10 ms·

Ironic, considering that Apple did exactly the same, when you installed QuickTime on Windows. They tried to trick you into installing iTunes and Safari and set

by iSnow 12y ago

Ironic, considering that Apple did exactly the same, when you installed QuickTime on Windows. They tried to trick you into installing iTunes and Safari and set them as default apps. Also, it stinks that Apple has nailed iOS that shut that even as a knowledgeable user you are not able to bypass it. They did not yet dare to do the same on Mac OS, but who knows when that comes.

pjc50 12y ago
Apple are quite happy to trash another company's OS. The Windows iTunes experience was terrible: it ate resources, was opaque in operation, didn't always sync properly and could occasionally wipe your devices. It used to be required for OS updates. The "nailing shut" is an increasing problem for anyone that believes in a free market in software. Which isn't helped by all these sites shipping value-negative software.
- bcj 12y ago
  I'm not going to lie, that does sound similar to my experience with iTunes on OS X (though I do remember it somehow being even worse on Windows).
- jrockway 12y ago
  iTunes for Windows seems fine to me. It syncs my iPhone OK, and doesn't otherwise annoy me. It's nice that I don't have to buy into their cloud or OS to use their phone.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  As an anecdote to counter another anecdote, I've never had these problems with Windows iTunes. I've used it since getting the HP branded iPod back in '02 (I think), and my music library has grown into the upper tens of thousands of songs since then. It's caused me to believe that all these people trashing on iTunes have broken computers, because the software plainly doesn't do half the crap it's accused of doing.
  - soylentcola 12y ago
    To continue the mostly-irrelevant story time, I've installed it a few times and generally it works OK now but it is still quite slow for what it is. My main computer is no dog either (i7, 16GB RAM, SSD, yadda yadda) and compared to other media player/managers it really is a poor performer. I can almost understand this on the newer versions since they've made it a sort of one-stop-shop for playing media, managing iOS devices, shopping for media and software, and sorting your content databases. But the older versions I used back when I had a "classic" iPod were just terrible and all I did with that was load music onto the iPod. I seem to remember installing some custom firmware on the iPod specifically so I could just treat it like an external drive and manage the media on it via Winamp or Mediamonkey or some other program that had no business doing a better job at handling an iPod than something straight from Apple. Even now I just use it maybe once or twice a year to back up and update my old iPad 2. I haven't found a way to disable all of the various iTunes helper processes that want to run in the background (short of turning them off in services.msc) so it only gets updated and run when absolutely necessary. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong and it will run better if I open it more often and let it do its thing but there's just a point where it doesn't do anything (other than iOS backups) that I can't do more easily with other software. ...but I also admit that like many things, my previous bad experiences may be causing confirmation bias and leading me to take note of iTunes issues more than I would with other software.
- FollowSteph3 12y ago
  If you have an ssd and more than one Apple device, each device you synch eats up about 10gb of space or more. If you have a spouse with an iPhone in addition to yours, a kid or two with itouches, then that can easily eat up 50+Gb of an ssd drive. This can be a very significant percentage of your drive!! And there's no way to change it to anything by the c drive on windows.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    There is a complex method of changing the backup drive by setting up symlinks. It is user-hostile of Apple to force use of C:\
    - bruceboughton 12y ago
      If you have a Mac with more than one hard drive, one of which is an SSD, you probably know how to set up symlinks.
- norswap 12y ago
  I nearly choked when Steve Jobs described iTunes for Windows as "a glass of water for someone in hell". More like "a bucket of lava for someone somewhere reasonable".
kagamine 12y ago
Less ironic when you consider that all of those Apps are from the same reputable company and not malware, nor do they have any hidden purpose beyond trying to assimilate the WinClones to the Appleborg (although it seems to have given Apple such a bad rep among some Win users that it backfired).
shimfish 12y ago
It stinks for the user. It's way better for developers who aren't into having their software pirated though. Which in the end is better for the users.
- coob 12y ago
  Piracy is rampant on jailbroken iOS devices.
  - matrixagent 12y ago
    Indeed. I only learned recently just how rampant – not even half of the copies of a "App Store best of the year" game were bought. (https://twitter.com/ustwogames/status/552136427904184320 https://twitter.com/ustwogames/status/552136427904184320) I wouldn't even have imagined so many people would even jailbreak their phones anymore.
    - pjc50 12y ago
      I boggle at people going to that much effort to pirate such cheap games. Is there a region restriction issue?
      - rhia 12y ago
        I know quite a few people who are too cheap to pay the < 1$ for most apps...
        scrollaway 12y ago
        And I know quite a few people who are too broke to pay $1 for most apps. You are implying that people pirate $1 games "because they're too cheap to pay" which most of the time is just completely untrue - for a lot of people, it's a matter of not having the money. Some people here need to take a reality check break once in a while and look at people who don't make as much as they do.
dieg0 12y ago
iTunes for Windows is a monster that drains the life out of the PC. Microsoft Office for Mac OSX was coded with the same evil spirit. This behavior is unethical but pervasive, and should be outlawed somehow, it hurts everyone. Specially when it comes from the two biggest players in the market.
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  I've been pretty happy with MS Office for Mac over the past few years.
- dpark 12y ago
