Oh for the Love of God!

Of course. To a free­tard free­dom is the right to play by their rules.

Amen brother, amen.

The really funny part is this: “With that change, I think I’d be pretty happy to let the Apple Software Update ser­vice back on my Windows machine.”

That makes it per­sonal. Instead of “Windows users are so fuck­ing con­fused by a check­box that they can’t be trusted with the hor­ri­ble respon­si­bil­ity of installing a browser,” it becomes “I, Aza, am so fuck­ing con­fused by a check­box that I can’t be trusted with the hor­ri­ble respon­si­bil­ity of installing a browser.”

Nope, not at all. The prin­ci­ple is sim­ple, it’s like when you sign up at a web­site — the “receive our weekly newslet­ter” check­box should be unchecked by default (it often isn’t but it should be). People shouldn’t be tricked (or defaulted) into receiv­ing optional stuff (soft­ware, email, etc.) they don’t want or require. If they want it they can check the box and make a hope­fully informed choice to accept it.

After read­ing a lot of the com­ments float­ing around the inter­web, I have come to the con­clu­sion that the real issue is there should be no check boxes what­so­ever, any­where. According to the Windows users on the forums, every­body just clicks through screens with­out spend­ing the time to digest what exactly it is they are updat­ing or installing.

So I think Apple should revise the Software Update again, but this time it should just be a win­dow with a big progress indi­ca­tor and no words except “Done” when every­thing has fin­ished installing. If they want to include an advanced view that lists what is going to be installed they should hide it in the menus where no aver­age Windows users can stum­ble on its con­fus­ing nature.

This issue of “To be checked, or not checked.” is really a moot issue. What Apple defines as “new and sep­a­rate” and “just an upgrade” is up to Apple. If you don’t like it, get a refund.

This amuses the heck out of me. I can see Asa’s point, it prob­a­bly shouldn’t be defaulty checked. However, it’s not the end of the world and con­sid­er­ing what Apple already did, I’d say that’s more than what most com­pa­nies would do.

However, if you want to get nit picky, we could walk thru Firefox and see where things are defaulted to checked…cause appar­ently they don’t trust me to make such choices as “Always check­ing to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup”.

Evil? per­haps

Oh,…cause your “angry”, I get it now.

@Adam Reading Asa’s post, he’s defi­natly not treat­ing it like it’s the end of the world either.

I actu­ally agree with Asa. The thing is called “Software Update”, so you expect it to update your soft­ware in default mode. Can do other things if you ask it, but in default mode, it shouldn’t mess with your sys­tem and install other things.

David S.

Nope, not at all. The prin­ci­ple is sim­ple, it’s like when you sign up at a web­site — the “receive our weekly newslet­ter” check­box should be unchecked by default (it often isn’t but it should be). People shouldn’t be tricked (or defaulted) into receiv­ing optional stuff (soft­ware, email, etc.) they don’t want or require. If they want it they can check the box and make a hope­fully informed choice to accept it.

So you agree that, as other’s have pointed out, the check­box to always check if FireFox is the default browser, is “trick­ing” users. Because I sure as hell have seen users bounce back and forth between IE and FF, select­ing each as the default every time one launches.

It has been seri­ously hilar­i­ous watch­ing the Firefox guys the last sev­eral months. From the embar­rassed reac­tion to rev­e­la­tions of how much the “free browser com­pany” makes from Google each year (A LOT), to the “Acid3 is use­less now that we can’t meet it, besides, we are busy with Firefox 3 “, and now this whole snit about an Apple browser’s check­box on Windows machines…its great entertainment!

Note also that when load­ing Firefox (or any other browser, for that mat­ter) blindly click­ing through the dia­logue boxes that pop up results in Firefox being set as the default browser! Perhaps we should demand that Mozilla remove this dia­logue box imme­di­ately, lest some­one not know how to click the ‘no’ button.

I fail to see what about Asa’s post is worth such poi­soned outrage.

Joel:

The Angry Drunk is both ine­bri­ated and choleric.

Duh.

He’s also right on!!!

Don’t you think the whole default browser ques­tion is slightly smaller in scope than installing an appli­ca­tion which may or may not affect the per­for­mance or secu­rity of your machine?

The real ques­tion: what does the user intends to do. When open­ing a browser that must be down­loaded from the Internet to install, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the user also wants that browser as their default.

Look me in the eye and tell me that, by updat­ing QuickTime or iTunes, the user also intends to install a Web Browser.

I’m as big a fan­boi as the next, but Apple’s wrong here.

Apple’s behav­ing like a real fuck­ing pusher here. Funny how the very drunk defend­ing this prac­tice also had a go at Mozilla for not com­pet­ing on merit. Blatantly, shov­ing a browser down people’s throats isn’t exactly com­pet­ing on merit. I may be a Mac/Safari user, but I’m not a syco­phant. Apple’s wrong here.

