The Angry Drunk - Latest Comments in Oh for the Love of God!

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

jonah — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 04:07:16 -0000

Yeah, this is all a big fuss about nothing. However, opt-out is the tactic of the spammer. Just sayin'.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Heart_Man_2000 — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:33:32 -0000

I can't understand all the fuss. If you don't want Apple software on your Windows machine, don't install it in the first place. It's called freedom of choice.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Darren Meyer — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:49:07 -0000

Asa isn't whining about Apple doing exactly what he asked for -- he originally asked to have Apple make new software more clear (they did now), *and* to have the box unchecked by default. Apple did part of what he originally wanted: now he's saying "good job, but please don't stop there."

It's a pretty simple issue. If you're using something to update existing software, that's what it should do. If it's going to offer to install *new* software, fine -- but users should have to accept the new software if they want it, not reject it if they don't. Google Apps does this very right, Apple doesn't.

And yes, Firefox has some default behaviors that are unfortunate as well ("always check" should default to off, and the initial "set me as default?" dialog should have "Yes", "No", and "No, and don't ask me again" as choices ).

The question here isn't whether someone else in the browser market is doing a better job than Apple, the point is that Apple is doing something that undermines users' trust in software updaters. If people don't trust their updaters not to give them new software, they'll just turn them off, thus leaving security holes all over the place -- and that's worse for us all.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

joecab — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:25:47 -0000

Paranoid little me says this was Apple's plan all along, because if they started off by offering Safari in the update window as an alternative, people would bitch and moan about that as well, and they'd have no lesser evil to go back to aside from removing it all together. You can't ever underestimate the public's ability for misplaced indignation and stupidity.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

josef — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:16:55 -0000

Step 1. Read of Asa's comment on Daring Fireball
Step 2. Check Darby's counterpoint, also via Daring Fireball.
Step 3. Read comments. (Cheeks hurt from laughing so hard.)
Step 4. Fall in love with this blog and wonder where it's been all my life.
Off to spelunk the Angry Drunk for more gems!

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Guest — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 06:33:09 -0000

Best fucking comment thread *ever.*

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Neil Anderson — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 22:50:19 -0000

Maybe the whiners should read before they click?

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Travis — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:36:52 -0000

@John C. Welch: That's sounds like a fantastic place! Is there some way I can visit it?

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Rob Moir — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:32:34 -0000

It's funny that because it's Apple doing something it's OK. I think we'd never hear the end of it if Microsoft dropped something onto your Mac that behaved the same way.

The point to me is that regardless of whether or not you think it makes people "terminally stupid", they think in a certain way, and either Apple are ignorant of how users interact with their computer or they're all too aware and are exploiting it on purpose for some reason.

And either explanation worries me.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

John C. Welch — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:01:18 -0000

But it's the magic circle of trust where all the open source fairies and unicorns live and dance and frolic all the day long!

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

The Angry Drunk — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:57:45 -0000

Sigh. I was going to respond some more, and I realized that I'm wasting my time. If you really think that there is some magic "circle of trust" that Apple has somehow violated; then you are terminally stupid and I don't have any more time for you. Babble amongst yourselves.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Jonny — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:25:13 -0000

Apple don't understand that, if you start doing stupid stuff like this, you brake the circle of trust on updating software, only for security reason. If they continue stunts like this then people stop updating then everyone has unsecured systems, more viruses and worms... Bad move Apple

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

John C. Welch — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:45:19 -0000

I want someone to explain to me why FF decided "Fuck, people don't need to have a choice about our crash reporter app, so we'll stop asking them, and just install it without any notification whatsoever and screw what they want"

Because, as long as they keep doing that, they can just STFU about Apple and Safari, since their behavior is, you know, WORSE.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Just someone — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:22:22 -0000

Why has nobody bothered to point out that for Windows users using the bloatware that is firefox, or the crapware that is Internet Explorer, Safari actually IS an update.

It an update to your entire browsing experience, bringing you a speedy, light, well designed web browser that won't piss you of and doesn't look like its interface was designed by a committee of blind bricklayers (I'm looking at you, Firefox)

You should be fucking THANKING Apple for offering you the chance to update to something half decent.

Whining pricks..

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

J. Dunner — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:57:25 -0000

I can't believe this kind of crap gets linked to from Grubers site...

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Melangell — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:18:32 -0000

The Angry Drunk is absolutely right. It you are so much of a 'tard as to not actually pay attention to what you are doing... Arrggh!! Take some frelling responsibility for yourselves!

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Jesper — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:14:16 -0000

@JGowan:

Jesus god. If someone out of Apple and Mozilla has trouble getting people to download their browser out of their own free will, it's definitely Apple. Safari's a good web browser on any platform, but Firefox (3, admittedly) is definitely the better of them on Windows at the moment. I really don't think Asa's worried that they don't have enough ways to magically teleport their software onto people's computers.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

slaws — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:18:42 -0000

I always thought the big battle over "web portals", whose browser would be the de-facto on your desktop, whose website your browser would default to when it launched was ridiculous. I'm mean who didn't realize you could just change your settings and use whatever browser you wanted. Change another setting and have your browser go wherever you wanted it to on launch. Now, however, I see the world truly is populated by people that have no clue and must be protected from the ravages of those who know they are clueless. This all goes a long way towards explaining how Windows remains the dominant operating system on earth.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

JGowan — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:18:07 -0000

Asa is just mad that they don't have an "iTunes" to backdoor their browser onto millions of computers.

