Mozilla CEO Objects To Safari Auto Install

hairyfeet writes "Do you use iTunes on Windows? If so you may be getting the gift of Safari from Apple whether you want it or not, and Mozilla CEO John Lilly is not happy about it. After his daughter was offered Safari as a 'bonus update' with a recent update to her iTunes software, Mr. Lilly says on his blog, '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.' He also pointed out the check box is already clicked when you go to update meaning you have to opt out, not in and that it lists Safari as getting an update even if you don't have it installed." Update: 03/21 21:44 GMT by KD : Corrected the name of the Mozilla CEO; also linked directly to his blog.

Comments

Obligatory

[smitingpurpleemu]

If M$ did this there would be a huge uproar and several anti-trust lawsuits. Now that the iPod is working on a monopoly of the mp3 player market, why is what Apple did any different? The quality of the software doesn't matter here.

Re:Obligatory

[fwarren]

I dont think that it is going to matter. Unless it automatically sets itself up as the default web browser.

The truth is, if it becomes the default web browser and sets the homepage to http://msn.com./ The people they want to switch, won't notice the difference. If they don't hijack the default browser settings, no one will even know it is installed. If they do hijack it and MSN is not the hompage, those people will switch back to IE anyways.

What bothers me, is that mozilla feels threatened. If Firefox is the best browser out there, it will continue to gain market share, despite what Microsoft and Apple do.

Re:Obligatory

[Wyzard]

This happens with Bonjour too. If you install Bonjour for Windows (something that ought to be installed on every Windows box, IMO), you'll be offered iTunes and QuickTime as "updates" later.

Calling installation of a new unrelated application an "update" is pretty underhanded.

Re:Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that Vista is an almost total failure is pretty much proof positive that Microsoft has lost most if not all of their monopoly power.

Why? It's proven that Microsoft can't force the world to buy a new Microsoft product, but that's irrelevant; being a monopoly isn't about forcing people to buy your stuff, it's about stopping people buying anyone else's, and the reason Vista is failing is nothing to do with people choosing non-Microsoft software.

Re:Obligatory

[Mongoose Disciple]

I completely agree with you. Many times people say "If Microsoft did this... blah blah" and most of the time the comparison is completely silly. But this time it's spot on. And Apple is just as wrong to do it as Microsoft was (and is).

Actually, I'd say it's even a little worse than that. Microsoft back in the day made the argument that people were starting to expect web browsing to be part of the "basic functionality" of a computer and that it made sense to ship IE as part of Windows. While their dirty pool in the browser wars is now a matter of public record, that piece of it at least did make sense.

There's really no way you can argue that people expect to get a new web browser with an update of iTunes, though.

Re:Obligatory

[ukyoCE]

Exaggerate much? As I said, yes, the ipod is popular. But nowhere near monopoly-level popular. For instance Bloomerg measured the ipod as having 72% of the market in 2007:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aM6PvSxM.wq8&refer=us

In addition, the market is very active with competition. Competitors include Creative, Sandisk, Microsoft, iRiver, Samsung, Samsung, and every cell phone out there these days (which aren't counted against that 72% statistic).

A monopoly is based more on competition than on marketshare. Google 'define:monopoly': "a market in which there are many buyers but only one seller".

Calling the iPod a monopoly is simply absurd.

Compare this to Microsoft in the OS, office document, or PC gaming markets. They've intentionally pushed proprietary formats to prevent anyone from even *attempting* to compete in those markets. Even though Apple may have had a near-monopoly in the portable music market in the year or two after it first came out, they've pushed open formats like AAC and pushed for DRM-free formats so that even their Apple Store songs would be cross-platform and cross-device.

If Apple had gone the route of Microsoft and pushed a tightly controlled proprietary format like WMV, Apple could have extinguished the entire music market and kept it to themselves. Instead they're competing based on merit alone, and still doing quite well.

Which is just one reason that it's surprising to see Apple taking this sleazy "auto-install Safari" route.

He should listen to his own advice

[iamacat]

Firefox shouldn't come bundled with any Google software, set home page to Google without giving a choice of other search providers or popup "set me as a default browser dialog?" unless the user explicitly goes to preferences menu and does so. I do hope Safari doesn't automatically hijack the default browser when it is installed in this manner. I don't see a big security downside to installing it if it needs to be explicitly run by the user rather than automatically activated from a web link.

We need a new title for this

[KevMar]

We need a way to classify software that does this. Call it installware for all I care.

installware: software that installs other products that the user would not expect to be installed as a default option. This includes any 3rd pary addons or 1st party products that are unrelated to the current install.

something that would lable products that instal browser bars too. We know some products work hard to not get listed as spyware or adware. Its time to expand it to include this other crap.

iTunes music store may become HTML

[Ilgaz]

If Apple pushes Safari/Webkit (webkit is important) they may have plans to make iTMS a web browser thing (it is NOT webkit now) and want to rely their own standards supporting framework for rendering.