  When I used a Mac as my primary device, I relied on Office for Mac and it always ran well. I never had problems with it. The only issue was the lack of Visio, which I replaced with Omnigraffle. Disclosure: I work for Microsoft, though this experience was at a previous employer.
  - maxsilver 12y ago
    This has been my experience too -- everything works reasonably well, I'm pleased with it. It's not always pretty (and I'm frustrated that some keyboard shortcuts don't work like they ought to) but it's always run properly. Microsoft Outlook for Mac (the newer "blue" one, v15.3) is actually my favorite mail client on the mac. It's basically exactly what I wanted -- I wish there was a Windows version of the Mac Outlook :)
- dieg0 12y ago
  I've seen bugs in Word and Excel Sometimes Words starts typing multiple lines and Excel freezes when copy pasting filtered cells. I've learned to work around these bugs, (having been there for over a year). Maybe Office for Mac is not be coded by the devil, but lacks features and is unsatisfactory in ways that make me consider turning on the PC
- IvyMike 12y ago
  I always think about the tough state of existence for the "iTunes for Windows" and "Office for Mac" dev teams. I'm sure they get no support from corporate IT, their company's marketing constantly makes fun of their chosen field of expertise, and they probably even have their own table in the cafeteria. :(
acdha 12y ago
> Also, it stinks that Apple has nailed iOS that shut that even as a knowledgeable user you are not able to bypass it. I agree with that feeling wrong but consider it from the perspective of anyone who cares about security. We live in a world where millions of people have fallen for attacks which required them to type in their admin password and okay a software install, open the web console and paste JavaScript in to compromise their own account (see e.g. https://www.facebook.com/help/246962205475854 https://www.facebook.com/help/246962205475854), install custom Android apps which then exfiltrate data or attempt local exploits, etc. Apple chose not to allow that for iOS to ban that class of attacks outright. I've reconsidered my previous cynical conclusion that this was just to boost the app store profits based on the number of people I've heard mention using an iPad because they don't have to worry about installing programs; now I think the real profit comes from the trust in the platform – you need an awful lot of $.30 app profits to balance out a single device purchase. I'm not enthusiastic about heading into the no-user-serviceable-parts world but it's not like the traditional PC model has worked out well when the majority of non-technical users has some level of dread/acceptance that they'll make a mistake and be compromised.
benihana 12y ago
Yep. This ruined my Apple for me for about half a decade. I refused to use any of their products because my only interaction with them was with their shitty Windows software, so I assumed all their software was shit. It wasn't until I worked with a Mac fan who let me use his 2005 MBP that I realized that they can actually make decent software. Microsoft seemed to do the exact opposite in this time period. Their Office software was very Mac-like and worked very well on OS X.
- larrik 12y ago
  Unpopular opinion time: I've had a Mac Mini for 3 years, and I still haven't found any Apple-made desktop software I would call "decent". I've had only iPhones since the 3G came out, too, so I'm not just an anti-fanboy.
  - scott_karana 12y ago
    Surely you must tolerate OSX, or why would you still use the Mac Mini?
    - ceejayoz 12y ago
      It's entirely possible to run Linux/Windows on Mac hardware.
    - larrik 12y ago
      I usually use the Mac Mini solely for iOS development, and (since it's there anyway) iTunes management of my iDevices. I have a main machine I run Linux on, and use a KVM to switch between them. I admit that using a Windows keyboard on it is definitely a barrier, though.
  - chipotle_coyote 12y ago
    That's not an unpopular opinion -- I know a fair number of Mac users and I don't think I know any of them who are devoted fans of Apple's application (rather than system) software. I've been using Macs more or less full time since 1999; over those 15 years some of their applications have been pretty good, subjectively speaking, but in general Apple is pretty frustrating in this regard. They'll come up with a neat application, let it languish way too long, then go into a fit and rewrite large swaths of it in strange and occasionally compatibility-breaking ways. Every time I look at iPhoto (admittedly not often) it seems to be an entirely different program. The current version of Pages can now almost do everything that the previous version of Pages could, but not quite. Aperture started life as a pretty brilliant program then sat around drooling on its shoes while Lightroom raced past it. And as we head into 2015, iTunes still has blocking dialogue boxes, which makes things a wee bit inconvenient if you're trying to use it as a media server. (Which you really shouldn't. I'm a masochist, I guess.)
JohnTHaller 12y ago
Apple tricked quite a few Windows users into installing Safari and setting it as the default. Then Apple discontinued Safari for Windows without making an announcement or notifying uses (same as they do with older OS X versions... they just stop updating them). So there are quite a few people out there using Safari on Windows with no clue about the fact that they're using a completely insecure browser.
- raverbashing 12y ago
  If someone went to the trouble of installing Safari they know And by the way, I never managed to make it work in Windows...
  - rev_bird 12y ago
    One of the main points of this thread is that Apple specifically targeted people who _weren't_ trying to install it.
    - raverbashing 12y ago
      Ah I understand now. True, if you installed iTunes or QT and it installed it as extra, yeah, you probably have an older browser installed (but I think there's not that many people that still use it)
      - kbenson 12y ago
        I think you are still missing the complete context of the original comment. Once a browser is set as default, for a significant portion of people that won't change unless they are somehow prompted or forced to change it again at a later date. To many people, the browser is just another part of the OS that allows viewing webpages, and they just call it "The internet".
        basch 12y ago
        lets be honest. flash or java plus the ask toolbar have been installed by now, and managed to install chrome. chrome has a way of installing itself.

