What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps • Hacker News Board

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#111

Post by brudgers » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 12:08 PM UTC

The higher level of trust I place in free software is one of the motivations for my increasing use of Linux. Even Java comes with crapware on Windows, the app store has the standard creepy more permissions than needed business model.

I remember when download.com was a resource and there was good stuff to be had for free. But bad drove out good a long time ago. The official Windows ecosystem is permalogin appStores and what lives outside the walls is a massive web of bad actors who thrive on Google's self-serving disinterest...Why do download.com and Cnet show up in results? They are less benevolent than content farms.

It's not that I hate Windows or experience viruses. It's that I've tired of being paranoid on the one hand and updated by apps on the other. Psychic weight and distraction are two things of which I want less.

---

Clarification: Windows has a great ecosystem for commercial software and in a business context often has the best options for solving domain specific problems.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#112

Post by thejosh » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 12:08 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #41

And this is why Apple created Gatekeeper and made the Mac OS X App Store so ridiculously onerous for developers[1]. The software world is, for all intents and purposes, a thin sheen of gold flecks and diamonds atop a veritable cesspool of shit. You can just imagine the conversation at 1 Infinite Loop: Marketer: The Panic guys are considering pulling out of the App Store. Maybe we should reconsider our App Store strat…

Oh cool, so you go ahead and trust a corporation to tell you what you can and can't install on your operating systems, I'm sure that will go well. They have your best interests at heart.

Atleast Macs allow you to not use the AppStore (for now).

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#113

Post by makomk » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 12:11 PM UTC

anon1385 wrote: post #105

Download.com is just the beginning of this crap. At least a lot of people now realise that download.com is shady. Google is just as bad as download.com, but people still think of Google as a reputable site. Even in this discussion people are recommending just googling the product name to find a download. Please don't tell people to do that. It's dangerous. If you type terms like 'firefox' into google search much of t…

At least the actual, genuine result is visible without scrolling. A few years Google were paying computer manufacturers to set a special version of Google with more prominent ads as their default search engine. The net result was that if you got a new computer and searched for Firefox using their default, Google-supplied search the genuine result was actually below the fold in some cases.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#114

Post by rbanffy » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 12:12 PM UTC

This is why I moved my mom to a Mac and then to Ubuntu in, IIRC, 2007. The last time I had to clean up her Windows machine, everything was so completely contaminated with all kinds of malware that I simply gave up. I backed up her most important data (customer data, proposals), cleaned it thoroughly (Office documents can be infected - thank you, Microsoft) and just moved her to a Mac I no longer used. When she started complaining the Mac was slow (it was no longer up to the task of running a modern browser with Gmail in it) I moved her to an IBM desktop with Ubuntu she uses to this day.

She even updates the machine herself through the package manager GUI.

And she's 79.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#115

Post by brudgers » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 12:16 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #41

And this is why Apple created Gatekeeper and made the Mac OS X App Store so ridiculously onerous for developers[1]. The software world is, for all intents and purposes, a thin sheen of gold flecks and diamonds atop a veritable cesspool of shit. You can just imagine the conversation at 1 Infinite Loop: Marketer: The Panic guys are considering pulling out of the App Store. Maybe we should reconsider our App Store strat…

Windows has an app store too and because there is a vibrant market for paid third party applications [particularly B2B] it is not so onerous on developers. It's not the primary channel to reach users.

Apple has a gatekeeper model because many years ago it shifted to the view that money users spent on third party software was coming out of their bottom line.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#116

Post by shimfish » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 12:26 PM UTC

iSnow wrote: post #51

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #41

And this is why Apple created Gatekeeper and made the Mac OS X App Store so ridiculously onerous for developers[1]. The software world is, for all intents and purposes, a thin sheen of gold flecks and diamonds atop a veritable cesspool of shit. You can just imagine the conversation at 1 Infinite Loop: Marketer: The Panic guys are considering pulling out of the App Store. Maybe we should reconsider our App Store strat…

Ironic, considering that Apple did exactly the same, when you installed QuickTime on Windows. They tried to trick you into installing iTunes and Safari and set them as default apps. Also, it stinks that Apple has nailed iOS that shut that even as a knowledgeable user you are not able to bypass it. They did not yet dare to do the same on Mac OS, but who knows when that comes.