After I tried using systems default browser (Safari) as my only browser instead of 3rd party and ended up downloading Firefox 2 because some large site required it for extra needed function (Firefox'es sponsor too) I think Mozilla CEO should be the last to talk about "pushing browsers to people".

A Safari.exe in program files if it is not becoming a system default browser with UI tricks shouldn't matter to any browser vendor especially a one which is supposed to be pushing more standards based choices to Windows users. They should be the ones asking their friends like Google, Yahoo about "Why IE and Firefox only? Why not Safari, Opera?" since people started to get seriously irritated about that attitude. It is not serving them at all. A user swearing and downloading firefox.dmg from their established Safari browser won't have good feelings from first minute.

If Apple is still doing "HFS+ on NTFS/FAT" tricks like putting Resources/Dlls to single directory, Safari 3.1 is comparable to single directory contained Opera too.

Does someone doesn't like the fact that some Windows users not being Joe Sixpacks does not use their work because of other concerns? What if those non Joe Sixpacks love Safari?

Re:quicktime also

[Robotech_Master]

I actually like having an auxiliary backup browser. Sometimes a page won't load properly, and I want to try it in a different browser to see if maybe something is broken in one but not in the other. And I'd a lot rather use Safari than Internet Explorer (which is broken on my current winbox anyway).

Re:Who modded this down?

[MrNiceguy_KS]

For that matter, I'm tired of installing QuickTime, then having it pester me with "updates" to install iTunes. If I had wanted to install iTunes, I would have picked the giant "Download Quicktime and iTunes" button instead of hunting for the tiny "Download Quicktime only" button.

Wrong, Apple wants to kill Firefox(graph says it)

[recoiledsnake]

Now that we have that inflammatory title out of the way, lets look at . And no, the pictures are not fake, I saw them in the keynote video at Apple.com a while ago when Safari beta for Windows was announced. I think this is what Mozilla is worried about.

Itunes contains safari already

[goombah99]

It's been said the evolution of all non-unix applications expand until they can do e-mail.

In this case let's look at the capabilities of the app in question. To actually function it needs an internet enabled application, capable of displaying text, images, hypertext, and acting on clicks to links by fetching new pages. It maintains a backward forward history. Permits bookmarks and drag and drop weblocs. It plays music, and video. It can gather feeds and display them.

Wait which app was describing? Safari or Itunes?

The point is they are all the same. I'd bet that in some debug mode, itunes is safari. The only substantial difference between itunes and safari is that Itunes permenantly stores the music, can stream music, and can burn/convert music.

SO essentially safari is within itunes entirely. It would not surprise me if there was not already some secret debug mode preference setting that exposed a complete set of browser window controlls instead of only using the itms URL.

on windows rather than a mac, the situation is probably even more extreme since while on a mac those simmilarities could be factored out either to the OS or to libraries that come with the OS, on windows Apple reimplements the entire webkit/quicktime ecosystem rather than using the Windows navtive functionality.

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That said I would agree that if we were talking about different applications that were not so coupled then I could see why this would be verging on bundling. For example, If i updated itunes and it also installed a Word processor or Quicken program, I'd say wait a second.

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I also note however that for Web2.0 apps like google apps. When you go to the site you find that they have indeed given you new apps you did not ask for.

Re:No, I'm not going for this BS.

[Your.Master]

What IE8 force? What are you talking about? You're making shit up. Stop making shit up.

Re:No, I'm not going for this BS.

[toriver]

At the end of the Safari license there is an offer to provide source on request; what more do you want? Just because many (L)GPL software has source more readily available than nevessary does not mean Apple have to provide the source online - only "on request", in their case on physical media.

Re:However bad this is

[Anonymous Coward]

heh. So how about Sun pushing the entire OpenOffice install on a Java update?

And I agree with the grandparent; since the latest WGA-install pushed through windows update, I am now in charge of keeping 5 families up-to-date. Since they don't know what every update entails, they stopped updating their PCs. And with good reason, I might add. So they only get updated every once in a month, when I happen to stop by.

Even I remove Java auto-update from my own computer, just because it's nagging. And Windows auto-update too, with its every-ten-minute nag screen to reboot your computer. One of the first things I teach others is how to drag that notify box to the lower right corner of the screen, so it stays out of sight...

Really, the only applications that I trust enough to update themselves are:
- Firefox, because it only asks once and if I say "do it later" it will delay it and automatically install when I start it next time.
- Thunderbird, for the same reason. But I can't remember ever having received an update notifier for it, so I'm not sure the update is working correctly.
- AVG antivirus, because it is autonomous and I can configure what to do when user interaction is required (ask; do it now; complete at next reboot)
- apt-get. 'Nuff said

(off-topic:

Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

It's been 15 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment

So what's the going (typematic) rate for the day? /. users can type faster than that, can they?)