Honestly, does it really matter that people have Safari on their computers? In my opinion, it should be added to Windows Vista and Windows XP as part of the whole non-monopoly thing. That goes for Firefox and any other major browsers. If Windows users have a choice of IE then they should easily have a choice of other browsers.

Bottomline is this: the Windows users that think IE is the gateway to the internet (and only IE) then they'll just overlook Safari completely. If they know what browsers are and that there are many different ones, then they might try Safari. What's wrong with that? Competition, I thought, was good for business, the economy, the end user... it's just not good for 2nd Place, 3rd Place, 4th Place... Asa doesn't want Windows users to possibly try Safari, even by accident because they might actually like it and then never try anything else.

Lame, if you ask me.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Jesper — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 08:23:47 -0000

@Angry Drunk:

Fair enough. To clarify, I didn't ever think you had skin in this game, but it seems to me that Asa's not allowed to have an opinion on any level simply because he has skin in this game, because then he's just whining about the hard knock life of competition. You're not bound to any standards of journalistic obligations I or anyone else might hold to you, you're a guy with a weblog, going by the name of "The Angry Drunk", for fucks sake. If Asa was doing it to promote a Firefox that was starved for it, I'd agree that it'd "reek of desperation". But Firefox is not exactly in a bad place right now, and there are other (non-"freetard") people making the same exact argument and the same exact observations of the change being made, and you choose to return to Asa having the gall to retain interest in something he was previously interested in. That's what I meant by framing the argument. Without a lot of hand-waving, I just don't see it.

@Bucky Slingshot:

Yes, you can argue that not reading is stupid behavior because in some cases that'll be the point, but they are not the only options on the table. Mainly, people don't read everything they confront on their computer all day long, and as a software developer you can try to change people into making an exception for your awesome executable manna from heaven or you can work with the cards you're dealt.

(I fully appreciate that you may not be a software developer, and are just proclaiming this behavior to be stupid, which is OK. But I don't think that if we put you in a lab and measured your computer usage during a day, we'd find you to be acting extremely differently beyond what's to be expected on account of you being able to follow this level of UI design conversation (or people getting upset with the attention that this level of UI design conversation somehow generates) to begin with. PEOPLE SKIM CHUNKS OF TEXT PRESENTED IN DIALOG BOXES. SOMETIMES THEY DON'T READ IT AT ALL. YOU DO IT TOO. GET USED TO IT!)

Making the checkbox unselected by default so that in any case, clicking Install *never installs any new fucking piece of software, you know, like every other legitimate fucking updater app on the planet* just wouldn't be that hard. Unlike some other people in this comments thread, I couldn't care less about the average IQ of Windows or Mac or Linux or ENIAC users or the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. Apple just chooses to sell the most likely way in which people use Software Update out to distributing their applications and inflating a downloads statistic, hoping people won't be annoyed when new software shows up on people's desktops.

That's what gets me.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Russell — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:46:12 -0000

To quoth an angry drunk, "Again, the take home message here is that Windows users are so fucking confused by a checkbox that they can’t be trusted with the horrible responsibility of installing a browser."

But this is true. Only they're not confused; they're just idiots. They're using windows for God's sake.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Matt — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 06:54:26 -0000

Can we remember that the user in this situation is not necessarily joe computer user, but someone who at least has the bare minimum computer competency to buy a separate copy of Windows, and follow the Boot Camp instructions to install it on their Mac? And, like, they probably already use Safari on the Mac side? So maybe they can understand the checkbox?

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Leo — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:47:50 -0000

Actually, to coin 'Windows users' as confused and not to be trusted with a checkbox is a bit of a...well very weak point.

I don't know the software update on OS X, but if that also defaults to offering new softwarem, I bet many Mac users just click through blindly as well, installing new software without them knowing. It's just that there are more Windows users, thus more possible complainers. I think there are more Windows novices with a weblog than Mac novices.

Plus of course, it's Apple software update on a Windows Machine. Say you installed Office for Mac; after a few weeks the update thingy runs, and by default it also offers to install Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker for Mac (if those existed). If that day ever came, your, Grubers and many other Mac-bloggers head would probably explode in the process of loathing Microsoft.

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Dave M. — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 03:36:58 -0000

All I can say Mr. Angry Drunk.... AMEN brother!

Just wait though, there is going to be a whole new round of whining about this update.

What really rankles me is, where are all the Microsoft is evil people when Microsoft updates their computer without even giving them a warning or even a message until after the deed is done.

After I updated QuickTime on one of my Windows boxes and rebooted. I was informed that Microsoft had updated my OS without my prior knowledge or consent. So where are all the enraged blog posts about how Microsoft is evil and such? Sheesh!

Re: Oh for the Love of God!

Bucky Slingshot — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 03:33:39 -0000

@Jesper:

"But the angle you describe people like me as pushing is “people is stupid and can’t uncheck checkboxes”. That’s not it. People just don’t read."

I'm not following. Not reading is a stupid behavior. So, how does this argument that they "just don't read" indicate that they aren't stupid? It proves the point.