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Some Users Say Win7 Wants To Remove iTunes, Google Toolbar
Foofoobar writes "Due to a strike with the UK's postal system, people in Great Britain are getting copies of Windows 7 early and have already posted their experiences about the install process. Some have an easy time but others post installs taking 3 hours including Windows asking them to remove iTunes and Google toolbar prior to installation." The article indicates that many of these early users, though, are having better luck.
If you upgrade Windows on top of another installation you are in for a bad time.
iTunes and Google Toolbar are annoyances anyway. If they could permanently get rid of Quicktime, I'd be a happy camper.
First, this obviously applies only to upgrades.
Second, iTunes does horrible things to your USB stack, and it needs to go.
After Win7 is installed you can add it back, and not lose any of your music.
Don't make a big deal out of Microsoft trying to remove the effects of misbehaved software corrupting the install.
There is no issue here.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Windows 7 recognizes how bad iTunes is? Even XP can't do that! I'm switching right now... Where'd I put my MSDNAA login?
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
If they didn't do this we would be reading about how the upgrade breaks competitor's software. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
TFA says Windwos7 asks you to remove some drivers and apps and then successfully re-installs them when done. That's not quite what the summary implies.
Here's the a quote from the article of a user who found that Windows 7 asked that the user uninstall iTunes:
...and I reinstalled iTunes which worked fine without any configuration, my library and apps were all there.
While I agree it is suspicious that iTunes and the Google Toolbar were the only applications that Windows 7 ask that particular user to uninstall, it should be made clear that Windows 7 did not impede the user from using that software or foist a MS application on him.
I will note that many users had significant difficulties with using non-Apple software after upgrading to Snow Leopard.
I myself have had significant difficulties using already installed software after upgrading various shared libraries via ports on FreeBSD.
I would suggest that these issues are along the lines of what Microsoft was doing when it asked the user to uninstall iTunes and the Google Toolbar.
From TFA:
Yep - a disaster in the making.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I've no plans to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP whatsoever but if people are being asked to remove iTunes and Google Toolbar, this implies they are using an "install over the top" upgrade method, rather than "backup, format and install from new".
And if these people **REALLY** believe that upgrading any OS in this fashion, let alone MS Windows, will end up giving them a nice clean install afterwards, then they probably shouldn't be anywhere near a computer in the first place.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
What a crappy, dishonest summary! I despise MS as much as anyone, but this is too much. Yes, it asked them to remove iTunes, etc., but then it reinstalled them! And everything worked.
No sig? Sigh...
Did the poster even read the article? The summary is longer than the sentence that mentions this.
"The upgrade process gave me a list of about 5 programs to un-install," he says. "Which I did, it was some drivers, iTunes and the Google Toolbar." What does the author say about this horrible, horrible thing? "I have to say that is about the most successful Windows upgrade I have ever personally experienced."
That's not sarcasm, that's not some biting commentary at microsoft, that is a user who is content with his instillation of Windows 7 on a computer. This is not an article about how microsoft is afraid of competition and squashes even the slightest attempt at competition, this is about how 3 people were relatively happy with their instillations.
The poster picked the single most insignificant statement out of context, and made it their headline. I'm not sure if the poster was being ironic, or trying to troll linux fans into reading a pro-microsoft article, but the summary has almost nothing to do with the article.
The upgrade didn't make you purge your computer of open source software. Windows 7 didn't make you uninstall OO.O, or even Lotus Notes (which really, needs to die). The upgrade did not purge your computer of competitor's software, it just so happened that those 2 programs needed to be reinstalled.
And program installers shouldn't need to touch OS components to do program installs.
Unfortunately, neither of these hold in the world as it actually exists.
