Safari, the browser hijacker?
I know I posted this before, but I was leaving a comment on an article today and I feel compelled to blog my comment…
@MasterofOpera.. you WANT Quicktime? Wow…. I blogged about this awhile back, now admittedly, I work for Microsoft, so I will probably get smacked for being totally uncredible, but I do carry a Macbook Pro (even into MS meetings hehe) and I think that gives me a little credibility towards being unbiased.
I think the thing is, it’s not that Safari is a bad product, even though I won’t use it even on the mac….. it’s that it is a subversive way to try and install it. I had installed Safari for Windows on my main XP machine at home, and when I saw the update thing I wasn’t surprised. Then I went to use my wife’s computer for something and the update box was up with Safari, I thought maybe she had installed it and didn’t think about it again until the 64 bit Vista machine I had just built from a clean install asked me to install it after installing iTunes. I was blown away. Stop taking the Apple fanboy side and ask yourself this.
What would happen to us (Microsoft) today if we tried to install IE8 with the Zune software for example. Me thinks we wouldn’t get away with that one too well. So as far as I know, standards of computer etiquette are not unique to the company.
Anyone that pretends that MOST users don’t just click next on those things is fooling themselves. My mom, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, friend next door….all those guys probably would just go, “oh, it’s an update…ok” Then they see a new icon on their desktop and go “What’s that?” They click it, and another box comes up saying “Make this your default browser?” and they go, hmmm, ok, and click that.
I am not saying these are the brightest users on the planet, but it’s a COMMON USER. Apple making this the default behavior, based on knowing research that this is a common user pattern, makes this NO different than the Browser Hijacking crap that went on 5 years ago. Seriously.
If you need an analogy to make it stick, Apple no more expects people to pay attention to that dialog as Best Buy expects you to mail in your rebates. That’s just the facts ma’am.
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