I was stunned and angry when I saw Apple Software Update pop up on her PC last week. There were no updates for iTunes or QuickTime, the two Apple programs I installed for her. Instead, using the same mechanism that delivers security updates, Apple Software Update was offering Safari 3.1 for Windows, with the check box obligingly selected and the Install button awaiting her click.
{ deletia }
Companies that deliver network-connected software that contains potential security vulnerabilities have a responsibility to offer regular updates to repair those issues. The right way to do it involves these four principles
* Opt-in is the only way. The update process should be completely opt-in. The option to deliver software should never be preselected for the user.
* Offer full disclosure. The software company has a responsibility to fully disclose what its software does, and the customer should make the opt-in decision only after being given complete details about how the update process works.
* Offer updates only. Updates should be just that. They should apply only to software that the customer has already chosen to install.
* Don’t mix updates. Updates that are not critical should be delivered through a separate mechanism. ^
Every time this issue comes up, someone starts a petition for a user bill of rights. Since “rights” are mostly imaginary notions that by their uncompromising nature conflict with almost everything else, I don’t think that’s an optimal solution, but for all people who want to succeed in marketing, I think “treat the user right” is a mandatory dictum.
What Apple did was deceptive. In a format reserved for updates, normally, it inserted an entirely different software package. Users are accustomed to being able to recognize this screen, click, and move on. They do that because installing software is one of ten thousand things they’d like to do today, and if not the least exciting, darn close.
What enables them to click is that they have invested trust in the company making the product. True, we can always say “The user should check everything they install on their computer,” but that’s not realistic. It’s like asking you to check your car for bombs each time you leave home. You trust it will work.
I have always admired Apple’s visual design and interface design, and simultaneously loathed the way they use that ability as a justification for a supremacist, elitist, snotty class warfare attitude. “Oh, you’re using a PC? Do you live in a trailer and wear overalls?”
I have also found it disturbing that Apple, like an abusive husband, lures people into this weird cult of feeling better than trailer-dwelling, overall-wearing citizens. It then abuses them, and they accept this as part of the privilege of being an Apple user. A strange, ugly, sick cult indeed.