Apple Duped iTunes Users to Install Safari!

Apple seems to be using a shady practice to pull new users to Safari 3.1, which was just released on Tuesday. iTunes users, who have never installed Safari are being tricked into downloading Safari as a part of update.

As CyberNet points out, at last year’s World Wide Developers Conference, Steve Jobs had a presentation on how they would distribute Safari on Windows platform. He said:

How are we going to distribute this? We don’t really talk to these customers, do we? There are over 500,000 downloads of Firefox a day. What are we going to do? Well, it turns out, there are over 1 million downloads of iTunes a day. As a matter of fact, there have been over a half a billion downloads of iTunes to Windows Machines. Over half a billion. And so we know how to reach these customers and we are going to do exactly that.

At that time, we all thought that Apple was considering bundling Safari with iTunes. Since the beta tag was stripped from Safari on Tuesday, it turns out that they did implement those plans.

applesafariupdate

I thought Apple Software Update was supposed to notify updates for only those softwares which have been installed. Why don’t they just rename Apple Software Update as "Apple Software Suite"? At least that way, people will know that they are installing new software, instead of just being duped into installing.

People love Apple for their products and design. By using deceptive tricks to lure more users, they are simply throwing stones at their own reputation.

This post was published by on March 21, 2008

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • http://green-flamingo.com Nathaniel

    Huh. I got that today. But I decided to take it – I was abou to download it anyway, because you talked about it the other day. Now I know why that mysteriously popped up!

  • http://www.techsted.com JD

    first time here and I’m already impressed. Thilak if you wanna find some more tech stories just visit http://www.techsted.com . I’m sure you’ll find some interesting stuff for your readers.

  • http://www.nirmaltv.com Nirmal

    Nice marketing trick. :-)

  • http://prosperitywriter.com/ Prosperity Writer

    this is how Microsoft dealt with Netscape and other smaller applications companies.

  • http://tech-buzz.net Thilak

    JD: Welcome to TechBuzz!

  • http://www.tecfre.com/apple-safari-worlds-fastest-browser-without-a-new-tab-button/ Apple Safari : world’s fastest browser without a “new tab” button

    [...] fastest browser. Considering the reputation which apple has, they like to do things differently ( duping itunes users to download safari ?? hmmmm ), but this different thing made me switch back to Mozilla [...]

  • http://www.vat19.com Stefanie

    Wow, this is surprisingly shady for a major company like Apple. I wouldn’t think twice if I saw it from most small publishers or free services, though.

  • http://www.finedigg.com zack

    that’s microsoft way of dealing with business….uh

    read more tips and articles here
    http://www.finedigg.com

  • http://www.evawhite.com Eva White

    I am not too much of a downloading tunes person. I like my plain vanilla stuff.

  • Gis

    More and more I dislike Apple.

    To Eva White: It’s not just iTunes. It also affects anyone with QuickTime.

  • http://tech-buzz.net/2008/05/02/safari-31-for-windows-triples-its-marketshare/ Safari 3.1 for Windows Triples its Marketshare

    [...] was highly criticized in March for duping Windows users to install Safari Web Browser by including it as an update in Apple’s Software Updater. If you had any Apple Software, it [...]

  • http://www.laoae.com/2008/12/admins-arsenal-personal-edition-songbird-media-player-goes-10/ laoae.com

    [...] just a resource hog, and I would prefer to keep my machines free of Apple software, as they are wont to just install things), Songbird has the chops to handle your iTunes library, as well as special facilities for importing [...]