Safari vs Firefox - Stealth entry of another Windows Heavyweight.

This past Christmas i was the happy recipient of a new iPod Nano, a slick little gadget i'd never quite been able to justify purchasing for myself - Camera, yes, Pc yes, web browsing mobile, yes - all these are 'gadgets' i use in my work and potentially lead to earnings , whereas the iPod, lovely tho it looks has never been something i could directly associate with productivity, just Fun! But now, thanks to the generosity of my beloved, i am a fully fledged member of the iPod tribe. That however was merely the start. next came iTunes , an all but obligatory download if you want to update and index you iPod to it's full potential (i'd be very grateful to hear of any genuine free alternatives) . iTunes has been a nightmare! .. First of all re-shuuffling music, then always regarding image content on the iPod as lower priority - whereas to me images is what i was after, the possibility to show of my lates Flash creation or Animated .gif to friends was enticing.. it was a long and harsh learning curve but i belieive i have tightented the reigns on iTunes sufficiently now for my purposes. Now, Updates. What is an 'Update' that's the Question here. Last night Apple 'softwarehelper' process informed me of a crucial new 'Update' to iTunes. Included in this imperative update however was a pre-checked , default choice to install the Safari Web Browser. Now , don't misconstrue my rant here, I don't mean to slam Safari as a Browser, what i don't take kindly to though is the 'Under the Radar' method Apple have used to prey upon the trust they have built with their loyal users, just to slip the Safari browser onto any Windows user who owns iTunes' Computer. Now it's easy to say "Chrikey man, if you haven't got the with-where-for-all to un-check a box and not accept Safari you are pretty dim... Me? no not dim, i was admittedly curious, as to why i had been suddenly force fed Safari after so many years. But what really concerns me is that Apple are well aware of who their majority user base for iTunes are - the young and impressionable music fan, YouTube fan, etc , those who want to be in the loop, up to date, with it. ... Then you have you average everyday Windows Home user, who may be ill informed and easily led in their will to do what seems to be 'Right' for their PC. Whereas what they were actually what they have just Updated/Downloaded , and a separate Download is surely what this should have been... it certainly didn't 'Update' any software i already owned, even the iTunes update itself was almost superfluous in its content - a carrier if you like for the freshly out of Beta Safari Browser. So, here i was , anyhoo, i have Safari on my System , lets take a gander. it's clear that Apple have done their utmost to give MicroSoft users a taste of what they may be missing in the OS X operating system.. Skinned as closely as possible to the OS. All seemed fine, simple, slimline, operational, bookmarks imported without fuss, then i thought i'd take a quick look at resources being used , since i was using this on my laptop, resources are quite tight on the memory committing side at least. So, for a true and fair test i pasted all 5 tabs i had currently open in Safari into Firefox, then gave them identical desktop space (50/50) , then opened Taskmanager to view how the process' where using the available memory, CPU usage as you can imagine was low on a Core Duo laptop, but Ram and memory allocation ios a different matter entirely . Firefox 68,000Kb vs Safari 207,000kb .

(5 tabs 204,000kb) Safari vs Firefox (5 tabs 78,000kb)

When running an otherwise efficient lightweight business spec'd laptop (Intel Core Duo1.66ghz ,on board Nvidia gfx and 1gb of RAM - Acer Travelmate 4230) what you don't need as a web designer and host is a Browser which uses nearly a quarter of my available physical memory. But above all, what no software user needs at this stage of worldwide web development and growing customer loyalty and trust of our favoured brands (of which Apple has been one mine) is a trusted and well customer supported brand such as Apple.Inc taking our trust and abusing it in such a way. Updates are good for everyone. Stealth Product placement is akin to malware practices and the method unscrupulous companies would use in days of old to replace your Internet ISP's dialer with some premium rate terror that would thrust you into a world of unwanted pornography and phone bills that required a re-mortgage . Apple, Don't force us all to put our guard back up again, you are one of the good guys ....... Aren't you?