It’s so easy to rag on Microsoft. I don’t know why. They’re just so easy to hate. But they’re not the only major computer company that does goofy things.

Take Apple for example.

For the users of iTunes and Quicktime, there’s a handy Apple Software Update tool that keeps you up to date with the latest and greatest versions of Apple software on Windows PCs. One of the newest bits of software to pop up in the update tool is … Safari. For Windows. Well, okay, so we all know Internet Explorer sucks. And maybe Firefox or Opera or whatever isn’t your thing. Or maybe you’re just a rabid Apple fanboy who will use Safari simply because Apple told you to. Whatever. It takes all kinds.

But here’s the silly part: At the very same time while the Apple Software Update tool pushes Safari on Windows users, its own software license prohibits Safari to be installed on Windows. Or Linux for that matter. Or anything other than “a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.”

Hmm…

How does that work then, gov?

Well, it doesn’t, of course. Apple can hardly go after Windows Safari users for breaking their license by simply letting Apple’s own update utility push Safari onto their PC. That’s complete and total nonsense, so can’t exactly be legally enforced by Apple. Thus Windows Safari users who did nothing more than let Apple install it on their machine should be perfectly safe.

But it just goes to show, Microsoft isn’t the only one that can do something stupid out there.

And, speaking of Microsoft (and Apple) not being the only ones to do silly / annoying things, Mozilla has patched a number of Firefox security holes. Yay, you say? Well, yes. Quite. And those of use using said browser have likely already gotten that update automatically pushed to us. Which is also nice.

However, Thunderbird – Mozilla’s email client that uses a lot of the same code as Firefox – has not as of yet received these same security fixes for identical security holes that it shares with Firefox. Users of Thunderbird are no doubt annoyed by this. As they should be, as it’s been said that these updates won’t be finished for several weeks. Updates that are already written. Make sense? I guess Microsoft isn’t the only one that can be a bit daft about updating software.