Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

Agreed.
Apple Software Update is a plague. Apple should be ashamed. It keeps installing behind my back on various computers I use(d), even when I uncheck the option for it. Happened recently when I installed Safari 3.1, for example. Another time, it also installed on my computer when a friend of mine plugged her iPod on my computer (although I didn't check what she did exactly).
Likewise, I once updated Quicktime through Apple Software Update, and it changed my settings, and made it automatically open with Windows... Great. ¬_¬

This is pretty standard behavior for them. When I used to use Windows and had QuickTime installed, they would try to force iTunes on me every time I wanted to update QuickTime due to security issues. I finally said to hell with that and uninstalled QuickTime altogether.

Funny because I just got an notification about a Safari update and there was no itunes or quicktime update listed. Too bad I forgot to take a screenshot.

It's worth mentioning that you can tell it to stop nagging you to update iTunes (or Safari) when you just want to update QuickTime. You just have to tell it to ignore that item.

Unfortunately, it only ignores that particular item, not the channel. So while it'll keep things uncluttered while you wait for the next QuickTime update, the next time they bump iTunes it'll offer you the download again.

Such a shameful event, apple is a greedy, unethical company, and this shows exactly that.

If users don't know what they are installing, how would apple expect them to use it anyway? What a pointless bs practice.

I totally reject iTunes/quicktime on my windows machines, it slows my system down ridiculously.

Agreed completely.
I consider ITunes more or less malware/spyware, because that stupid update manager keeps trying to install it.

Ben has a related post here:
http://www.bengoodger.com/2008/03/updaters.html

David, Ben's post isn't really related at all. He's pointing out some usability shortcomings of update services (we've fixed Firefox's to be much better for Firefox 3) while I'm talking about abusive marketing and distribution practices.

- A

Well alright... loosely related then... :)

Whether or not you think this is ethical, it's a bit desperate isn't it?

Firefox got where it was today with grass roots marketing, and by putting out an awesome browser.

And here we have a multi-billion dollar company, and the best they can come up with is pushing it via a software update, leaving the check box ticked and hoping people will use it?

Give it a few days and Apple will be announcing how many 'millions' of people have downloaded the new version of Safari.

I'll be sticking to Firefox on my Mac thanks. Apple: must try harder!

Apple's sneakiness did not start today...

Yeah, the solution is simple: two lists, properly labeled... with the new-to-you stuff unchecked by default.

• Make the updates opt-out.
• Make the new programs opt-in.
• Make the difference between the two obvious.

Problem solved.

Apple is a for-profit institution. Their products are high quality and user friendly, but at the end of the day they need to push their apps out somehow to make money. Is it inconsiderate to push out an update warning for a product the user hasn't installed? Yes, but the user has the choice to not install it. Is it's Apple's fault if they blindly accept the update to find a new piece of software installed? No. The user has a choice between accepting the offering or ignoring it. I believe you can even select to not see updates for the product ever again (at least you can on the Mac platform's software update service).

Again, software companies are in a dilemma between appeasing their users and filling the bottomline. Firefox can afford to sit around and wait for people to adopt it. Apple needs Safari to make returns on the investment. It might not be the best citizenship in the software world, but it is par-the-course for every software provider that has to turn a profit. Live with it...it's not like Apple is holding a gun to people's heads and making them install it.

Really, all this uproar just seems like whining about the fact that Apple could eat away at Firefox's market share just by Trojan horsing Safari through iTunes users. Just continue to make the great product you already have even greater. The latest Minefield nightly blows away Safari on both platforms.

Ricky, my lad. You completely missed the essence of the complaints. This has NOTHING to do with Firefox's market share and EVERYTHING to do with Apple's dishonest methods of distributing their software AND creating distrust in the manner in which software is and should be updated. Try and stay with the program, lad.

Ricky, my lad. You completely missed the essence of the complaints. This has NOTHING to do with Firefox's market share and EVERYTHING to do with Apple's dishonest methods of distributing their software AND creating distrust in the manner in which software is and should be updated. Try and stay with the program, lad.

I do understand, but I say that Apple is a for-profit institution and a free program really isn't free unless it is open-source. If Apple wants to advertise their other offerings, that is their prerogative to meet the bottomline. Besides, other companies have done far more insidious things than ask a user to install a solid standards-compliant browser alternative to Internet Explorer. The updates don't install in the background and the user is availed the opportunity to not install the offering AND even can ask not to see any more offerings from that product again.

