The Browser World

Apple updated its Safari to v3.1 in a recent update on Tuesday, and also started promoting the browser in its Apple Updater on which Mozilla’s CEO John Lilly blasted out.

Mozilla’s CEO John Lilly in his blog said that Apple’s method of distributing is wrong. Their method of spreading Safari in the regular Apple iTunes and Apple QuickTime was quoted to be unethical by him.

What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong. It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that’s bad — not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole Web. What they did yesterday was to use their updater for iTunes to also install their Safari Web browser –what follows is some background and analysis.

The update by default checks the box to download Safari during the regular Apple Update as shown in the post.

(Photo CNET)

“What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong. It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that’s bad — not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole Web,” claimed the CEO, whose company’s open source Firefox browser is No. 2 on Windows after Internet Explorer.

“Apple has made it incredibly easy — the default, even — for users to install ride along software that they didn’t ask for, and maybe didn’t want,” said Lilly. “This is wrong, and borders on malware distribution practices.”

A sympathetic user commented “If Microsoft did the identical action, install some non-user-selected software using their software update channel, there would be cacophony across the Internet”

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs first unveiled Safari for Windows last June, he said that the main way Apple planned to get Safari on Windows is through its Software Update program.

Jobs said that “Apple plans to use iTunes as a distribution vehicle for Safari for Windows”. He noted that “there are a million downloads of iTunes a day, with 500 million of those going to Windows machines.”