My concern was that if I wanted to buy something, I'd go online and look for it. If I wanted to run an application, I'd search for it. It was a case of extremely terrible UX and wasted my time having to disable it each time I installed Ubuntu.
'apt-get remove unity-shopping-lens' hardly consumes a lot of time, particularly since you make it sound like you installed Ubuntu often enough to make it onerous - that often, and you'd remember the command without having to web-search for it.
I find much harder to justify Apple (as an Apple user) then Ubuntu for doing this.
Ubuntu is free (technically also Yosemite is, but it´s part of the Apple HW/SW package), and what it does it´s not so different than a Laptop manufacturer installing bloatware to subsidize the costs. It´s ugly but I understand it.
But one of the reason for buying an Apple product (and paying a premium price for it), it is not having to deal with things like this.
You use scare quotes, suggesting you think it takes a long time. It really doesn't, not for anyone who has frequently installed ubuntu - it really is as fast as typing that line.
Also, where did I say it was a good thing? I also think that having to deselect privacy markers in two places is also a step no-one should have to take. This thread is about why Ubuntu got raked over the coals and Apple didn't, and it takes longer to navigate to and unselect the two disparate options for the Apple search issue than to uninstall the Ubuntu thing.
I mean seriously, of all the arguments against the Unity shopping lens, "I install ubuntu a lot and this wastes so much of my time" is such a non-starter. It takes more time to select a wallpaper.
Are you so completely blind to other people's computer skills?
It only takes a short amount of time for you because you know precisely what to do. There are literally millions of little "but that's so easy to change" on a computer, it's a huge cognitive tax.
Other people will be "Why's there shopping results, wtf? How'd I get rid of this. What's going on?". After a few weeks of it annoying them they finally google it , find old information, run an old command, doesn't work, get annoyed, go make cup of tea in annoyance. Forget about it. Get even more annoyed over the next few weeks at Amazon results popping up, google again, finally find up-to-date blog post, find the right menu, go to the right place, click, finished. Until they install the next version in a year or two and the process happens all over again as they've forgotten how they did it last time.
EDIT: There's a great little idea in the book Good Omens where the devil Crowley sets up projects of small amounts of misery to huge amounts of humans, rather than going after one soul at a time like other, old fashioned, demons. Auto-callers, motorways shaped like an ancient symbol for the devil (the M25).
Crapware like this would definitely be something Crowley would be proud to come up with.
I was responding to someone who phrased their comment that suggested they had installed ubuntu a number of times; not exactly the behaviour of a naif. I also commented that since we were talking about time, the ubuntu version compared favourably against the Apple find-in-two-spots version. Also, if you want to talk about the general behaviour of tech naives, they don't reinstall their systems every year, not by a long shot. I've worked in tech support in some form or other most of my life, whether it's family, school, medical equipment, office support, whatever. Your idea that the general computer user changes their operating systems every year (or two) is pure nonsense. OSX is the best to come along in that regard, and that's because they do in-machine updates. There are still tons of people on XP, which was superseded eight years ago.
Hell, if you want to talk about the behaviour of tech naives, at least with the ubuntu issue, it's clear and obvious that something distasteful is going on. With the Apple issue, the naives aren't going to be even vaguely aware.
Sod the strawman you built up around me; in both my comments I was referring explicitly to an experienced user. But no, you frame me as dismissive of tech naifs... while painting the use-case of a person who is a power user. Perhaps Crowley has been whispering in your ear?
And the concern wasn't about the fact that it shows products, but about the fact that data was being sent to Amazon (unencrypted as well, I believe).