Yostivanich

Apple which is leg­endary in some cir­cles as being described that it can do no wrong, well that just proven as not true today. The big story of the day is that Apple pushed onto Win­dows users via the Apple Soft­ware Update, Safari 3.1. What occured is that if you have iTunes or Quick­Time you have an option when installing either of those to install the Apple Soft­ware Update. This appli­ca­tion as even described by Apple is designed to Update your soft­ware, not to install new soft­ware. What hap­pened is that if users weren’t pay­ing enough atten­tion as one of my very tech savy friends did today, when updat­ing iTunes or Quick­time, Safari installs even if you didn’t have Safari installed.

This was a rather upset­ting move by Apple in the minds of many peo­ple. Now granted the instal­la­tion isn’t spy­ware, won’t hurt your com­puter, is pro­mot­ing a diver­sity of browsers and cer­tainly not a bad browser at that. Also your default browser remains unchanged, but that doesn’t change the fact of the mat­ter that soft­ware was installed in a rather dubi­ous man­ner. The soft­ware was installed via a pro­gram designed to update soft­ware not install com­pletely new soft­ware on your com­puter. This in my mind makes Apple look either like a monop­o­lis­tic com­pany using it’s power through iTunes to push other soft­ware onto people’s com­puter or like a spy­ware com­pany not being com­pletely upfront about it’s inten­tion or very clear when installing software.

Some colum­nists have said that users should pay atten­tion as to what soft­ware is and isn’t being installed. I agree with that posi­tion 100 per­cent, no ques­tion users should be aware of what is and isn’t installed on their com­puter. Now I want you to all go and ask some­one not so tech­ni­cally lit­er­ate what is installed on their com­puter. If they can name beyond 10 pro­grams, I would be sur­prised. Then have them go look at what is actu­ally installed and see if they even know what about half of them do. If they are like most of my non-tech savvy friends they won’t know. Yes, peo­ple should be aware of what they are click­ing on and what they are and not accept­ing. One of the largest com­plaints about Win­dows Vista Secu­rity Dia­log, it pops up so often peo­ple become used to it and click accept no mat­ter what. Same thing here, we are con­di­tioned to click “Okay” and keep going no mat­ter what.

This is the prob­lem, com­pa­nies already push soft­ware onto our com­put­ers as is. Why do we want one more com­pany start­ing. Granted on the Win­dows world our com­put­ers come pre-installed with bloat­ware, and other com­pa­nies have done it in the past. Does that give Apple a free pass to do what­ever they want? No of course not. The ques­tion here isn’t whether or not com­pa­nies have done it in the past or what is or isn’t pre-installed, the ques­tion is about what Apple is cur­rently doing. I would love to have some­one tell me how installing soft­ware via a pro­gram designed to update soft­ware is not being devious.