Apple pushes Safari

Watch out, Windows iTunes users: Apple is pushing, via its security updates feature, Safari 3.1 onto Windows users. You can opt-out of it, but if people just click OK on the default, they’ll get it. Ed Bott rants about it here. (Amusingly the report, at least for me, is accompanied by an Apple advert.)

I’ve got IE7 and FF on my PCs already. I don’t need or want another web browser. It was rude enough that Apple insisted Quicktime be bundled with iTunes… no wonder the size blew out from 19Mb to 33Mb.

But now they’re pushing Safari onto people as well?! No thanks.

7 thoughts on “Apple pushes Safari”

  1. Chris Till

    >> via its security updates feature

    I thought they ported “Software Update” to Windows, they’re no longer using any “security update” checking mechanism within individual products?

    The only thing I’m seeing wrong here is they have obviously made Safari appear “ticked” by default?

    Apple have made it clear over the past few weeks they were going to give Windows users the option of installing Safari via Software Update so it’s not like they’re secretly doing it 😉

    That said, Software Update itself is an optional component as well when you install iTunes on Windows – so you could not have it on there and never be bothered by this.

    iTunes has needed QuickTime ever since they integrated video functionality into it for the iPod videos and Apple TV.

  2. Philip

    Hilarious. Those nasty Apple folks. How dare a company force users of a program to endure the installation of a specific web browser? It’s unheard of…

  4. daniel Post author

    Yeah, it’s a curious piece of revisionism, claiming that Win95 had IE. IIRC IE1 was only available in Microsoft Plus, a separate purchase. IE2 (which I recall supported tables!!!) came out later for download.

  5. Chris Till

    >> IIRC IE1 was only available in Microsoft Plus

    Yup, though they did quickly integrate IE into Windows 95C which was a quick update a few months later that added FAT32 support. But the IE integration was shocking: you run setup on a brand spanking new machine which would boot into MiniWIN (a stripped down Windows 3.1 purely for Win95 setup), go through the Setup wizard, the installation would then take place, you’d boot into Windows 95 to your new desktop… and then IE’s setup which was dumped onto your hard disk would suddenly fire up with a customised welcome dialog that would say something like “Windows still needs to finish installing before you use your computer” and then the so called “already integrated IE” would then get installed.

    Of course we all know by Windows 98 IE *was* integrated into Windows – not as a true web service for the whole system to use but sprayed throughout the operating system like a cancer, and anything and everything hacked up to use it in every way possible so that it was now a vital part of the system… even tasks that are totally and utterly inappropriate for a web browser such as Windows Update!!!

    God forbid how utterly furious I’ve been when I’ve had Windows 2000 servers utterly screwed because IE was fried which basically renders the entire system unusable and worse yet unupdatable bar manually downloading and installing service packs. And of course we can’t even uninstall IE to fix it, we either spend months trying to hack it working again (and chances of succeeding pretty remote) or completely rebuilding the darned thing… which of course I’ve had to do! All because of a web browser for $#$@s sake!!!! GRRRR!!!

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