Is Apple’s Jealousy Of Microsoft Surfacing?
Mar 22 2008 
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Apple has been a huge bully this week and to be quite frank, I think it’s because Apple’s jealous.
The Safari Fiasco
Apple has been making headlines, most notably on Techmeme, over the fact that they are now pushing their products onto Windows machine’s using their Apple Software Update program. Basically, if you don’t have any of their products installed, when you use their updater, the option to install these products is checked by default. This doesn’t stop at Safari either. Oh no, silly people! This has also happened for those that don’t have iTunes installed. Damn Apple! Is this how we do business now? Even John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla, thinks Apple’s latest moves are wrong. However, that could be because they didn’t think of it first.
Nevertheless, people have been pretty pissed off about this move from Apple. It says a lot about the company’s emotions towards not only Microsoft, but also users of Microsoft’s products. Personally, I feel it has jealousy and envy written ever so subtly all over it. Obviously the market share that Windows has could make anyone envious. Even though iPods and iTunes are dominating the music scene, that’s still doesn’t beat the revenue that Microsoft generates off of Windows alone. As a result, Apple’s becoming more aggressive with it’s marketing tactics. It’s an unexpected move from Apple and one that most would expect to see from Microsoft instead. You have to admit, Apple is definitely dirty dancing.
The Ads
At the same time, I notice their ads are becoming more and more spiteful in tone. At first, everyone laughed. It was…snarky. One could almost consider it to be friendly rivalry. Then today I read that, "Apple again takes a swipe at Vista on Windows-friendly sites".
In the ad, the PC Guy notices that the banner above has a negative headline calling Vista "one of the biggest blunders in technology". He walks to a blank wall and opens a door to reveal an "Emergency Banner Refresh" panel. He pulls a lever and the ad refreshes, only to reveal another Vista-bashing headline that says the operating system needs "a do-over". His third attempt finally yields a positive quote, this time referencing Leopard, the latest version of the Mac OS, calling it "a perfect 10".
The PC Guy throws the switch one more time, and the top banner shows simply the Apple logo, while the right panel shows an iMac and the words "Upgrade to Mac."
Update: This ad apparently was running Friday on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. It doesn’t appear to be there today, though.
Apple is fighting really dirty and being very slick about it lol. I’ve never seen any response from Microsoft, but if you have, please share them in the comments section.
What Apple fails to be seeing is that it’s dirty to the consumers not just Microsoft. We stand the most to lose from such behavior, not Microsoft, and Apple stands to lose one of the hardest things you can ever get from consumers: Trust. Is it really worth it Apple? Quite frankly, I’m glad I’m not using any of your products. Whatever happened to Updates? You know, the keyword in the program that you’re using to carry out your Windows domination plans?
What do you think: Is there a crack an Apple’s armor? Are they really jealous? Is it simply ingenious marketing skills? Or is it something else all together?
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Color me crazy, but that’s the way our Apple updates have always come in. They toss everything in there, and they have these neato little checkboxes that you can UNCLICK if you don’t want something. In fact, I went ahead and didn’t install today’s update, NOT EVEN THE SECURITY UPDATE. There’s this cute little button that allows me to just not install ANYTHING.
Sheeple is my word of the day. If people are too lazy and/or stupid to read what they are installing and then click or unclick depending on their needs, then they shouldn’t be allowed to have a computer in the first place.
Then again, AOL in its heyday was reliant on people knowing they HAD to install that CD that arrived in the mail, right?
/rolling of eyes
Sorry. I can’t get all het up about this one.
Frankly speaking apple is losing the trust of consumers by using such dirt tricks
Cyndy… you are correct. Also, don’t let that rant by John Lilly fool you… his anger has nothing to do with the “trust of the users” as he protests and everything to do with money. Mozilla raked in almost $57 million last year from Google thanks to that default Google search bar in Firefox. Every customer that Apple can switch to Safari from Firefox means less money for Mozilla. See http://tinyurl.com/yqy223 for more info on Lilly… me thinks the gentleman doth protest too much.
I’m an Apple fan for sure. I love their software and hardware. They raise the industry. But, I want to see Apple to the right and smart thing all the time. In this case, Apple doesn’t get to put new programs into your updates list. If they marked them as suggested maybe that would be OK. I would like to see Apple defend themselves on this one. Get one of the young social-software-aware execs to explain why Apple is doing this.
The only excuse I can imagine is that Apple thinks iTunes and Safari enhance and are now integral with iLife. Maybe they can have a little ad box in the dialog for what they wish you would try.
Mostly, Apple is blowing it here. I don’t agree that you can expect the user to know which things to uncheck. That’s like registrations with the all the permission to market to me checkboxes checked.
i have a macbook that i work on. but just yesterday i had to do something on my pc and saw the update you’re talking about. i thought it was weird for a second but didn’t really think too much about it… it was more confusing than annoying at that point since i don’t run safari on it. i can see how it would bug the average user…