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

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

#271

Post by ksk » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

api wrote: post #249

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…

You're right, but ultimately this is a band-aid over the fact that OSes have terrible permission separation and application isolation. If OSes were better architected from a security point of view, it would be substantially less of a problem.

You seem to know a lot more about operating systems design than Microsoft. Why don't you submit a paper?

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

#272

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

anon1385 wrote: post #220

jacquesm wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's by far the worst company they ever invested in. See here for PG's take on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711

Which basically boiled down to him trying to argue that people must want malware because they clicked through a deviously worded dialog box. From building spam filters to funding a spam company. Building things people want? Ha! I guess it's worth noting other YC partners in that thread also defending malware, for example Garry Tan: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5093746 It seems like the culture of spam and mal…

It's just disrupting something or other.

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

#273

Post by ksk » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:02 PM UTC

apetrovic wrote: post #27

Microsoft dropped the ball with lack of App Store. With all app store's drawbacks, that's the place where regular user can pay easily without thinking will someone steal his/her credit car number, the place where applications should be harmless, and the place where (and this is important) the user can compare prices between similar applications. Windows doesn't have the app store. And nobody (read: very, very small p…

So, if I understand you correctly, you wanted Microsoft to bundle MORE things and not less? You could have been Microsoft's star supporter in the anti-trust trial.

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

#274

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:06 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…

If apple would limit themselves to keeping malware off their users systems I'm pretty sure that very few people would have an issue with the app store.

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

#275

Post by ksk » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:06 PM UTC

jenscow wrote: post #2

This is the #1 reason Windows is no longer on my kid's computers; it's too easy to install crap-ware no matter what security package you use.

You can disallow software installation on any OS. Heck, corporate IT admins have been doing just that for decades. But hey, you might be a non-technical user, in which case, I agree with your choice.

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

#276

Post by VLM » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:06 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #181

normloman wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point was, most people like the OPs parents just use their computers for web browsing. And all of today's best web browsers run on linux. I helped my parents switch to linux mint, and it's been fairly successful.

[deleted]

"if you aren't using your computer for work"

Even that's not much of a challenge. Many years ago when my wife started working at home on her mac (1st gen mac mini so this must be about a decade ago?) corporate IT had a few puzzles to solve, but even a decade ago everything was moving to either web or rdesktop or vnc. If you can get the corporate windows guys to implement a workaround or whatever to allow macs to be used, then its usually a very small jump indeed to linux or freebsd or whatever.

I'm struggling to think of a stereotypical desk job that can't be done with a browser and perhaps rdesktop on the side. The exceptions I can think of like 3-D cad would be a problem, but that's not stereotypical desk job work.

Also in my experience, school kids, volunteer workers, and grandma are google docs users not office 2010 users. Google is taking over that space quite effectively. The school system has a contract with google such that if you want to edit your essay in office on your computer at home, well, fine, but you'll be exporting into google drive to actually submit the homework, so save yourself some time and annoyance and do the whole thing online.

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

#277

Post by dieg0 » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:14 PM UTC

dieg0 wrote: post #147

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.

iTunes for Windows is a monster that drains the life out of the PC. Microsoft Office for Mac OSX was coded with the same evil spirit. This behavior is unethical but pervasive, and should be outlawed somehow, it hurts everyone. Specially when it comes from the two biggest players in the market.

I've seen bugs in Word and Excel

Sometimes Words starts typing multiple lines and Excel freezes when copy pasting filtered cells. I've learned to work around these bugs, (having been there for over a year). Maybe Office for Mac is not be coded by the devil, but lacks features and is unsatisfactory in ways that make me consider turning on the PC

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

#278

Post by _lce0 » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:14 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #148

matrixagent wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I only learned recently just how rampant – not even half of the copies of a "App Store best of the year" game were bought. ( https://twitter.com/ustwogames/status/552136427904184320 ) I wouldn't even have imagined so many people would even jailbreak their phones anymore.

I boggle at people going to that much effort to pirate such cheap games. Is there a region restriction issue?

it's not a matter of price, or restrictions, but more about how people interact with the platforms.

They believe they already paid for the phone; they know they still need to pay their carrier for something they use but paying for software?

    common that's digital. copyable. 
    wait! I need to tie my credit card to my phone? no way. I certainly can afford apps, but it's better to use them for free.
    why do they need to pay if facebook, gmail, whatapp... are free.. 
    do you read the news? app developers earn billions!
    I know you need to pay for window, but I've using for free for the last 10 years you know..

Just read at the free games' reviews.. they complain and demand, without even thinking on giving a dime to authors.

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

#279

Post by ksk » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:17 PM UTC

I think in general, this is what happens when companies start failing. CNet used to be a great company, but these days people don't go quietly off into the night. Corporations hire useless MBA types who want "synergy" with the "ecosystem" and "streamlining sales process for customers" (by customers I mean the malware companies, not the website visitors) and other nonsense euphemisms that usually means "we're going to screw someone".

In a saturated s/w market it seems like the only money that's left is in places where people didn't want to go before because of the "that's kind of a dickish thing to do" self-awareness that companies used to have.

While in theory, this is not Microsoft's fault, practically I don't feel comfortable recommending Windows to any family member these days. OSX is good, but a lot of OSX crapware is starting to come with kernel extensions and Launch Daemons/Agents, etc.

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

#280

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #171

zxcdw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that it's our own fault Whose fault exactly is it? Has anybody in HN worked with a company which does this crapware bundling, let alone creating? Or does anybody know anyone who's "in the business"? Because I, quite honestly, can't understand how or why people would be doing this. Is it really that "Well, I know this shit is going to infect thousands of machines with software which nobody would like to have, bu…

> Whose fault exactly is it? People who think that software should be free, as in beer. Developers have to be paid. When people paid for software with dollars, this exchange was much more straightforward. But now people think that software should be free as in beer, which means it comes with ad software or "sponsored software" that in turns sells ads, or spies on everything you do, or something to pay the bills.

Well, I disagree. There's a ton of software that is being developed and distributed for free because the authors actually care about solving a problem. Not all software needs to be sold, not all developers do it for money. For many people money is the problem (you need to put time to get it which could be better used to build useful stuff), not the goal.

Some developers choose to sell their software, and they have their perfect right to do so. Hard work needs to be compensated, and if someone wants that compensation to be money, then so be it. Just label it in clear terms. Ad-software is not a legitimate earning method, it's robbery. What it tells is that you don't give a damn about neither problem you're pretending to try to solve (otherwise you wouldn't let your app to be polluted with worthless crap) nor your users, who will have to live with malware (which, on global scale, is a huge negative utility in terms of lost productivity and health lost to stress/anger).

(I skipped here over the big, expensive software - things like Photoshop, Matlab, etc. That they are result of hard work of people who need to get paid is obvious, and everybody knows that they should buy that software if they needed, and they will receive something valuable in exchange.)