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Some Users Say Win7 Wants To Remove iTunes, Google Toolbar

Posted by timothy on from the you-choose-the-teapot-you-choose-the-tempest dept.

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.

53 of 570 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds good to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    iTunes and Google Toolbar are annoyances anyway. If they could permanently get rid of Quicktime, I'd be a happy camper.

    1. Re:Sounds good to me by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Seriously. I actually like iTunes, but damn is it a resource hog. Sometimes it will chew up 90%+ of CPU for no apparent reason. It will often be unresponsive to clicks for a couple seconds. I am not sure what is so complicated about a music player that causes this.

      And then every time it asks me for an upgrade, it insists on installing Quicktime and other things that I don't want on my PC.

      I don't use Macs, but wonder if all of Steve's apps behave this way...

      --
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    2. Re:Sounds good to me by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As with most of these types of things, they perform far better on the original platform. Microsoft does the same thing with the Office suite, for instance. I tend to agree that Safari and Quicktime on Windows bug me, but on the Mac, they're great. iTunes on Windows is far inferior to the Mac version as well, not in terms of features, but certainly in terms of performance.

    3. Re:Sounds good to me by maccodemonkey · · Score: 4, Informative

      QuickTime is what iTunes uses for it's MP3/AAC decoding engine, which is why it's installing QuickTime. It's not just installing it to force it on you, it's actually a dependency. This is why iTunes on Mac OS X is still a QuickTime 7 app. It can't move to QuickTime X because QuickTime X is not cross platform.

    4. Re:Sounds good to me by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

      And then every time it asks me for an upgrade, it insists on installing Quicktime and other things that I don't want on my PC.

      If you're talking about QuickTime Player and Safari, consider this: The iTunes application relies on the QuickTime framework to play media and the WebKit framework to display iTunes Store and iTunes LP. Trying to run iTunes without QuickTime and WebKit is like trying to run Windows Media Player without Windows Media or trying to run VLC without libavcodec.

    5. Re:Sounds good to me by oldspewey · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sometimes it will chew up 90%+ of CPU for no apparent reason.

      It's thinking different.

      --
      If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
    6. Re:Sounds good to me by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So why can't Apple do what the rest of the world does when it needs to use code from another application... use libraries. You don't need Quicktime's plugins or media player. Just the libraries should be sufficient.

      --
      The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
    7. Re:Sounds good to me by maccodemonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But the plugin and player are what... 2-3 megabytes of 20 megs? Most of the download is the QuickTime library and the codecs...

    8. Re:Sounds good to me by nmg196 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You posted that like you thought QuickTime is decoding engine, which it's actually an awful cheap media player from the early 90s. An encoding engine is a small DLL - not an entire media player application. There is no NEED for Apple to require QuickTime to be installed, but like much of Apple's software.

      iTunes is one of the most badly written awful pieces of software in mass usage today. It's no wonder Windows needs it to be out of the way while it's installing - it does a LOT of horrible things to your system including installing all sorts of pointless services and modifying many critical bluetooth settings.

    9. Re:Sounds good to me by EdZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Do you honestly think a half dozen audio codecs, and another half dozen video codecs would make for a "small" DLL?

      Yes. e.g:
      CCCP: 5.9mb (plays damn near everything you'll encounter, including .mov if you rename them to .mp4, as for the past few revisions that's all they've been anyway)
      Quicktime Alternative: 17.8mb (just the quicktime codecs and the plugin, no player)
      Quicktime: 30.94mb

    10. Re:Sounds good to me by Symbha · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not a cop out... nobody said they couldn't.... just that they didn't.

    11. Re:Sounds good to me by Achromatic1978 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Again, the components of QuickTime that seem to annoy people are very small, and easy to remove. Do you honestly think a half dozen audio codecs, and another half dozen video codecs would make for a "small" DLL?

      Huh, what?

      A codec is a mathematical algorithm. Are you telling me that the codecs for interpreting an MP3/AAC stream, etc, are SO COMPLEX that the math for them can't be contained in less than 40 or 50 megabytes of compiled code?

      Survey says: horseshit.

