From Reddit: **** you Sun! Bundling trialware with the latest Java update is BS!

General Discussions
#21

This shit right here is why you hear users saying “don’t install java, it’ll break/slow down your machine”. It’s not the jre persay, but the extra apps that get randomly bundled with it. They don’t know/care to differentiate between the core jre and the bundled crap, so they’ll just avoid the whole thing - and worse, tell their friends to avoid it too.

And I notice whatever idiot makes the installer still can’t manage to get logos at their correct size and instead resort to some really crappy looking scaling. Unprofessional touches like that are a red flag to users that make them think they’re installing some kind of dodgy malware.

#22

How have Sun been funding it all these years? Yeah, I know it’s quick to say they haven’t and thats the problem, but they really have been cashing on the market where Java really shines, enterprise server side development. Compliance testing, support, consulting and licensing to these markets has to be emminently more cash producing that targetting an emmerging market for Java like client side.

If Sun/Oracle need to make more money out of Java then shouldn’t they use business sense and charge the people who make money out of the product and have lots of cash to blow - the Enterprise. Trying to cash in the market where you’re already viewed as one of the weakest players is like taking a stick to your consumers and driving them to the other less encumbered alternatives (read Flash/Air/Javascript).

Kev

#23

[quote=“ChrisM,post:19,topic:34273”]
Though bundling shareware with updates is a really bad idea from my point of view, I can see that monetization is required. How about if installing or updating means you have to go to a webpage which contains (very valuable!) ad space? You could promote other products there, but avoid inflicting scary pop-ups or unwanted installs on the end user.

#24

The thing is, general users are not saying that. They just aren’t.

[quote]And I notice whatever idiot makes the installer still can’t manage to get logos at their correct size and instead resort to some really crappy looking scaling. Unprofessional touches like that are a red flag to users that make them think they’re installing some kind of dodgy malware.
[/quote]
This, I totally agree. The folks doing the installer need to do better.

As for Kev and SimonH’s posts, I can’t say I disagree with you. The business and revenue side of Java is evolving and the people at corp are watching carefully.

#25

What a horrible way to push software - trick consumers into installing something they didn’t even want by making it opt-out.

Why can’t java just be a programming language invisible to the end user?

I bet this extra advertising money is only needed for funding javaFX - which is a big unnecessary drain of resources. Swing, Java2D and JOGL have languished due to javaFX.

This is a much better idea

#26

I hear it all the time. From a “mom & pop” user’s point of view, it goes something along the lines of:

  1. Installs “java” because some game/app told them to during install.
  2. End up installing Open Office / Carbonite Backup / whatever because they don’t know if it’s optional or needed, and because they just blindly click ‘next’ though installers anyway.
  3. Curse when either a. Open Office pinches the Word/Excel file extensions (“it broke Word”) or b. Carbonite starts dragging their system to a crawl with a scheduled backup or c. other installed app finishes it’s trial period and starts opening nag screens every boot.
  4. Blame the problem on “this java thing it said I needed to install”. Wait for tech savy person to uninstall the problem app, then mentally remember to never install anything with the word “java” in it again.

I know you mean well Chris, but when was the last time you actually got roped into doing tech support for a non-tech savy friend? It’s a completely different world out there and people will make broad generalisations and group anything in the same installer (or anything that looks like it’s in the same installer) into one thing, and so if anything causes problems they’ll blame the whole thing and never touch it again. It’s even worse when the installer in question is for something intangable like java where they don’t see any end result other than the spam-ware bundled with it.

#27

What really sucks about this is that its shown/pushed out on updates. Its understandable if this was done on a fresh install and download of java, but for updates? thats going too far IMO. Why punish end users by making them go through a full install process each time for an update (mostly due to bugs put there by sun in the first place). Java should really take a page from the flash update process here, simple unobtrusive progress bar, that completes with almost a single click and then disappears.

