I don't really condone Apple's sneakiness. However...I've had a real problem with Microsoft's ability to rake in market share for IE, for years, for no good reason: IE benefits from the tech-unsavviness of most people who can't replace it, it does not compete by adding real value.
IE's shell desperately needs to be broken; and as sneaky as Apple's solution is, Apple has a real chance of cracking the shell wider than anyone else has. And this isn't replacing Crap A with Crap B...Safari is a real standards-compliant browser, convincing people to move to Safari over IE is a step forward for the industry by any measure.
Yes, it would be much better if Apple opened up their magic update scheme to allow a choice of Firefox, etc., but one step at a time.
You make an interesting point, but I'm not convinced that the ends justify the means. Just because Safari is better than IE does not mean it is okay to push it on people - especially when most of the people are using iTunes only because they have an iPod and Apple pushed iTunes on them. (This is just an observation. I have absolutely no real evidence to back up this claim.)
I do tend to be an idealist though, and I think that everyone needs to take the high ground when pushing for change.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 22.9 ms ] threadIE's shell desperately needs to be broken; and as sneaky as Apple's solution is, Apple has a real chance of cracking the shell wider than anyone else has. And this isn't replacing Crap A with Crap B...Safari is a real standards-compliant browser, convincing people to move to Safari over IE is a step forward for the industry by any measure.
Yes, it would be much better if Apple opened up their magic update scheme to allow a choice of Firefox, etc., but one step at a time.
I do tend to be an idealist though, and I think that everyone needs to take the high ground when pushing for change.