      Check out VLC sometime. It does more in a quarter of the size of Quicktime than Quicktime does, by far, in terms of codecs.

    12. Re:Sounds good to me by Per+Wigren · · Score: 5, Informative

      Do you honestly think a half dozen audio codecs, and another half dozen video codecs would make for a "small" DLL?

      libavcodec currently has decoders for 242 audio and video codecs, encoders for 100, demuxers for 129 container formats and muxers for 89.
      The resulting DLL is about 7 MB.

      --
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    13. Re:Sounds good to me by bertok · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously. I actually like iTunes, but damn is it a resource hog. Sometimes it will chew up 90%+ of CPU for no apparent reason. It will often be unresponsive to clicks for a couple seconds. I am not sure what is so complicated about a music player that causes this.

      And then every time it asks me for an upgrade, it insists on installing Quicktime and other things that I don't want on my PC.

      I don't use Macs, but wonder if all of Steve's apps behave this way...

      I actually need and use iTunes (to talk to my iPhone), but one thing that shits me to no end is that every time I get a point-release update of iTunes, it installs two hidden "on startup" items. I have to use the 'msconfig' tool to get rid of them every bloody time.

      Programs should really stop the habit of silently installing background processes that mostly do nothing except slow down the computer's boot time.

      For example, since Vista, Windows has had a great task scheduler API that lets developer schedule system tasks like "check for update" on lots of complex criteria, such a "30 minutes after the PC goes idle". That way, the processes are only run once per machine (not user), don't slow down the boot, and can close to conserve memory after the check is done.

      And don't get me started with the hideous piece-of-s*** that is Bonjour, which is a system service installed by iTunes that intercepts and modifies DNS requests. It opens your computer to vulnerabilities and has broken some apps. A music player has absolutely no business fucking around with system-wide DNS.

      Every time someone complains that their machine is 'slow', it's either a virus, or I just use msconfig to disable the 50 startup processes installed by crap like iTunes. Miraculously, it turns out that there was nothing wrong with their hardware after all.

    14. Re:Sounds good to me by manekineko2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, but libraries don't attempt to autoload a tray application without the plugin and player.

    15. Re:Sounds good to me by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Need to test your UI responsiveness while under high load?

      There's an app for that.

      --
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  2. You can add them back... by icebike · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  3. Wow by Kratisto · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:Wow by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I always assumed iTunes realised how bad Windows was and added some extra idle loops and random malloc() calls to try to fit in...

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  4. So by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. About iTunes -- from the article by rwade · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  6. Oh, FFS! by R2.0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    From TFA:

    "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. After that the whole thing was automatic, I just left it sitting there... At the end of it, Windows put back the drivers I removed, and I reinstalled iTunes which worked fine without any configuration, my library and apps were all there. I have to say that is about the most successful Windows upgrade I have ever personally experienced."

    Yep - a disaster in the making.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  7. Just One Observation... by pandrijeczko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  8. Crappy Summary by Anonymous+Codger · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...
    1. Re:Crappy Summary by GF678 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I despise MS as much as anyone, but this is too much.

      For me, the more Slashdot bashes Microsoft unfairly, the less I despise Microsoft. If Microsoft is supposedly so rotten, why does Slashdot feel the need to lie? It makes Slashdot look like it's run by a bunch of idiots with an agenda, and makes me question how much of the bashing of MS is legitimate.

  9. Lie about windows to get posted on slashdot by Useful+Wheat · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Lie about windows to get posted on slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The upgrade did not purge your computer of competitor's software, it just so happened that those 2 programs needed to be reinstalled.

      I can even tell you specifically why those 2 programs should be uninstalled then reinstalled after the upgrade. No, it's not because Microsoft's trying to stick it to competitors.

      iTunes messes with your USB stack by installing system-level drivers, and since the whole underlying OS is changing, those drivers will likely not work right after an upgrade for reasons that should be blatantly obvious to anyone who considers themselves 'good with computers'. The best practice is to let the iTunes installer see that it's installing on Windows 7 and configure the drivers correctly for the new OS.