Can I play a bit of devil's advocate? My guess is that the need to remove iTunes and Google toolbar might be related to compatibility issues (i.e., the version that the users have currently not being the "latest" one, or the one "100%" compatible with 7). Without any more concret info, like the version number for iTunes of all the machines involved, if 7 "demands" diferent things with the same version installed, etc, we can't really be sure what's the issue here, and assume it's for the best for the users (not having potentialy incompatible software installed on 7).
Now before someone says "but I've been using iTunes 2.0 with 7 since forever!!", well, I'm just speculating as much as the next guy :) Afterall, this is Slashdot, right? ;)
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
Finally, a good idea from microsoft.
Surely the real story here is that the postal strike is somehow causing mail to be delivered faster.
Supposedly windows 'upgrades' are basically an install of the new OS then it tries to copy over/grab all the stuff from the 'old' windows. It's an ugly process, and probably errors are caused by programs it doesn't know how to copy over. Stuff that embeds itself in the OS, itunes messes with USB, Google with search and god knows what, Anti virus with everything could work fundamentally differently on a new OS than an old and figuring out how, if at all, to copy that over is probably a difficult business. This might even be problems with specific versions of said programs rather than the application as a whole.
Uninstalling applications in an automated way is a bad idea. They may or may not remove *data* associated with the application that the user wants to keep, and may not know how to easily copy over. Believe it or not most people care more about their data, and access to it, more than the OS they use to launch the applications. It's probably better that people who know something about what a 'directory' is, and how to browse them, try to figure out how to copy data over than a lot of users for whom such a terrifying concept is completely foreign.
> iTunes for Windows is maximum bloatware with questionable value...
Unless you own an iPhone, in which case its value is pretty well dictated to you by Steve Jobs.
You really can't own an iPhone without it.
But somehow, Apple gets a pass for that kind of behavior, and Microsoft suffers FUD posts like this on Slashdot for Apple's misadventures.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I'm definitely not a windows fan(or user). I'm totally a Linux guy, but it seams there's no issue here. The only issue I see is /. loosing credibility with this kind of stories. A major version change of operating system should be installed by a clean install and only morons upgrade. It's only natural that in the process of a new installation Windows tries to uninstall shitty software that mess with the core of the system.
Windows has plenty of real issues to bash about without this kind of shit.
If I was some windows user or Fan I would say: "If this is the kind of arguments /. has against windows all the other windows stories must be non-issues also"
First off, there's no legitimate reason iTunes has to use QuickTime for MP3/AAC decoding. There are plenty of other options. If Apple insists on eating their own dogfood, there's no excuse for installing more than is necessary. Installing iTunes doesn't mean I want their stupid, crippled movie player or plugins.
And leave the awful player and browser plugins out.
For some reason, Apple decided to use their own USB driver; one not exactly known for it's stability, evidently. Yes, Apple would rather risk your system instability than use a standard tried & tested driver to write files to any iPod. That'll be why Windows 7 doesn't like it I expect.
http://www.google.com/search?q=itunes+BSOD
Sometimes I wonder if Apple make PCs crash deliberately to fuel their ad-war
throw new NoSignatureException();
My experience with Windows 9x matches GP's claim. If you had a broken installation and tried to fix it by re-installing without deleting the old installation, it would copy the broken settings and usually work even less than before.
Maybe GP still remembers that time and based his statement on that ;-)
I'm not so sure about newer versions, as I made a habit of doing always clean installs back then. Never tried to "repair-install" W2k or later.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Oh really? Eye TV 2.x (don't know 3.x), it is self contained .app which you drag to /Applications in mac (pre OS X) fashion. It sits idle there until you launch.
When you launch, it asks for admin uname/password to install "a device driver" (kernel extension). What kind of horrible, evil things may happen right?
Well, guess what? Nothing happens. It is because of the kernel/driver model. OS X doesn't give a heck if the device is not plugged in, it just caches the symbols/plist files coming with the driver to a file. So, if you have a Eye TV driver but you don't have Eye TV, that extension will sit there, forever, ignored by the OS _until_ you plug the device having same USB signature. I think you were expecting some stuff outside /System/Extensions , some registry like files, some hidden files... No man, it is just .kext and HFS+ "bundle bit" magic with clever use of directory watching.
