Apple gets mauled on Safari outside walled garden

Stan Beer
Monday, 31 March 2008 05:12

Opinion and Analysis

You call Safari bloatware? I can hear many Mac users asking indignantly. Well yes, for many users that already have IE7 and Firefox installed (the vast majority of PC users) Safari is just another browser they don't need on their hard drive.

I have nothing against Safari. It's a pretty good browser. I already had the beta and downloaded the latest version because of what I do which is write about IT matters. However, I'm a mostly Firefox and sometimes IE7 user and I see nothing in Safari, Opera or any other browser that will give me anything that I don't already have. For me, as a user, another browser on my hard drive is simply unnecessary bloatware.

Apple may claim that Safari is the now the fastest browser, well on my machine Firefox 3 beta 4 kills it. However, even if that wasn't the case, for Firefox and IE7 users who didn't also have Safari installed, surely they have a right to expect Apple not to try to convert them to its browser by stealth.

So what now? The problem is nobody seems to know. Apple has not apologised or issued a statement on this matter that I can see. Therefore, are we to assume that from now on unwanted new software by default is what we should expect to receive in Mac "software updates"? Or is it simply a case of an unbelievably arrogant company not wishing to apologise for trying something on its users that backfired and therefore it will not be repeated?

The next "software update" from Apple should be interesting but if Apple says nothing about this incident, who's to say it won't happen again? This what commentators, bloggers  and posters all over the Web are talking about when they say it has become an issue of trust.