      Google Toolbar installs differently depending on which version of Internet Explorer it's installing into. Vista users may be using IE7, whereas Windows 7 comes with IE8. Technically using the IE7 interfaces to extend IE8 is supported, but it forces some backward-compatibility hacks to be enabled, which slows the entire browser down. By uninstalling and reinstalling after the upgrade, you get the IE8 version of the Google Toolbar and it runs better.

  10. Re:I'm confused by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  11. Compatibility? by holiggan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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"
  12. Re:Remove itunes? by stranger_to_himself · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally, a good idea from microsoft.

    Surely the real story here is that the postal strike is somehow causing mail to be delivered faster.

  13. Re:Not sure the title is correct... by icebike · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > 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.
  14. One more /. non Issue here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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"

  15. Re:Windows Upgrades by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't know ... why don't you have these problems? What is your secret?

    In my experience, if you have a real, live system and you upgrade Windows, you can expect everything non-MS to break. Critical registry entries get deleted, DLLs go missing, directories get moved and everything goes to hell in a hand-basket.

  16. Re:Windows Upgrades by dollar99 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I agree with the original poster that people who don't do clean installs are in for a bad time. If you've successfully upgraded Windows on top of an older version you should consider yourself extremely lucky. I prefer to do clean installs and save my good luck for winning the lottery and such.

  17. That's not an excuse by Rix · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  18. So install the libraries by Rix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And leave the awful player and browser plugins out.

  19. iTunes is evil by Toreo+asesino · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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();
  20. Re:Windows Upgrades by psp · · Score: 5, Funny

    But why does this have to be the case with MS Windows?
    I never had this problem on my GNU/Linux system. Nor have I ever heard anyone about this issue on Mac OSX.

    No, OSX only downgrades Flash to a vulnerable version. Nothing to worry about.

  21. Re:Windows Upgrades by Brad1138 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Critical registry entries get deleted, DLLs go missing, directories get moved and everything goes to hell in a hand-basket.

    This is Windows, what's your point?

    --
    If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
  22. Re:Windows Upgrades by NiceGeek · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is a workaround for that.
    http://icrontic.com/articles/upgrade-the-windows-7-rc-to-retail

  23. Re:Windows Upgrades by nomadic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So provided that Linux upgrades any associated libraries when it upgrades an application,

    Which it frequently doesn't. Ubuntu especially is notorious for breaking stuff.

  24. Re:Windows Upgrades by GIL_Dude · · Score: 5, Informative

    I would have put myself solidly in the "never upgrade, always do wipe and load" camp until Windows 7. I've now upgraded three machines and it has gone very very well. (I would still wipe and load for corporate purposes to be sure the machines are 100% the same).

    For this specific item they mention here about iTunes... The beta version of the upgrade advisor merely recommended that you deauthorize iTunes on your computer before upgrading. Apparently nobody could figure out how to do that, so they now recommend that you uninstall iTunes, then upgrade your machine, then re-install iTunes. I guess this is to make sure your computer remains authorized for any content you bought although I can't give results for that as I only have content I ripped from CD myself. I can say I have done one machine each way - I uninstalled for this notebook I am on now and I just deauthorized for my wife's notebook. Both upgrades worked flawlessly.

  25. Re:Windows Upgrades by Joe+U · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In my experience, if you have a real, live system and you upgrade Windows, you can expect everything non-MS to break. Critical registry entries get deleted, DLLs go missing, directories get moved and everything goes to hell in a hand-basket.

    Exactly, and you want to know why?

    Microsoft follows their publised API's and published guidelines. Most other companies DO NOT. They take shortcuts to try and get things done quicker and almost always get it wrong.

    If it runs on Vista, it should run on Windows 7, if it breaks, the developer fucked up.

    Apple, Real, AOL, Apple, Symantec, Adobe, McAfee, IBM and Apple I'm talking about YOU. Especially Apple, ITunes is an over-engineered crapfest that touches things it shouldn't touch in the OS. (In their defense, they have gotten slightly better lately, but itunes still lives in a dedicated VM on my computer).

  26. Re:Windows Upgrades by w0mprat · · Score: 4, Informative

    Software like iTunes and Google Toolbar make deep low level changes to the operating system, so I'm really not suprised that these have to be uninstalled before upgrading.

