Common courtesy is very important for all application developers to follow especially when they are dealing with users settings. Especially for common file formats, where the user has probably already set up their preferences how they like. And most importantly to not piss off your install base.

As you might have gathered from the title Apple has screwed up in this area yet again. In their never ending battle to try and forcibly get an install base, from some of their crappiest application. The Apple developers must taken the same “Our shit doesn’t stink”-attitude as many of their users, and started taking over the preferences on the users machine with out asking.

Like any good .NET developer I had the XML file format being opened by Visual Studio, it has a nice viewing, and editing interface that is hard to beat. Today I saw their was a QuickTime update while watching the Facebook Conferences presentation in anticipation of my previous post today. So as I decided to do the update, what a nightmare that has turned out to be. First of all it was 70 MB download, because Apple also decided that iTunes and Safari needed to be downloaded with Quicktime, and bundled them all together. Then it decides to take over all my documents in my system, including HTML, XML, and a bunch of other web related documents. See below.

Then to boot their XML “Rendering” sucks.

Hey news flash Steve Jobs this is how a real browser renders XML, and does a damn fine job at it.

At least if you are going to take over my system, and forcibly put your software on my computer, the very least you could do is not make it suck. Is that too much to ask.

Steve Jobs has to learn that Windows users don’t put up with the same amount of shit as Apples users do, because one we don’t bow down at the alter of Steve Jobs, and two we have other options. I am not going to let Steve Jobs take a steaming pile of shit on my PC, change all the settings, install one of the worst browsers on earth, and then forgive him. He is going to have to do something grand with Safari to get it back on my PC.

I am really pissed that I now have to uninstall a program that I never wanted installed in the first place, and then go through the registry and clean up after an Apple Developer that couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag.

Maybe they should spend less time trying to achieve an ACID3 milestone that won’t be standard for another couple of years and work on the basics that IE for the better part of a decade now.

Tags: Apple, IE, iTunes, QuickTime, Safari, XML

Posted in Personal, Rant | | | View blog reactions | 4 Comments »

Three interesting things about Apple Safari came out this past week.

1. Apple Safari 3.1 passed the Acid 3 test
2. Apple Safari running on a Mac was hacked in 2 minutes flat at PWN To OWN and fell in the second round using a default install of Mac OS X software.  Even Vista made it to the third round where it was successfully hacked through the Adobe Flash plug-in for IE 7.
3. Apple is pushing Safari to Windows users with out their permission.

In my opinion it is great that the Apple Safari team is working very hard to support web standards. However that should be secondary to building a secure browser platform that is going to protect their user base.  This should be obvious to every developer with in Apple, because Acid 3 features aren’t currently out on the net, so support isn’t that critical, however browser exploits are out there right now just looking for prey.

Combine all that with Apple pushing Safari out to Windows with out asking for permission from the user of the computer.  Windows already has enough problems with security and doesn’t need a new one pushed on it by Apple.

Tags: Adobe Flash, IE7, OS X, PWN To OWN, Safari, Vista

Posted in Rant | | | View blog reactions | 5 Comments »