9.12.2008

Apple Jumps on the 'Crapware' Bandwagon

iTunes 8 came out a few days ago so I downloaded and installed on one of my XP PCs and on my MacMini.  All seems good on the MacMini but I am very unhappy with the deployment on my Windows system...

During install, I am allowed to select to install iTunes/QucikTime and/or Safari- which is problem #1; Safari is checked by default and the multitude of people (myself included) will not look and click install, thus adding yet another browser to Windows (IE, Firefox, Chrome- and now Safari).  This should be an 'opt-in' option, not an 'opt-out' choice...

Problem #2; it installs something for 'MobileME'; I am not sure what, but there is definitely a new icon in control panel dedicated to it.  If I am not mistaken, MobileME is the new '.mac' platform that is used for offline storage/web pages/photos and to synchronize iPhone data.  I do not have an iPhone and I definitely will not be sending Apple $99/year for something that I can get for free from another provider...

There are also reports of Vista BSODs due to additional driver updates; GEARAspiWDM.sys and an updated USB controller diver...

Apple- WTF are you doing?  Are you trying to get your crap added to a spyware/adware blacklist by backdoor installing stuff like this?  This is indicative of smaller, cheesy companies that need to make money by stating to their investors that their software is installed on XX millions of PCs; Is this really what you are trying to do?

I will probably never use Safari- I tried it on my Mac and found it to be mediocre (at best) and immediately downloaded Firefox.  I will defiantly never send you $99 for MobileME; the trial of .MAC was useless enough and I know that there are far superior services on the web- so please don't try force your Apple crapware on me...

Windows and Mac are very different hardware/software platforms- please don't try to force a unified software platform for both on your end users; it just will not work!

If Apple did beta testing on iTunes 8, it looks like they did a pretty crappy job of it- did they even bother testing on Vista?

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