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Comment by goosedragons | Hacker News Reader

Apple pulls this crap too. Use a different browser on Mac and get a "helpful" notification telling you to try the new Safari. Only place you're safe these days is a fully FOSS OS like Linux and FreeBSD.

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I don't use Apple products but I don't think this is outrageous or something. Why shouldn't a company that sold me a refrigerator be able to point out that it produces ovens as well?

Of course I despise what Microsoft does, it's absolutely over the top.

”Helpful” notification is much less than Microsoft is doing indeed. After all, Mac is commercial OS and Safari is their product so at least a little bit is allowed. But Microsoft is closer and closer banning anything they don’t want.

Because its annoying and ridiculous? They also do it WHEN you open another web browser. Imagine if your Acme fridge had a camera that noticed every time you opened your non-Acme oven and bleated out "Try the new Acme Oven! You'll love its efficiency and design!". Is that okay?

Maybe they do that once? They definitely don’t do it every time you open Chrome. That would be ridiculous.

You're right thats its not actually every time but neither is this Edge install thing. If you click "Later" I think it won't do it for 3 days according to this blog post [0] and I think that's still accurate. If you hit Try Now I think you get a little more time to whenever Apple updates Safari/macOS.

[0] https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-osx-try-safari-promotion....

Once a year when Apple does an OS release isn’t too unreasonable. Apple’s iOS policy is completely unreasonable, but IMO Mac has stayed quite ok. The only thing I really don’t like is the rigmarole you have to click through when opening an app from the internet for the first time, but that can be turned off (and it will stay off)

Compared to Windows, the notifications for trying Safari are nothing, and switching browsers aren't so much of a hassle. Microsoft actively tries to push you to Edge in the settings and a to get a Microsoft Account at start up. A couple of times I've been stopped at start up because of the "You need to finish updating" screen with those prompts, sometimes afterwards I see that my taskbar now has the Mail and Edge app pinned automatically. In comparison my Macbook throws up an ignorable notification in the corner if I open Firefox. For your analogy, your Microsoft Fridge is turning off the power supply for your house unless you go and turn it back on by yourself or buy the Microsoft Oven.

If people accept it, then it will get normalized, then the next level of abuse will come and you'll be happy because the water is only going up a degree or two. Frogs are best boiled slowly. They'll never notice, the suckers.

Do you have any proof for the boiled frog myth? Would love to read.

I don't think we need to rehash that bit over and over again, it's a well known that the story is apocryphal but it serves as a useful metaphor, which I think by calling it a myth you are well aware of. Or were you genuinely interested in boiling living frogs?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

I think this logic should be reserved for the cases where it really matters, like the erosion of freedom of speech. Potentially permanent changes.

This is just slimy sales tactics. The level of ‘acceptable to most people’ swings back and forth. It’s not a slippery slope.

It really matters. That it doesn't matter to you is something I'm fine with, but user freedom to use their computers as intended is not something that is trivial to me.

It does matter to me, I hate it when slimy sales tactics are the norm. I’m saying the boiling frog idea does not really apply here. It is essentially a spam issue.

Ah I see, when you look at it that way, yes, the instance itself is a bad enough thing. But the problem is that the step up from the previous n abuses is small enough that some percentage of the users will accept it, hence the froggy bits. They just keep doing worse thing, I'm trying to imagine the FF from a decade ago doing this and trying to get away with it. The users that are still left are the die hards, everybody else is already gone, they either can't leave or the won't leave (or both) until it is too late.

It's about the erosion of computing freedom. How distant is so helpfully nudging you to use a particular, blessed program for your security and convenience, to just mandating it? See Apple, for example, who has successfully normalized the device manufacturer dictating what software is allowed to run on the OS, and it's conveniently the one from its own store, paid for through its own gateway and sometimes whose cloud storage and network functionality is controlled by state agencies. That's something that really matters.

> I think this logic should be reserved for the cases where it really matters

I disagree, because by then you've lost the ability to fight back. If you let the little bad behaviors go, you set a precedent that's hard to fight against.

One could argue we're seeing that in realtime with your argument that everything is still fine...

> Why shouldn't a company that sold me a refrigerator be able to point out that it produces ovens as well?

Depends on how big that company is in the fridge market. Using a monopoly power in one market to dominate another is textbook abuse of monopoly power and exactly why MS got sued for IE back in the day.

Pointing it out once is potentially helpful.

Continuing to point it out after you’ve acknowledged it is called “nagging”.

It’s annoying. Really that simple.

>Why shouldn't a company that sold me a refrigerator be able to point out that it produces ovens as well?

How often would be too much? What if you already bought an oven and it was still 'pointing out' that the company produces fridges (like you just bought) as well? Every six weeks acceptable? I accept that when i go downtown/ to a shop my eyeballs count. But inside my home, on my systems? No thanks.

Saying “hey why not try this” as a small easily dismissible notification is very, very different from what’s shown in the tweets.

No, it really isn't. Especially since the options are "Try now" and "Later" with no "Never" or some other easy way to permanently stop it.

You really can’t see a difference between

> “you don't need to download a new browser, we recommend Edge”

> “to protect your pc we recommend only running ms verified apps, use Edge”

And

> “try safari, it’s energy efficient”

If not, look a bit harder.

No I don't. They're both advertisements. One happens only at install. The other when you use a competitors program. Both are despicable behaviors from an OS. It's like asking whether I prefer dog or cat turds on my carpet. They're both turds.

That’s reductionist to the point of stupidity. They are also both words, so I guess there’s no difference between them and this comment?

Except words have meaning, and the differences between these meanings are important.

One set of words is telling you that you are not safe unless you use this browser. It’s implying you’re making a mistake by using Firefox, and in both cases it’s saying “the people who make your computer are telling you to use this thing”. Non technical people are easily fooled by this. It’s scary.

The other one is saying “hey, Safari exists” in the corner of your screen.

There’s a big difference between these two.

There is no difference. In both cases someone is pushing their opinions or interest into your view. That's advertising, plain and simple. The text of the ad doesn't change that. Apple may not have the advertising bug as bad as Microsoft, but the are both reprehensible. I can't see why anyone would voluntarily use either one of them.

Those are different marketing techniques with the same goal of increasing browser market share.

Silicon Valley has a huge problem with user consent and respecting “no” from users. The whole industry feels like a guy at a club asking people “Hey, you should date me. Allow? [Yes | Ask Again in 5 Minutes]”

Reminds me of the time when discussing some feature changes with an UX designer and I said something along the lines of "well, going against users wants/wishes can't be good UX" and they basically replied "but of course it can :)"

TBH, I’ve maybe seen it once.

The secret is to not use Safari ;) (which is slightly better than Edge, but just slightly)

I use Brave on w10. How do you validate one browser being 'slightly better' (even 'just') than another? Me? I just like brave. The rest can all FO for now. I used to try new/ different ones irregularly but brave just seems ok-for-me for now.

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