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.
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.
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)
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".
Yup. Chrome is offered as opt-out bundleware with quite a few Windows apps and Google pays the publishers for this. This is how quite a few regular users switched to Chrome. Even just updating Java in Windows it'll try and sneak a copy of Chrome in with the update.
No, they really didn't. I've fixed quite a few friends' computers and asked 'why do you have Safari and Quicktime installed?' and the answer is always 'I have no idea, maybe iTunes did it'.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
> 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), 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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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
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. :(
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).
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) I wouldn't even have imagined so many people would even jailbreak their phones anymore.
Those numbers are somewhat sketchy if I recall right. Apple doesn't allow app authors to have access to an unchanging ID of a device, so if they're doing something like
(number of changeable UIDs that touched our server) - (app store sales) = copies we should have been paid for
..then there's a huge problem with their methodology. It would fail on the basic use case of one user with one app store account installing the app on more than one device (especially with kid friendly games like this), or re installs after a device wipe, or reinstalls after a user with a busted phone gets a new one, and so on.
As usual, bad statistics being used in defense of the piracy bogeyman. The number of people who jailbreak their phones is a tiny minority of iOS users, and the number of people who do so to pirate is an even tinier minority of that.
Even as someone that has no moral issues with downloading apps for free, I can tell you that it's not worth it on iOS. The contrast between the "it just works"-ness of the app store, and the hoops you need to jump through to get free apps is jarring.
Five percent are paid downloads, so the ratio is 9.5 to 1, but a portion of those are people who have both a phone and a tablet, people who have more than one Android device with them. So a small portion of that 95 percent is going to be taken up by those installs.
> So a small portion of that 95 percent is going to be taken up by those installs.
More! I have burned through four Android phones and three tablets with one google account. Everyone who upgrades their device makes "one pirated copy" by the logic of this study.
And a huge portion of the current (licensed, not the chinese ones without a valid Google license) Android phones are likely to be upgrades for older or broken devices.
Isn't this partially a result of selling iPhones in countries where majority of population doesn't have access to any means of payment that would work with App Store?
it's not a matter of price, or restrictions, but more about how people interact with the platforms.
They believe they already paid for the phone; they know they still need to pay their carrier for something they use but paying for software?
common that's digital. copyable.
wait! I need to tie my credit card to my phone? no way. I certainly can afford apps, but it's better to use them for free.
why do they need to pay if facebook, gmail, whatapp... are free..
do you read the news? app developers earn billions!
I know you need to pay for window, but I've using for free for the last 10 years you know..
Just read at the free games' reviews.. they complain and demand, without even thinking on giving a dime to authors.
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.
If they somehow came up with the money to buy an iPhone -- $500+ unlocked, or $100+/month on a multi-year contract -- they don't "not [have] the money" to occasionally spend $1 on an app. They've just chosen to spend a lot on the phone itself, which might not leave much left over.
Lest you think I'm speaking from a position of not understanding poverty: my salary in 2013 was $21k pre-tax, with a wife and a kid. I had a $10 flip phone and spent about $8 a month on minutes.
Stolen iPhones, back in the days when there was no option for remote wipe/disable, or used iPhones (some friend got a 1st gen iphone for ~20€) can be dead cheap.
And honestly, I'd choose a working-order 1st gen iphone over any brickphone.
> If they somehow came up with the money to buy an iPhone -- $500+ unlocked, or $100+/month on a multi-year contract
Looks like you need the reality check I was talking about. I can find you $40 smartphones in countries that aren't the one you're in. And by the way, $40 can still be a huge investment for such people (just like $500 is to a lot of people in the US).
Edit: Those downvotes-without-explanation are really unnecessary, seriously. If you think I'm wrong, you very well may need a reality check yourself.
EDIT: saying things like "If you think I'm wrong, you very well may need a reality check yourself" makes it seem like you're not open to dialogue. It comes off as rude, arrogant, and accusatory. That probably contributes to the downvotes.
> "I can find you $40 smartphones"
I can find plenty of $40 smartphones at Wal-Mart and Kroger. But this thread isn't about $40 smartphones, it's about iPhones -- and, in particular, the parent to your prior comment mentioned knowing people "too cheap" to pay for apps despite owning (implied: relatively new) flagship phones.
I know some people who are legitimately too broke to pay for apps, but they don't have new iPhones. Last year I didn't have a $40 smartphone, and definitely not a $500+ iPhone, precisely because it would have been a bigger investment than I could justify for a phone. I get that there are people for whom a $40 phone and $1 per app is too much money, but they don't have an iPhone6 or even an iPhone5, and they're not pirating the sort of apps that only run on those phones. The people pirating those apps aren't too poor, they're too cheap.
Complaining about downvotes without replies makes it seem like I'm not open to dialogue? I think it makes some people in here seem like they live in a bubble, to each their own huh?
> But this thread isn't about $40 smartphones
Actually, it is; GGP said he "knows people too cheap to pay $1 for apps" and that is completely valid for Android as well. The rest of your post's premise is wrong on that basis. I'm not claiming iphones are popular amongst that sector of the population. But even if I did, as someone else said below, actual pirated/resold iphones do cost around 30-40 USD making them just as accessible.
