, at least until it generated too much bad press? Did Microsft ever do this? Nope.

Who only allows their proprietary DRM to be used on the iPods? Verizon, Comcast, Amazon? Nope.

And for all of you who say (maybe rightfully so) that MS took their user interface from Apple, use you mouse and GUI to surf the web and look at the research done at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Thats right Xerox, the copier company.

To be fair to iCompany, they are no worse than other companies. They do produce innovative designs and sleek user interfaces. They have also built a GREAT brand.

But how fair and open minded are the holy-than-thou iZealots? They sound more like religious sect when someone points out a flaw in iCompany or one of their iToys. Maybe Apple’s Fanboys (and girls) should wake up and take a look at iCompany. Or maybe they are just superficial and blinded by the glare off of all their iGadgets.

I have nothing against Apple. In the end though they are company and they are in business to make MONEY just like all the other companies that they are listed with on Nasdaq. That is not a bad thing, money makes the work go round. iZealots need to see past the glare and see Apple including all its goods and bads. In cae they can think of any, does anyone remeber the Newton? Then again it is the grand daddy of the iPhone, and the iPhone is pretty awesome!

MG Siegler said:

@wolke - true it is about business, I just found the blowup odd since a lot of companies do the exact same thing and have for a long time — including Apple.

@Cort - While I agree with you that Safari is great, some folks, for whatever reason may not want it on their computers.

@Julius - Again, agreed. Safari is far superior to any browser MS has put out there - we can hope that changes with the upcoming IE8, but I’m naturally skeptical. The rest of your point is just like mine, this is done all the time, no big deal.

@randomblurbs - I agree with most of what you say, a nice summation of why some people can’t stand Mac fanboys. I think your key point is this:

“To be fair to iCompany, they are no worse than other companies. They do produce innovative designs and sleek user interfaces. They have also built a GREAT brand.”

At the end of the day they sometimes get away with stuff that others don’t because they make great products that people — beyond fanboys — love. They did not escape the negativity here though, which I find interesting.

Rafael said:

what’s the big deal? If you don’t want the thing (which is way faster than IE), then remove the dang thing and plod along without it! But I would try it first, before passing judgement beforehand. Who knows? You might even like it.

MG Siegler said:

@rafael - Yeah, pretty much my point.

B.D.Kuchera said:

Apple makes a good computer, but everyone knows that Safari is the biggest piece of trash browser ever made in the history of the internet. It just doesn’t work worth a darn. Apple can’t make two things, a web browser, and a mouse. Two buttons, my friends! Just make a stupid mouse with two buttons standard. Apple, it might actually help your computer sales beyond what you would expect.

First thing I always do when I am at any mac (if given the chance) is to use my own mouse, and download firefox. Thank you Mozilla for your genius! Safari is the first thing I throw in the trash, and that’s ironic because it’s supposed to be the portal to the Internet. If Firefox didn’t run on a mac, I actually wouldn’t even buy a mac ever again.

I can’t tell you how many mac users I know that threw away their Apple mice because they didn’t have two buttons. I was not the exception when I got my new mac book pro (which I am selling because it is a pain, crashes, has the “rainbow wheel of death all the time, and was waaaay too expensive). I hate to say it, but I’m going to sell this sucker and buy at $500 Vista PC. Blech! Atleast it’ll have a two button mouse and runs exponentially more software. However, I must note to Microsoft, your “Do you really really really want to run this program?” alert needs to go away. -Like, forever.

Peace out.

Benjamin Kreuter said:

To all the Apple fanatics posting here about how this is “no big deal” — this behavior is illegal, and is a violation of antitrust laws. Why should Apple be exempt from antitrust laws when AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, and a slew of other companies are not? What difference does it make whether or not Safari is, in your opinion, superior to Internet Explorer? The technical merits of the software have nothing to do with the legality of bundling unrelated packages like this.

Furthermore, the fact that one merely has to “uncheck the box” to not have Safari installed does not make the tactic any more legal or ethical. Opt-out schemes are commonly employed by purveyors of malware, the FTC frowns upon the practice in general, and in particularly egregious cases it has been found to be illegal. There is a way that Apple could have ethically handled this: opt-in for Safari, much in the same way that Firefox downloaders may opt-in for Thunderbird.

When are people going to stop acting like Apple is a company that can speak no evil? From a technical perspective, Apple ships a more secure OS than Microsoft (but still less secure than the BSD system that it was based on), and Safari is more standards compliant than IE or Firefox (as is Konqueror, the browser that Safari is based on). From an ethical perspective, Apple is at its best only on the same level as Microsoft, and at its worst, right down there with SCO.

Dusty Pilot said:

About a month ago I joined iTunes, and downloaded music to play on my laptop. I had no trouble downloading the first time.

Today I downloaded three more songs. The purchases showed up on my bank account, but the songs did not download.

I went to iTunes.com, downloaded again what I thought I needed (maybe an update, or thought that whatever I downloaded the first time was deleted from my computer). I purchased one more song to see if it corrected the problem, but, charged again, and no downloaded song to my playlist. What’s going on?

Dusty

John Daniels said:

It’s not that they just have it bundled…but when you unclick Safari …it just shows up again and again in the updates. I suppose if you delete it ..that it will just show up again.

Well I’ve tried it. It makes some of my favorite sites look a bit strange. Tried it on some I work for and it plays with the tables so it doesn’t look like intended.

They should just let people decide for themselves. Sneaking a huge program on people is not a good way to promote your software. I wonder how many computers didn’t have the memory needed to download it in the fist place.

It’s like Mac users revenge. Anway…I’m going to uninstall it because I will never use it. But I bet that means it will be back in the next update.

Oh and for the record …. I’m not a fan of Quick Time either….once again that insufferable program took over all my settings so I have to change them back to Windows Media player. If it’s wasn’t for iTunes I wouldn’t have it on my computer. Real Player does the same thing….but that I can ban from my computer.