Apple caused quite a controversy over the weekend when the company made good on its promise to use iTunes as a way of pushing the Safari web browser on unsuspecting Windows users. The controversy arises from Apple's decision to bundle the Safari web browser as a "update" for iTunes on Windows - despite the fact that Safari is a totally new, and potentially unwanted, application.
Software Update, Apple's means of distributing iTunes updates on Windows, has previously only offered to update existing software. However, late last week that practice changed, and Apple began listing Safari for Windows as a "update," which clearly, it is not.
Some have compared the new update behavior to the nefarious practices of malware distributors and John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, a Safari competitor, slammed the move on his blog.
The problem is that installing Safari is the default option since the box is automatically checked. If you aren't paying close attention to the updater - and why should you, ostensibly it's just going to update iTunes, and Apple is (or at least was) a trusted source - you'll end up with software you didn't want.
Lilly explains why Mozilla feels Apple's decision is wrong, not just for Apple, but the security of the web in general:
A chorus of vitriolic Mac fans has accused Lilly of being anti-competitive and jealous that Safari has an additional inroad on Windows, something Firefox lacks. Lilly responses to that charge in an update saying that the issue is not competition, but update behavior.
As Apple apologist John Gruber points out, the real issue is the decision to make installing Safari the default behavior. In other words, the user has to opt out, which isn't clear when Apple's Software Update runs. Gruber argues, and I would agree, that part of the problem is simply design.
"Updates to currently-installed software are an entirely different thing than offers to install new software," he writes on his blog. "Different things should look different; the current design of Software Update doesn't allow for such a visual differentiation."
As you can see in the screenshot above, the dialog box makes it seem like Safari is already installed, when in fact it's a new program. Perhaps a better design decision would be to separate out Safari so users know it's new software and leave it unchecked by default.
Of course Apple isn't the only company doing surreptitious application installs - Microsoft does it with Windows Live Messenger, which offers to install the entire Windows Live suite, and Google pushes all sorts of software when you install the Google Toolbar.
But the fact that Apple is no different than Microsoft and Google in this respect doesn't make the practice any less wrong.
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