Edit: And I don't mean to be rude, it just disgusts me how some people here are so full of money it doesn't even register that for some, $1 is a big deal.
> "Complaining about downvotes without replies makes it seem like I'm not open to dialogue?"
No. Treating disagreement as a sign that people need a "reality check" and that they're "in a bubble" makes it seem like you're not open to dialogue. Like you don't even acknowledge the possibility that someone disagreeing with you could have a valid perspective.
> "it is ... completely valid for Android"
Yes, but the broader context of the thread was about iPhone piracy. Also note that he claimed he knew people "too cheap" to pay $1 -- not people "too poor" to pay $1 -- for apps.
I get that $1 is a big deal to some people. I live in one of the poorest zip codes in my state. I've taken in three poor families in the last two years (a divorced mom, teen parents, and a single woman working through community college). My church runs a fairly substantial food bank and clothing bank. I'm connected to a ministry that rescues young women from polygamy (FLDS, AUB, and related groups) and they often have 3-5 children, no money, and a 6th grade education at age 20. I taught in a school where 95% of students qualified for federal free/reduced lunch. Some of my family members do charity work out at Navajo Mountain in southern Utah, which is one of the poorest places in the US.
The people I know in deep poverty are not major app pirates. Most of them don't have smartphones, and the ones that do have $40 or less grocery store phones running Android 2.2 on a pay-as-you-go plan, with either free games or no games.
Conversely, everyone I know who pirates $1 apps is either a college student whose parents pay for everything and they just can't be bothered to ask mom for iTunes credits, or they're a middle-class adult who thinks "I can get it for free if I jailbreak my phone, so it's not stealing." They have adequate dollars to pay for apps to go with their $500+ phone and $100+/month plan, but choose not to. Hence, "too cheap".
It's like complaining that prisons are full of criminals. While playing around with a jailbroken iOS device is fun I would never do it with a device I use myself for something real.
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.
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.
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.)
> I don't think I know any of them who are devoted fans of Apple's application (rather than system) software.
I fail to see the difference between OSX and Windows then. Legacy Win32 APIs probably are still there, somewhere, but they've built a fairly solid system on top of that. PowerShell is one major argument in favour of Windows platform: it really makes resource management and scripting (and remote administration) quite nice. Meanwhile, for practically anything other than core system services (and sometimes for those too...) you need to install 3rd party applications.
It's exactly the same on Mac OS: I had to install Spectacle just to make the system support the most obvious shortcuts for positioning and resizing windows. Homebrew/mac ports are nice and I know of no Windows equivalent, but I think they target very specific kind of users and are rather limited in usefulness.
In any case: I'm a Linux user, have been using FreeBSD on the desktop before that for years, worked on Windows earlier, and now I'm being forced to use a Mac for iOS development. I see no real difference between OSX and Windows7/8 in terms of OS capabilities: out of the box they're both rather weak (for my purposes, anyway). With some tinkering and 3rd party applications both can be made into workable systems - but the tinkering is both harder and more limited than what's possible on Linux.
Other than mentioned homebrew and some degree of POSIX-compliance which makes compiling many *nix programs natively under Mac OS possible, what makes it nowadays better than Windows (I mean core OS functionality)?
That's really subjective, but for me I suppose it's two things.
First, I'm probably not alone on HN in reading that last sentence of yours that begins "Other than..." as being roughly equivalent to "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?" OS X doesn't just have "some degree of POSIX-compliance"; it's Unix, full stop. If you are that "specific kind of user," this isn't optional.
Second, as squishy as this sounds, I simply like the OS X user experience more than Windows or any Linux/FreeBSD desktop environment that I've tried. The Mac gets the GUI right in subtle ways that are hard to describe but that I always notice when I'm using other systems. And this isn't due to lack of personal exposure; I'm, well, old by today's computing standards, and I've used the original MacOS for years, FreeBSD for several years (including professionally) and many versions of Linux, from the SLS days up through Ubuntu 12. (Actually, I'm running Ubuntu 14.10 and Arch Linux on two different servers, but they're GUI-free.) And I wouldn't trade OS X for any of them.
I know for some people, being able to tile terminal windows into a 3x3 grid without ever touching a mouse is their UX nirvana, but I am not one of those people, and I don't think I'm less productive for it. The fastest way to get a window the size and place I want it is often with a mouse. The fastest way to copy and move files is often with drag and drop. I know (some) people insist that I must be slowed down by constantly using mouse-driven software and switching between a tabbed terminal, a GUI text editor and a visual diff tool -- all with (gasp) overlapping windows! -- but I'm not. Really. And there are a fair number of Mac-only programs that I prefer to their Linux or Windows counterparts, if I can even find such counterparts. (Keynote, OmniOutliner, Soulver, ReadKit and xScope all come to mind.)
And, last but not least, it's nice -- at least for me -- to have a full Unix system that also has a lot of commercial software support. I don't run much Microsoft or Adobe software, but I'm glad I have the option. The applications I mentioned in parentheses there are all commercial, and as cliché as it may be to claim that commercial software generally has a better UX than free software -- and even more obnoxious, that Mac software tends to have a better UX than Windows -- it often matches my experience.
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.