Of course, in the Apple dictionary, “update” means “install”.

Now, I’m a big fan of Apple’s products (except the Macbook Air - which is pointless) since being converted by my Nano, but fortunately I maintain the ability to see through a lot of the marketting dross spouted by Apple (hey, they’re a big company trying to make lots of money, fair enough, but I’m not kidding myself about it, unlike a lot of Apple fans), but this sets off my spider-sense.

So the other day, I’m running iTunes, downloading all my podcasts, and up pops an Apple Software Update dialog. “Ah-ha” thinks I. “A new version of iTunes then”.

Nope. Infact, I checked the dialog and noticed it wanted to “update” Safari. Something I’ve never installed on my PC, as I’m quite happy with Firefox, and frankly, the initial reviews of the Windows version of Safari were far from flattering.

I wonder how many non-techie PC users just clicked “Ok” without checking it properly?

Its a dodgy tactic. I wonder if Microsoft would’ve gotten away with pushing a brand new product onto people’s PC’s as an “update”? Probably not…

Fortunately, I’m not the only one who noticed it and its kicked off some discussion on the blogosphere (link, link). I’d like to see Apple get their fingers rapped (a bit) for this, but given we live in an age where they can brick any iPhone that doesn’t use their preferred mobile network, I’m not holding my breath.

Is Jobs planning a hostile takeover of the Windows desktop? | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

I mentioned this in the comments for the article on Safari for Windows. I found this editorial pretty interesting. Certainly, with the success of boot camp, the prospect of Apple marketing dual-boot machines makes a lot of sense.

However, for myself, I’m not sure I’d see the point in rebooting into a version of Windows where all the Mac applications I was just using are the defaults. But as long as the Windows equivalents were still there and could be used, fair enough.

I think I’ll stick to XP and Ubuntu for now though. I don’t have anything particularly against Apple software. I just can’t afford it

Here’s quite a nice article looking at the new release of Safari for Windows made by Apple the other week.

First look: Safari 3 beta on Windows vs. Firefox 2 and IE7

I’ll probably be sticking to Firefox, but its the kind of thing I might download out of curiousity.

Saying that, I installed iTunes ages ago and never warmed to it.