Plasmic - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Not really... (Score 5, Insightful) 267

by Plasmic on Monday September 28, 2009 @09:09PM (#29574937) Attached to: Apple Pushes Unwanted Software To PCs, Again

Do you seriously not understand the difference between having something show up on a list of updates that are available and actually having it download and install behind your back?

How much research do you think people do before checking a box in an iTunes dialog? The onus is on Apple to not offer stupid things that would coincidentally inflate the installed base of an enterprise utility.

Do you seriously not understand the use case of a typical end-user, e.g. teenager, that thinks they want the 'iPhone Configuration Utility' since it's offered by Apple iTunes and they ... have an iPhone? "Hey, I might want to configure my iPhone. And I've always downloaded every other iTunes update with iPhone in the title." (Anyone that can read the description and decipher that it's for enterprise device management doesn't fit the definition of "typical end-user".)

The results speak for themselves: millions of users installed this software because it looked like a standard iPhone update.

Comment Re:Likely Accidental (Score 3, Insightful) 267

by Plasmic on Monday September 28, 2009 @08:52PM (#29574773) Attached to: Apple Pushes Unwanted Software To PCs, Again

Incorrect. Apple Updater has been popping up every time my wife opens iTunes (and sometimes even when she doesn't) asking her to install Bonjour, Safari, MobileMe, QuickTime and the iPhone Configuration Utility.

Can't argue with that!

And aren't we aware of Apple's iPhone in the enterprise push with IT buyers? Apple would love to say, "With over 10 million installs, the iPhone Configuration Utility is widely adopted by corporate IT departments". Nevermind that 99% of those are due to the "accidental" installation.

You also have to ask yourself, have they ever done anything to indicate their shyness with regard to software installation? QuickTime takes over every single audio/video playback association, both in Explorer and with browser-embedded media, and even gets its own system tray and desktop icons. Same goes for iTunes with its "uncheck if you don't want it" policy for the apps mentioned above.

I just don't see why we'd give Apple the benefit of the doubt on this one.

The Hidden Cost of Using Microsoft Software 691

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @03:37PM from the badware-tax dept.

Glyn Moody writes "Detractors of free software like to point out it's not really 'free,' and claim that its Total Cost of Ownership is often comparable with closed-source solutions if you take everything into account. And yet, despite their enthusiasm for including all the costs, they never include a very real extra that users of Microsoft's products frequently have to pay: the cost of cleaning up malware infections. For example, the UK city of Manchester has just paid out nearly $2.5 million to clean up the Conficker worm, most of which was 'a £1.2m [$2million] bill in the IT department, including £600,000 [$1 million] getting "consultancy support" to fix the problems, which including drafting in experts from Microsoft.' To make the comparisons fair, isn't it about time these often massive costs were included in TCO calculations?"

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