by iSnow 12y ago

pjc50 12y ago

Apple are quite happy to trash another company's OS. The Windows iTunes experience was terrible: it ate resources, was opaque in operation, didn't always sync properly and could occasionally wipe your devices. It used to be required for OS updates. The "nailing shut" is an increasing problem for anyone that believes in a free market in software. Which isn't helped by all these sites shipping value-negative software.

bcj 12y ago
I'm not going to lie, that does sound similar to my experience with iTunes on OS X (though I do remember it somehow being even worse on Windows).
jrockway 12y ago
iTunes for Windows seems fine to me. It syncs my iPhone OK, and doesn't otherwise annoy me. It's nice that I don't have to buy into their cloud or OS to use their phone.
Karunamon 12y ago
As an anecdote to counter another anecdote, I've never had these problems with Windows iTunes. I've used it since getting the HP branded iPod back in '02 (I think), and my music library has grown into the upper tens of thousands of songs since then. It's caused me to believe that all these people trashing on iTunes have broken computers, because the software plainly doesn't do half the crap it's accused of doing.
- soylentcola 12y ago
  To continue the mostly-irrelevant story time, I've installed it a few times and generally it works OK now but it is still quite slow for what it is. My main computer is no dog either (i7, 16GB RAM, SSD, yadda yadda) and compared to other media player/managers it really is a poor performer. I can almost understand this on the newer versions since they've made it a sort of one-stop-shop for playing media, managing iOS devices, shopping for media and software, and sorting your content databases. But the older versions I used back when I had a "classic" iPod were just terrible and all I did with that was load music onto the iPod. I seem to remember installing some custom firmware on the iPod specifically so I could just treat it like an external drive and manage the media on it via Winamp or Mediamonkey or some other program that had no business doing a better job at handling an iPod than something straight from Apple. Even now I just use it maybe once or twice a year to back up and update my old iPad 2. I haven't found a way to disable all of the various iTunes helper processes that want to run in the background (short of turning them off in services.msc) so it only gets updated and run when absolutely necessary. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong and it will run better if I open it more often and let it do its thing but there's just a point where it doesn't do anything (other than iOS backups) that I can't do more easily with other software. ...but I also admit that like many things, my previous bad experiences may be causing confirmation bias and leading me to take note of iTunes issues more than I would with other software.
FollowSteph3 12y ago
If you have an ssd and more than one Apple device, each device you synch eats up about 10gb of space or more. If you have a spouse with an iPhone in addition to yours, a kid or two with itouches, then that can easily eat up 50+Gb of an ssd drive. This can be a very significant percentage of your drive!! And there's no way to change it to anything by the c drive on windows.
- DanBC 12y ago
  There is a complex method of changing the backup drive by setting up symlinks. It is user-hostile of Apple to force use of C:\
  - bruceboughton 12y ago
    If you have a Mac with more than one hard drive, one of which is an SSD, you probably know how to set up symlinks.
norswap 12y ago
I nearly choked when Steve Jobs described iTunes for Windows as "a glass of water for someone in hell". More like "a bucket of lava for someone somewhere reasonable".

