Quicktime and Forced Software Installs
Tuesday, May 17th, 2005I recently had to install QuickTime to play some content from a blog I was visiting. When I went to the Apple download site to get it, I discovered that in order to get QuickTime, you also had to download iTunes. No problem, I thought, when I do the install, I’ll choose custom and then deselect iTunes, since I didn’t want to install iTunes. As it turns out, the install program does not allow you install QuickTime by itself; it forces you to install iTunes as well. So, after the installation was finished, I had to go into the Control Panel and uninstall iTunes. What a hassle.
I don’t know what Apple thinks it is doing by forcing me to install iTunes. It’s not like I’m suddenly going to want it just because they’re forcing me to install it. In fact, they’re really making me hate it just that much more by forcing me to remove it after forcing me to install it. Somebody in their marketing department needs to tell these guys that forcing someone to do something which is not necessary is bad from a PR perspective.
These two programs, while they will integrate, are not required to be installed together for them to work. QuickTime runs just fine without iTunes, so forcing me to install iTunes is just their way of forcing me to try it out. For all of their noise about how bad Microsoft is, Apple seems to be taking a page from the Microsoft marketing playbook by forcing the installation of iTunes.
Would it really have been that hard to put a “QuickTime Only” install option in the package?
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