The Rest of Us
- John Gruber writes the blog Daring Fireball. He wrote the following in regard to the recent controversy about Apple including Safari 3.1 in the the Windows version of the Softare Updater that is included with iTunes:
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I have to say, I’m with Mison. I don’t understand the supposed outrage over Apple’s Software Update app for Windows offering to install Safari 3.1. Seems par for the course on Windows, and even on Mac OS X Software Update asks me if I want to install apps I don’t use.
What follows is a modified version of the email I sent to Mr Gruber:
I largely agree that I do not see this as been of the “cats and dogs living together” level that it is being played up to be, but I do want to give you the perspective of my wife when it happened:
Let us just take my geek credentials as read. However, when my wife uses a computer, she doesn’t care about them. She has a couple of tasks she uses them for, and after that she just doesn’t give a damn. From her perspective she has much better things to do. So she uses what she uses, and largely rejects change because she sees no point.
So the other day when the apple updater popped up and (in her words) “annoyed me when I was reading” and told her she needed to install Safari; she came out to where I was working and demanded to know “What the [expletive deleted] is Safari, and why is Apple telling me I need it?!?” I explained to her is was Apple’s web browser, and they were giving her the option to install it, her response was “That is STUPID! I tolerate this update thing because I use iTunes and whatever that [QuickTime] thing you tell me I need. It shouldn’t tell me to update that Safari thing unless I have it installed. Is there any way you can turn [including Safari in the updater] off?”
And I see her point. I care about computers. That is how I make my living, and they have been a part of my identity since I was 13 (28ish years now), but my wife doesn’t. She cares what she does with her computer, and only wants to do what she does. We who are “inside baseball” tolerate and understand what Apple did, but it can be really annoying to those who aren’t.
The irony is that Apple has painted itself (though perhaps not lately) as the company for that larger group. You would thing they would at least have thought of a better way to present it than the way they did.
There is a lesson here kids, learn it.