kagamine 12y ago

Less ironic when you consider that all of those Apps are from the same reputable company and not malware, nor do they have any hidden purpose beyond trying to assimilate the WinClones to the Appleborg (although it seems to have given Apple such a bad rep among some Win users that it backfired).

shimfish 12y ago

It stinks for the user. It's way better for developers who aren't into having their software pirated though. Which in the end is better for the users.

coob 12y ago
Piracy is rampant on jailbroken iOS devices.
- matrixagent 12y ago
  Indeed. I only learned recently just how rampant – not even half of the copies of a "App Store best of the year" game were bought. (https://twitter.com/ustwogames/status/552136427904184320 https://twitter.com/ustwogames/status/552136427904184320) I wouldn't even have imagined so many people would even jailbreak their phones anymore.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    I boggle at people going to that much effort to pirate such cheap games. Is there a region restriction issue?
    - rhia 12y ago
      I know quite a few people who are too cheap to pay the < 1$ for most apps...
      - scrollaway 12y ago
        And I know quite a few people who are too broke to pay $1 for most apps. You are implying that people pirate $1 games "because they're too cheap to pay" which most of the time is just completely untrue - for a lot of people, it's a matter of not having the money. Some people here need to take a reality check break once in a while and look at people who don't make as much as they do.

dieg0 12y ago

iTunes for Windows is a monster that drains the life out of the PC. Microsoft Office for Mac OSX was coded with the same evil spirit. This behavior is unethical but pervasive, and should be outlawed somehow, it hurts everyone. Specially when it comes from the two biggest players in the market.

snowwrestler 12y ago
I've been pretty happy with MS Office for Mac over the past few years.
dpark 12y ago
When I used a Mac as my primary device, I relied on Office for Mac and it always ran well. I never had problems with it. The only issue was the lack of Visio, which I replaced with Omnigraffle. Disclosure: I work for Microsoft, though this experience was at a previous employer.
- maxsilver 12y ago
  This has been my experience too -- everything works reasonably well, I'm pleased with it. It's not always pretty (and I'm frustrated that some keyboard shortcuts don't work like they ought to) but it's always run properly. Microsoft Outlook for Mac (the newer "blue" one, v15.3) is actually my favorite mail client on the mac. It's basically exactly what I wanted -- I wish there was a Windows version of the Mac Outlook :)
dieg0 12y ago
I've seen bugs in Word and Excel Sometimes Words starts typing multiple lines and Excel freezes when copy pasting filtered cells. I've learned to work around these bugs, (having been there for over a year). Maybe Office for Mac is not be coded by the devil, but lacks features and is unsatisfactory in ways that make me consider turning on the PC
IvyMike 12y ago
I always think about the tough state of existence for the "iTunes for Windows" and "Office for Mac" dev teams. I'm sure they get no support from corporate IT, their company's marketing constantly makes fun of their chosen field of expertise, and they probably even have their own table in the cafeteria. :(