I understand where you guys are coming from, this is an inconvenience to the user that a update service for iTunes is warning you when a non-iTunes update is available. But from the business perspective, things like this are compromises to user experience that for-profit companies have to make sometimes.

Actually, no, the user can't ask to not see more offerings from that product again, unless Apple has changed this behavior very recently. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the user can only ask that it not bug them about that particular version of the product again.

I use the updater for QuickTime and Safari, and don't have iTunes on my computer. Every time it offers me an iTunes update, I tell it to ignore it. It then stops telling me about that iTunes update. Eventually, Apple releases a new version of iTunes, and it asks me if I want to install it. So I tell it to ignore that one. Lather, rinse, repeat. It's seriously annoying.

Does the "Apple Software Update" window open by itself (in the foreground) and does it immediately look like c|net screenshot? If yes to both it does definitively border on malware behavior, but from the other side, due to missing user protection for the case user presses Enter or clicking onto the position of the "Install 2 items" the moment that window appears.

Does the "Apple Software Update" window open by itself (in the foreground) and does it immediately look like c|net screenshot? If yes to both it does definitively border on malware behavior, but from the other side, due to missing user protection for the case user presses Enter or clicking onto the position of the "Install 2 items" the moment that window appears.

Synonymous: yes, it does.

I am also familiar with the problem, Apple always offers me the "I-Tunes + Quicktime" "update", although I never used I-Tunes.
What I find even more annoying is that after every update Quicktime hangs around in the system tray again (until I stop it from doing this) and I have just one more Desktop icon I don't need. What sane person would want to start Quicktime from a desktop icon? The only way you can use it (because it doesn't have a library) is to double-click a file to open it with Quicktime.
I am also annoyed that Safari 3.1 (in the Safari/Windows betas you could still opt out from this) installed some stupid Bonjour service. I don't have a network printer and I strictly don't need just another service running just to have it running.

Apple's hard- and software may look nice, but it becomes a pitbull when you don't do what it wants you to.

I am also familiar with the problem, Apple always offers me the "I-Tunes + Quicktime" "update", although I never used I-Tunes.
What I find even more annoying is that after every update Quicktime hangs around in the system tray again (until I stop it from doing this) and I have just one more Desktop icon I don't need. What sane person would want to start Quicktime from a desktop icon? The only way you can use it (because it doesn't have a library) is to double-click a file to open it with Quicktime.
I am also annoyed that Safari 3.1 (in the Safari/Windows betas you could still opt out from this) installed some stupid Bonjour service. I don't have a network printer and I strictly don't need just another service running just to have it running.

Apple's hard- and software may look nice, but it becomes a pitbull when you don't do what it wants you to.

Aaron, thanks for info, now I'll wait for Safari without such addons - I do not have any printer.

Aaron, thanks for info, now I'll wait for Safari without such addons - I do not have any printer.

Aaron, Safari uses Bonjour to discover websites on the local network and display them as bookmarks. It's not just a printer-discovery system, it's an all-kinds-of-services-discovery system.

I think it's wrong to think that updates are only for security, that they should always have an implicit high level of trust, and that the same degree of trust should carry across all vendors. Most apps which I update through their own updaters are NEVER for security reasons; it is for new functionality. No update should have implicit trust. (Even if it fixes a security problem, might my configuration already protect me from that potential security risk? might the update break necessary functionality for me?) The notion that updates are solely for security, that they should and must be trusted, and that they should be applied quickly, if not automatically, arises solely because Microsoft had made their system such a wide open attack vector. I see no reason to bend and narrow every software developers' intentions to Microsoft's problems. I believe it is actually better to live in a world where the user is still responsible for reviewing and understanding every update and installation they make for themselves (even when the majority may be ignorant or lazy) rather than believe everyone should conform to one perspective in the hopes that everyone trusts everybody blindly.

For more than a year now Apple has been using Software Update to push iTunes + QuickTime "updates" even to people who don't already have iTunes installed, and yet John Lilly and Asa are only raising a stink about it now that the exact same mechanism is being used to push Safari. Were you both actually ignorant of the fact that Apple has been using this deplorable "update" practice for quite some time? Or are you being disingenuous in claiming that your criticism of the practice now has nothing to do with Safari per se?

Ignorant or disingenuous? You decide.

It makes me question what other crap Apple would try to trick me into if I installed Safari.