Apple pulls a fast one with new Safari browser

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Oh come on, Steve, is this how we're going to play ball now?Steve Jobs is one of my favorite people, the $1-a-year chairman of Apple Computer and a really smart dude. Really smart. Apple, you know, is the home of the iPod, the Mac, the PowerBook, the Lisa, all that cool stuff.Except the folks at Apple had a bit of a problem: The company had released a new browser called "Safari for Windows" that no one on the Windows platform would bother to use, because Internet Explorer and Firefox had cornered the entire market. (Remember Netscape?)Soooo, Apple decided to sneak it onto millions of Windows machines last week without asking their owners. It used the Apple update program, installed on Windows machines, that's supposed to update programs such as iTunes or Quicktime. When the update box popped up on an XP machine I use as a print server and iTunes server, I automatically hit "next" and never thought twice.A day or two later, it popped up on my other XP machine and I saw "Safari" on the list of updates. "Hmmm," I thought, "I never installed Safari on this box." I checked around and saw rumblings in the trade press about this unorthodox distribution method."What Apple is doing now with (its) Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong," Mozilla (Firefox) CEO John Lilly wrote in his blog. "It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that's bad -- not just for Apple but for the security of the whole Web."It wasn't just that Safari was offered as a download; it was set to download by default and pushed to users without asking. That's what seems to have set people off. (It's equally annoying to have to uncheck iTunes as a download every time I update Quicktime on my business laptop; Apple keeps pushing that to me, too.)I know people should take responsibility for what they're installing, but think about this: "Safari" wasn't an update, it was a new program. Users have gotten used to accepting Apple's word that the update program has integrity (unlike anything from, say, Real Networks, which will fill your computer to the brim with junk).My Apple fanboy friend tells me Windows Update has been doing the same thing for years, but I disagree. I can't recall Windows Update ever offering me an entirely new program, even Windows Defender. There were plenty of updates, such as Windows Media Player, but not entirely new programs.It would be like installing Office 2008 for the Mac on my Powerbook and three months later getting Microsoft Money along with an update.It's just sleazy -- and I expect better from Apple.(James Derk is owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm, and tech columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at jim(at)cyberdads.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)