Linux

How Bad is Forced Software, Really?

By EAN ⋅ March 25, 2008 ⋅  Email this Post ⋅  Print this Post ⋅ Post a Comment

I’ve been reading a lot of posts about how disgraceful it was for Apple to “force” Safari 3.1 on Windows users via Apple’s update system. Various well known bloggers and software engineers have likened Apple to spyware companies and various other nefarious businesses.

Let’s get one thing straight first and foremost, there was no forcing of software on anyone. Safari 3.1 was released, it showed up in the Apple updater for Windows–even on people’s machines who had not installed any previous version of Safari. There was no underhanded behind the scenes installation going on. Hell, nobody came from Cupertino to strong arm you into clicking that install button. You could either say “Yes, install Safari on my system” or “No thanks, Safari isn’t for me”. The choice was completely up to the user.

It all boils down to one simple question. If you were a developer in Apple’s position and you had one very popular product and another product you know people would love, but they just haven’t given it a try yet, would you do the same thing?

I don’t have a problem with it. As long as I actually have the option to say “No thanks”, it doesn’t bother me that software companies push their lesser known products like this. Of course, people should take responsibility for their computing actions and actually read what comes on their screens instead of clicking “Install” like a kindergardener doped up on a sugar high.

The situation would be completely different if Apple had tried to shove a paid product onto people’s computers. Much like Yazsoft, the company who makes Speed Download for the Mac did earlier this year with their release of Speed Download 5. While it’s gone now, they threw a paid upgrade onto the automatic updater. Tacky. And underhanded.