There is no software which will bastardize core drivers of OS X. If you listen to some trouble shooting idiots and downgrade your core OS parts in /System, it is your fault. Nobody is idiot (yet) to do it in automated fashion though. Lets not forget all OS X comes with time Machine now, for free, no "ultimate" etc. crap schemes. Every single OS X user having space on somewhere (USB, network doesn't matter) has hourly backups of changed files including a complete backup of system.
Oh if you were speaking about Unsanity APE, it was designed from the ground so nobody would feel the need of modifying system files for trivial hacks. What happened? Ask the Logitech idiots who shipped awfully outdated version of it which wasn't able to disable itself.
Apple no longer sells DRMed AACs. AACs you rip yourself have never had DRM.
I never had this problem on my GNU/Linux system. Nor have I ever heard anyone about this issue on Mac OSX.
Try upgrading a Ubuntu 8.04 install to 9.04 or 9.10 on a Fujitsu S7110 laptop. Forget about pretty compbiz fireworks, wireless networking, and external monitor support without driver headaches post upgrade. I'm cool with it though. It's hard to expect more than MS is capable of doing on a $400 platform when linux is free...
As for MacOS. Snow leopard is notorious for problems with upgrades and costs at least as much as Windows when you consider the hardware premium. My boss (6 month old macbook pro) AND a friend of mine (1 year old macbook) ran into the "bricking" problem after upgrading to snow leopard(there is mention in this article):
http://www.pcworld.com/article/171129/snow_leopard_users_4_biggest_gripes.html
What I really don't like is how Apple will never never never ever ever admit that a problem exists, instead they insist that users are installing "unsupported software" or running with "corrupted files" blah blah blah. My roommate loves Apple and argues with me about this sometimes but I just think of Apple like any other PC/OS vendor, I'm not trying to pick on them (or any other vendor) they just aren't as good as a fanboys and "geniuses" will tell you (like any vendor's fanboys and sales people). And interestingly my roommate has yet to attempt the upgrade on his 1 1/2 year old macbook pro...
It's not iTunes that does this. iTunes licensed Gear's ASPI drivers for burning support within Windows. The Gear drivers are Microsoft XP and Vista signed drivers that strictly adhere to Microsoft's rules. On a clean install of XP or Vista, iTunes and the Gear ASPI drivers work 100% of the time. However, many other programs that implement CD-burning without signed drivers can cause the Gear ASPI drivers to break.
Not really.
I've been quite happy to bash MS for almost everything they do for more than 15 years now. I'm quite relaxed. If Win7 is a really good product with no major flaws, it would be a first. If they don't show up now, they will show up later. Maybe they've become better at hiding them.
The people trying to turn the initial positive reviews on their heads are young and stupid. They don't have the experience with hating MS that most of us do. They don't know that MS is expert at disappointing, even if the initial hype is well engineered and the major flaws hidden too deep. Also, they forget that after Vista, it was pretty much impossible to come up with something that wouldn't look good in comparison.
And hey, after almost 20 years of trying, let's give MS the credit for coming up with a halfway acceptable system, shall we? Where's the joy in hating them if they'd produce only crap? No, the substandard-but-acceptable stuff belongs there, too. It makes the next failure more enjoyable.
So in summary: No. You are dead wrong. The real, experienced zealots are quite happy to delay satisfaction and wait until the polish has gone and the hype machine died down, and people start to use Win7 for some serious gaming/work. We know that you can make almost any car look good on the test drive. It's the daily use and the first maintainance where you find out if you've been had.
We'll wait until then. We won't even say "told you so", because that became old with Vista. We'll just smile and shrug.
And if it never happens, if Win7 turns out to be adequate after all, we'll just shrug and wait for Win8.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org