Have you suddenly found Safari automatically downloaded and installed on your Windows Vista or Windows XP machine? If so, you’re not alone. Apple started pushing the Safari for Windows download and installation through their iTunes for Windows update this week, and reports are starting to come in that Windows users who never intended to have Safari for Windows downloaded onto their machines are suddenly finding Safari there, automatically downloaded and installed.
It is almost unheard of for a company to use a product update system as a conduit for pushing a completely different product, and Apple is taking their lumps for it now.
“What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong. It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that’s bad — not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole Web,” blasted none other than John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, whose own products include Firefox.
Now, to be fair, one can easily uncheck the box to download Safari when it was presented in the iTunes for Windows update screen.
But, to be equally fair, one has come to trust these updates – to trust that what comes through the update mechanism are, well, updates – maybe even important updates – not wholly new software. So that it isn’t completely unreasonable for users to simply accept all of the updates pushed from Apple without looking too closely
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Until now.
It also wasn’t altogether a surprise that Apple slipped Safari into their iTunes for Windows updates – at least not for Apple watchers. Last summer, when Apple announced Safari for Windows, Jobs even foreshadowed the move, by asking, rhetorically, “But how are we going to distribute this? We don’t really talk to these [Windows] customers, do we? What are we gonna do?” He then went on to answer his own question, “Well, it turns out there are one million downloads of iTunes a day. Turns out there’s been over half a billion downloads of iTunes to Windows.”
Still, for many Windows users, it’s been a big surprise.
One user summed up what many are feeling when he said that he was “Feeling tricked by Apple… Safari browser installed on my Vista machine that I didn’t ask for.”
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Cosmicbunny- so it actually downloaded Opera on your machine instead of Safari? Now that’s cool!
From what I seen of Safari on my XP machine it’s not even as advanced as IE. I was really disappointed with it. You can get a QT clone at Filehippo, Miro for podcasts and who really wants Apple’s proprietary lock on their music? Don’t be a sheep, go Open Source!
To cosmicbunny…That’s not the point of the article. The point was that it was an “unasked for” update that Apple “pushed” to users of iTunes. If I wanted Safari I would have downloaded it from Apple.
I, for one, appreciated the ease of getting the best browser for me onto my vista machine!
I learned awhile ago to pay attention during updates because several programs try to install other things besides the update.
I don’t use Itunes, but have downloaded the latest Safari – it’s very fast and uses less Ram on my
laptop, than FireFox 2.0.12, which is my favorite browser. I can’t wait for a stable version of FF 3,
which will use even fewer resources.
I learned a long time ago to not automatically accept Windows updates and have even had problems with CCleaner wanting to install yahoo toolbar.
The proper approach, for me, at least, is to allow the updates, but not their automatic installation – read them first.
I’ve always had that problem with Apple. I only want QuickTime, not all the other junk, and always get itunes and Ipod no matter what I check. I just uninstall them after. But it does tick me off. Ask me if I want the stuff, not just the toolbars, but the programs. And then they start when you boot up, I hate that. But I have to have QT for some of the programs and games I run.
Kinda makes me glad I only run iTunes every so often. I’m sure it’s been a year since I’ve even run it, much less updated. I may have to check out this Safari browser — and now that I know about the update, I may go that route and kill two birds with one stone! *grin* But at least I can say I knew about it beforehand…
I had this happen with IE 7, too. Leave me to my internets in peace.