The biggest thing on Techmeme right now is Apple’s decision to distribute their Safari browser on Windows to update Safari.
Lots of people are calling this close to malware since they believe many users won’t know what they are installing. John Lillly, the Mozilla CEO states:
“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. This is wrong, and borders on malware distribution practices.”
ReadWriteWeb calls it slimy spyware tactics.
I saw the implementation and it looks pretty clear to me that this isn’t spyware. There is nothing secret about this. Users simply get to check boxes to decide what they want or don’t want.
I don’t get the backlash here. Or maybe I just have thin skin :)