Safari the new "malware"?

No, it's not really bad. Well, I don't think it's bad that is, never used it myself. I figure using one primary browser with IE and Opera as backups is good enough (especially with all a free "see your website in other browsers/OS's" site). But I did think about installing it once!

So when I logged on today and saw Apple's updater saying that I needed to upgrade (yes UPGRADE not INSTALL) to Safari 3.1 for bug fixes (or something), I almost clicked install. In fact, had it not of required administritave permissions and actually had that little "admin required" icon on the button, I may have clicked it. But only for one reason, I thought that maybe I did install it and forgot about it! Been known to happen before. I've needed a program, found some free open source version, downloaded it only to be prompted with an "overwrite" or "filename(1)" in the folder -- because I've not only downloaded it before but installed it.

But with this program, I never did install it. The only traces of "safari" that exist is in my browser's history. So what's with Apple doing this? That's not an update by any means of the word! It's an actual install of a brand new program. Yet they purposely put it in their updater utility. And I'd bet that there are thousands of people out there that did click install. I'd also bet it happened to set itself as the default browser too. Funny, isn't it, that that's the act of malware?

Now I'm sure in today's software climate they're going to get nailed for this. But it's a sad thing when a legitimate company goes trying to trick users into installing their programs. I wonder how long before an apology surfaces… probably before this post hits the net -- they probably had the apology press release made before they pushed it out to everyone.