Ban the Check

On July 31, 2009, in Rants, Security, by

Dear Mr. Jobs,

Glad you are feeling better and back to work.  Thanks for rushing out the iPhone patch for the Blackhat issue that was just announced this week.  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222 Kudos for getting a patch out that fast.  Bet ol’ Ballmer couldn’t patch his phone platform that fast, huh?

But can you do me a huge favor?  When you offer an update for iTunes CAN YOU STOP PRECHECKING SAFARI AND MOBILE ME?  I’m getting a tad tired of you and every other vendor that sees updates as a mechanism for cramming your applications down our throats.  We went down this road before and you had it unchecked.  Now you are prechecking it again. 

And don’t think that I’m letting any other vendor off the hook, Flash with their google toolbar, Sun Java with their Microsoft MSN (now Bing) toolbar….. enough with the prechecked crud you guys keep doing.

You are violating the trust of updaters.  It is no wonder that people are shutting off updates.  This post is dedicated to Mow.. Steve Wechsler who found his mother’s computer with every security patch installed toolbar known to mankind on it.

BleepingComputer.com -> Hey, Software “Vendors”, Stop installing CRAP with your security updates !!!:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/blogs/mowgreen/index.php?showentry=1564

Join me in demanding from our vendors that Security updates do not offer up toolbars or any other non security related updates.  No additional software should be prechecked when we are obtaining security updates.

That goes for Microsoft, Sun, Adobe, or any other vendor that prechecks a toolbar or other offering with a security update.

Grab your “Ban the check” logos from here:  http://cid-c756c44362cd94ad.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Ban%20the%20Check?uc=1&nl=1

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4 Responses to Ban the Check

  1. indy says:
    July 31, 2009 at 8:56 pm

    They do. Install using the /quiet, /q, or /qn switch.

  2. Tony Toews says:
    August 1, 2009 at 12:04 am

    Dear Mr Jobs.

    As a result of the above cr*p I have removed Itunes & QuickTime from my system.

    Good bye

  3. admin says:
    August 1, 2009 at 12:09 am

    Indy, I’m primarily talking about the consumer marketplace here. This needs to stop across the board.

  4. Joe Raby says:
    August 1, 2009 at 11:09 am

    I don’t use Apple Software Updater because if you only want Quicktime, the updater advertises “iTunes+Quicktime” as an update EVEN IF QUICKTIME IS ALREADY UP TO DATE!

    Quicktime has its own updater. Everytime the player launches, it checks to see if there’s an update. If you only want Quicktime installed, do yourself a favour and just remove Apple Software Updater afterwards.