#28

Completely understand this and we, being more technically inclined than most, have heard this before. I just don’t hear it much with Java.

[quote]I know you mean well Chris, but when was the last time you actually got roped into doing tech support for a non-tech savy friend? It’s a completely different world out there and people will make broad generalisations and group anything in the same installer (or anything that looks like it’s in the same installer) into one thing, and so if anything causes problems they’ll blame the whole thing and never touch it again. It’s even worse when the installer in question is for something intangable like java where they don’t see any end result other than the spam-ware bundled with it.
[/quote]
Thanks :slight_smile: And you would be surprised how often I am called for “tech support” from family/friends (The other night, I was walking a family member through adding a wireless router that has a hidden name to their network list. At 11:00PM. GAH!) I am sure that most of us here have experienced this before.

I have no argument for you OT, and understand your POV. Again, I am not responsible, but I can give input to those who are.

#29

installed 6u16 on a fresh WinXP VM image and saw no additional software installers and all images had the right size.
maybe its a vista thing… (the scaling issue)

#30

Offtopic:
Even the WinXP installer has a RED banner as header.
It looks like some security alert.
Make it BLUE, please.

#31

This is simply the result of an attempt to maximize a cost/benefit equation. The problem here is the benefits are very short term tangible dollars versus long term difficult to quantify intangible costs. My opinion and I suspect that of many JGO members is that the costs of doing this have been grossly underestimated.

#32

Sounds like people only want products they trust (non shareware), so google tool bar, yahoo tool bar, open office otherwise nothing at at all.

Though I hear flash also includes some stuff in there installer too.

[quote]and all images had the right size.
[/quote]
I believe the person had high dpi settings on when he took the screen shot.

#33

I know. I should’ve added a wink as I wasn’t all serious with that remark.
But whatever opt-out is in the installer, I dunno, it does make java seem a bit sleazy…

#34

Presumably Sun will stop advertising random third party apps once they’ve got the Java App Store to advertise instead…?
Simon

#35

Well done Riven for spotting the red banner - aarrgh! Hurt the guy who deployed that, with a spike! A red one!

FWIW - bundling software’s not my bag at all. I think the admittedly considerably less effective but far more friendly technique of simply advertising software would be the way to go here. I’d pay a small fortune to advertise Puppygames on a Java installation.

Although I share Orangy’s concerns about broken software tainting the image of Java, what’s really needed is actual hard facts, not anecdotal evidence (or way or the other, Chris ;)), so until someone can come up with some actual facts about Java uninstallations then everyone can argue till they’re blue in the face, no-one’s going to take any notice.

Cas :slight_smile:

#36

OTOH, you can’t measure uninstallations if they weren’t installed in the first place because of a tainted image.

I think the real issue here is the vision displayed by Sun of what java’s user experience should be like in general.
In my opinion, it should be as unobtrusive and smooth as possible, while sometimes it seems Sun just doesn’t give a **** about user experience on the desktop, which might as well the main reason java seems to consistently fail to gain acceptance on the desktop.
All this (opt-in bloatware, unprofessional installers) also doesn’t seem to quite fit with how much Sun invested in JavaFX and better plugins, well the technical part in general.

#37

well, in my opinion it seems that read is java’s ‘color’.

#38

Indeed.

Nothing says quality like trying to trick customers into installing unrelated software.

#39

I wish they’d just charge for an embeddable or redistributable super-fast VM license. I.e. the 2-tier compiler and G1 collector. I’d pay $1000 for a redistribution license for that. But they’d have to provide a clean room MacOS implementation too.

Cas :slight_smile:

#40

Not likely their fault. MSI is broken in this regards. You can’t predict 100% what the size of the bitmap needs to be, and the UI will scale it (very poorly). I think it all depends on font sizes, DPI and such that are currently set in the system prefs.

I tried to do this with my own MSI installer and learned the hard way. Their bitmap scaling is so broken it will introduce coloured streaks where there were solid colours in some cases