    I wouldn't be suprised if most 3rd-party applications that install system services have to be uninstalled before the upgrade.

    Many applications like these mess with things that really you really shouldn't be messing with, especially when many comparable applications seem to have no need to embed themselves so deeply, and likely have much less bloat.

    As for upgrades breaking your old applications - running in compatibility mode for a older OS will solve 9/10 compatibility issues, but this feature seems to be ignored.

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  27. Re:Windows Upgrades by Itninja · · Score: 5, Informative

    I upgraded Vista Ultimate x64 to Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and had no significant issues. The 'upgrade advisor' program even advised me to deauthorize my installation of iTunes before continuing. No fuss, no muss, as they say.

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  28. Re:Windows Upgrades by Achromatic1978 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Software like iTunes and Google Toolbar make deep low level changes to the operating system

    iTunes in particular. How many system services does that thing install by default? IIRC, at least 4! Quicktime helper, iTunes helper, Bonjour/mdns, iPodservice, and that's before it attempts to foist Safari on you...

  29. Re:Windows Upgrades by nstlgc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As someone who installed Vista 2 years ago, updated to the Windows 7 RC when it came out and then to the final, allow me to say - what the heck are you talking about? The only thing that broke was Daemontools. This includes but is not limited to Firefox, Chrome, mIRC, Sony Acid, Sony Soundforge, Photoshop, GOM player, uTorrent, Emule, FTPrush, video codecs, and, as you already stated, numerous MS applications I run. They've all been there from Vista to the RC to the final.

    Really, what do you guys run that causes all these problems?

    --
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  30. Re:Windows Upgrades by nstlgc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you call "relying on side effects" "using undocumented features", then yea, maybe. Like that time developers thought everyone runs XP as administrator. Oh wait...

    --
    I'm Rocco. I'm the +5 Funny man.
  31. Re:Windows Upgrades by shadowturtle · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's known to do this. It has to do with iTunes messing with the drive's High and Low Filters. When I deleted the registry changes, iTunes gave a warning message every time it loaded, but still worked fine. Plus, the drive "magically" began working again. Apple talks a little about how these filters can mess with iTunes if changed. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2615

  32. Check your facts by amake · · Score: 4, Informative

    stay well away from Apple's AAC DRM-ed nonsense

    Apple no longer sells DRMed AACs. AACs you rip yourself have never had DRM.

  33. Re:Windows Upgrades by bill_kress · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If it's asking you to de-authorize it and not remove it, that kind of makes sense.

    I imagine something in the upgrade process can fubar Apple's DRM system and cause it to make iTunes think it's not authorized. If that old install information remains in their database, it might be annoying to remove it (or not, I'm just guessing).

  34. WRONG by pastafazou · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  35. Re:Windows Upgrades by Allador · · Score: 5, Informative

    All that fear mongering was a bunch of hooey.

    What is locked out?

    Nothing.

    Do P2P apps work properly?

    Yes

    Are there unexplained phone-homes?

    Vista and W7 are much more thoroughly instrumented than XP was. Many of these will send anonymous usage and config data back to MS. These are all well documented and understood, and don't really cause any concern for privacy.

    They're largely all disable-able, though they are scattered, as many of the product groups rolled their own systems for this (ie, office vs. media player vs wga, etc).

    Can I still play out-of-region CDs?

    This is dependent on the hardware and software you use. But the OS in no way gets involved.

    Do I have to fight UAC like someone with Vista?

    Loaded question. UAC on Vista (post SP1) worked exactly as it was intended. Any problems you had you should blame on your app vendors.

    Or yourself, if you chose to not customize UAC behavior to your liking. It is tremendously customizable (even in Vista) in how it behaves, how it prompts, whether or not to use the secure desktop, etc etc. If you don't like it, just configure it so that you do.

    W7 loosens it a bit so that many actions that the OS perceives as 'initiated by the user' dont cause an elevation. This is how it ships. You can turn it back to Vista style if you want, or otherwise customize it.

    Can I copy any standard file type on to any standard media?

    Yes.