You all real­ize that this isn’t Apple try­ing to pull some grand con­spir­acy to make Safari everyone’s default browser, right? I

I agree with Asa Dotzler, Apple needs to stop check­ing Safari’s box on Software Update, if the box is checked you can inad­ver­tently down­load Safari along with the QuickTime or iTunes update du jour. A large per­cent­age of peo­ple will just click the Install but­ton with­out notic­ing, because they trust Software Update. And the name is pretty much self-explanatory, it’s sup­posed to update pre­vi­ously installed soft­ware. Now, to avoid down­load­ing new soft­ware you don’t want, you have to remem­ber to uncheck the darn box. Every god­damn time. Of course you can click on the Tools menu to ignore the selected update but the solu­tion is not that straight­for­ward. I hap­pen to know the trick because I use a Mac, Windows users are not sup­posed to know the ins and outs of Software Update. The update mech­a­nism should be straight­for­ward and wor­thy of their trust.

“So you agree that, as other’s have pointed out, the check­box to always check if FireFox is the default browser, is “trick­ing” users.”

If you want to use Firefox as your default browser, the “Always check­ing to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup” thingy won’t be an annoyance.

If Safari is your default browser, and you hap­pen to launch Firefox, it will pester you (“hey, how come I’m not the default browser?”). Most likely it will hap­pen just once, you are pre­sented with a dia­logue, you can uncheck the box and click yes/no. I don’t see this as a prob­lem, Firefox is not trick­ing users, it’s easy to avoid and no new soft­ware is installed with­out the user’s con­sent tak­ing advan­tage of a moment’s inattention.

Considering the way Windows deals with the “default browser”, that’s actu­ally a pretty major issue.

However, it is hyp­o­crit­i­cal in the extreme for Asa to point fin­gers at Apple when they pull the same kind of shit. Firefox’s default is to suck all the per­sonal data out of IE.

Why do I now HAVE to install Firefox’s crash reporter? It’s not part of Firefox, and I hate the fuck­ing thing, it means that FF crashes take longer to recover from. How is that okay, espe­cially in its cur­rent com­pletely invis­i­ble form, when Apple’s now clearly-marked install of Safari isn’t?

I guess Asa will make this all clear, as to why their “opt-out” is okay, and Apple’s isn’t.

telos:

Apple’s behav­ing like a real fuck­ing pusher here.

Wait, what? Did you just actu­ally com­pare Apple with a drug dealer? I thought the “mal­ware” line was retarded, but that takes the fuck­ing cake. What’s next, “Steve Jobs imports Peruvian sex slaves.” Well, to be fair, that one is true; but you didn’t hear it from me.

Sorry, hit enter pre­ma­turely there.

As I was say­ing, Apple’s not “in the wrong” here because they prob­a­bly didn’t even real­ize this would be an issue.

I doubt it ever occurred to them to put Safari in its own cat­e­gory. Likewise, I doubt it occurred to them to uncheck it by default, because, unless my updater is bro­ken, every­thing is checked by default.

Also, you should learn to fuck­ing read before you click on something.

But hey, that’s just me. I think stu­pid peo­ple should be killed, and I think that while, yes, it’s prob­a­bly the “right thing to do” to make it unchecked by default, I also think any­one who bitches about it exten­sively is, in fact, stupid.

As a UI Designer, I can assure you that Windows (and Mac, for that mat­ter) users are indeed so fuck­ing con­fused by check­boxes that they can’t be trusted to fig­ure out that they have to uncheck a by-default checked box to not get Safari. Apple, of course, knows this, which is why the box is checked.

Here’s how it goes. I down­loaded a prod­uct by a par­tic­u­lar com­pany. That I use once in a blue moon to watch videos on the web. For that I get a big pop-up in the mid­dle of my screen ask­ing me to down­load 2 pieces of soft­ware I don’t want at all, and maybe an update for that par­tic­u­lar pro­gram. To get the update to my pro­gram I actu­ally have to uncheck boxes to avoid installing two mas­sive pro­grams that may alter how my sys­tem func­tions (a dif­fer­ent media player comes up when I play media, and a dif­fer­ent web browser comes up when I open an HTML file). The fact I don’t like this makes me con­fused in some way? What else do Apple fan boys put up with?

I have never once had the updater open with­out me click­ing on it, and I use iTunes and Quicktime with reg­u­lar­ity. Maybe my updater is out of date, Iunno, but that’s never hap­pened for me.

Andrew, you mean Apple makes you UNCHECK A FUCKING BOX??!!!!111

OMGWTFKHAAAAN!!