It stinks for the user. It's way better for developers who aren't into having their software pirated though. Which in the end is better for the users.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#117

Post by coob » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 12:31 PM UTC

shimfish wrote: post #116

iSnow wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironic, considering that Apple did exactly the same, when you installed QuickTime on Windows. They tried to trick you into installing iTunes and Safari and set them as default apps. Also, it stinks that Apple has nailed iOS that shut that even as a knowledgeable user you are not able to bypass it. They did not yet dare to do the same on Mac OS, but who knows when that comes.

It stinks for the user. It's way better for developers who aren't into having their software pirated though. Which in the end is better for the users.

Piracy is rampant on jailbroken iOS devices.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#118

Post by simias » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 12:32 PM UTC

thirdsun wrote: post #100

weavie wrote: post #11

I regularly get called by people complaining that their computer no longer works. Pretty much every time it turns out that their machine is loaded with crapware. It amazes me how people just put up with random browser windows popping up and having to search via some random search engine that has been imposed on them. At the minute I just have to put up with spending a few hours removing the worst offenders and then r…

Non-technological people are very bad at distinguishing bad sources from legitimate ones. I see it all the time - "well, the address bar said freemp3converter.com - it looked legit to me..." Now imagine a site or software that tries to look just remotely serious. Normal people often just don't see the difference. Plus, it's pretty normal in Windows world to have all kinds of crap installed - Dell, nVidia & Co. instal…

It's true, but how can you blame them? Even "reputable" sources like the official Java updater and many others attempt to install crapware.

I consider myself reasonably savvy and even I get tricked to install crap on windows if I'm not 100% attentive when installing software.

The other day I was setting up a brand new windows machine. I wanted to download chrome so I boot up internet explorer, end up at the bing home page and search for "chrome".

I've just tried again just now, here's what I end up with: https://i.imgur.com/1fTyQXI.png

You'll notice the first ad has a green URL pointing to google.com, seems legit enough right? Wrong, if you click it you end up on some other URL.

I didn't pay attention to that and actually ended up downloading the installer on that webpage, thankfully I realized something was wrong when the actual setup wizard looked weird. I still ran it though, and with administrator privileges, so I'm basically already dead.

This is me, all tech savvy and yet I fucked up with the first thing I attempted to install on a fresh windows.

After that I wanted a PDF reader. Adobe being completely crap I googled for alternatives and found many recommendations for "foxit". I download and install it: it tries to install a bunch of third party "cloud" services and prompts you to subscribe to third party services basically everywhere on the UI. I just wanted a bloody PDF reader... That's the state of "free" software on windows in 2015.

At that point you just can't blame the user, Microsoft should have done something about that issue at least a decade ago.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#119

Post by ddebernardy » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 12:36 PM UTC

apetrovic wrote: post #36

jenscow wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the user can compare prices between similar applications While that's excellent for the consumer, it's not so good for the developer where the pricing ends up being a race to the bottom.

That's market. You can say the same for various toothpaste brands lumped together on the shelf. Besides, it's true that the race to the bottom more or less ruined the phone market, but on Mac app store I see good (and popular) applications priced $50 or $100.

It's not just market forces at work.

It's also about awful marketing. If app devs (and the devs running the app stores, for that matter) knew a thing or three about marketing and sales, this race to the bottom wouldn't be occurring -- or at least not as fast.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#120

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 12:36 PM UTC

0942v8653 wrote: post #91

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #41

And this is why Apple created Gatekeeper and made the Mac OS X App Store so ridiculously onerous for developers[1]. The software world is, for all intents and purposes, a thin sheen of gold flecks and diamonds atop a veritable cesspool of shit. You can just imagine the conversation at 1 Infinite Loop: Marketer: The Panic guys are considering pulling out of the App Store. Maybe we should reconsider our App Store strat…

What does download.com have to do with this? Anyone in their right mind will figure out that it's terrible. I don't think the App Store really competes with download.com. It competes with independent websites that use PayPal downloads and license keys. Download.com, macUpdate, softpedia, download.cnet.com, and the like don't give anyone an excuse to lock down their platform this tight. The cure is worse than the dise…

independent websites that use PayPal downloads and license keys

As of 1 Jan this is now economically infeasible in the EU (see "VATMOSS").