acdha 12y ago

> Also, it stinks that Apple has nailed iOS that shut that even as a knowledgeable user you are not able to bypass it. I agree with that feeling wrong but consider it from the perspective of anyone who cares about security. We live in a world where millions of people have fallen for attacks which required them to type in their admin password and okay a software install, open the web console and paste JavaScript in to compromise their own account (see e.g. https://www.facebook.com/help/246962205475854 https://www.facebook.com/help/246962205475854), install custom Android apps which then exfiltrate data or attempt local exploits, etc. Apple chose not to allow that for iOS to ban that class of attacks outright. I've reconsidered my previous cynical conclusion that this was just to boost the app store profits based on the number of people I've heard mention using an iPad because they don't have to worry about installing programs; now I think the real profit comes from the trust in the platform – you need an awful lot of $.30 app profits to balance out a single device purchase. I'm not enthusiastic about heading into the no-user-serviceable-parts world but it's not like the traditional PC model has worked out well when the majority of non-technical users has some level of dread/acceptance that they'll make a mistake and be compromised.

benihana 12y ago

Yep. This ruined my Apple for me for about half a decade. I refused to use any of their products because my only interaction with them was with their shitty Windows software, so I assumed all their software was shit. It wasn't until I worked with a Mac fan who let me use his 2005 MBP that I realized that they can actually make decent software. Microsoft seemed to do the exact opposite in this time period. Their Office software was very Mac-like and worked very well on OS X.

larrik 12y ago
Unpopular opinion time: I've had a Mac Mini for 3 years, and I still haven't found any Apple-made desktop software I would call "decent". I've had only iPhones since the 3G came out, too, so I'm not just an anti-fanboy.
- scott_karana 12y ago
  Surely you must tolerate OSX, or why would you still use the Mac Mini?
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    It's entirely possible to run Linux/Windows on Mac hardware.
  - larrik 12y ago
    I usually use the Mac Mini solely for iOS development, and (since it's there anyway) iTunes management of my iDevices. I have a main machine I run Linux on, and use a KVM to switch between them. I admit that using a Windows keyboard on it is definitely a barrier, though.
- chipotle_coyote 12y ago
  That's not an unpopular opinion -- I know a fair number of Mac users and I don't think I know any of them who are devoted fans of Apple's application (rather than system) software. I've been using Macs more or less full time since 1999; over those 15 years some of their applications have been pretty good, subjectively speaking, but in general Apple is pretty frustrating in this regard. They'll come up with a neat application, let it languish way too long, then go into a fit and rewrite large swaths of it in strange and occasionally compatibility-breaking ways. Every time I look at iPhoto (admittedly not often) it seems to be an entirely different program. The current version of Pages can now almost do everything that the previous version of Pages could, but not quite. Aperture started life as a pretty brilliant program then sat around drooling on its shoes while Lightroom raced past it. And as we head into 2015, iTunes still has blocking dialogue boxes, which makes things a wee bit inconvenient if you're trying to use it as a media server. (Which you really shouldn't. I'm a masochist, I guess.)

JohnTHaller 12y ago

Apple tricked quite a few Windows users into installing Safari and setting it as the default. Then Apple discontinued Safari for Windows without making an announcement or notifying uses (same as they do with older OS X versions... they just stop updating them). So there are quite a few people out there using Safari on Windows with no clue about the fact that they're using a completely insecure browser.

raverbashing 12y ago
If someone went to the trouble of installing Safari they know And by the way, I never managed to make it work in Windows...
- rev_bird 12y ago
  One of the main points of this thread is that Apple specifically targeted people who _weren't_ trying to install it.
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    Ah I understand now. True, if you installed iTunes or QT and it installed it as extra, yeah, you probably have an older browser installed (but I think there's not that many people that still use it)
    - kbenson 12y ago
      I think you are still missing the complete context of the original comment. Once a browser is set as default, for a significant portion of people that won't change unless they are somehow prompted or forced to change it again at a later date. To many people, the browser is just another part of the OS that allows viewing webpages, and they just call it "The internet".
      - basch 12y ago
        lets be honest. flash or java plus the ask toolbar have been installed by now, and managed to install chrome. chrome has a way of installing itself.