I agree that putting it on the advanced pane would be as good as not having it.
But I disagree that it's good software. Especially in the case of Windows Live, this is Microsoft forcing proprietary extensions in in lieu of actually developing tools for the open web. And in the case of Apple, I think the assumption that people want third-party tools adding hyperlinks to web pages is faulty. Mozilla puts out a solid product, and I haven't heard a lot of people complaining that it needs more tacked-on features.
What it comes down to is that software packages that modify other software packages are bad software. Packages should be self-contained.
The goal of self-contained packages is a good one. I love that this isolation is getting enforced through sandboxing on new platforms like iOS.
Sort of off the main point, but I think Apple's thing just makes it easier for publishers to link into iTunes (those funny phobos.apple links), not rewrite song references it finds or anything like that. Custom protocol handlers like itms:// pop up some terrifying warnings by default and should probably be worked around.
I'd consider plugins that rewrite content as bad software.
What do the Microsoft plugins have to do with developing tools for the open web or not? The plug-ins you're complaining about:
* The Windows Live Sign-in Assistant enables you to automatically sign in to Windows Live websites when you're already signed in with, say, Messenger on your PC, something that's a net win for Messenger users and which really has no web-reasonable implementation. Why is this evil, exactly?
* The Office Live plugin allows users to open documents saved on SkyDrive from their browser in the Office clients. This also works with Office Live Workspaces (for users of that older product) and Sharepoint. Again, why is this evil?
I'm pretty sure that if there were a way to make these things work without needing to use plugins, that's something the team would pursue. But there isn't, so to make the experience of Windows Live and Office users better, these plugins get installed with those products. This seems to be pretty intuitive to me.
There's nothing wrong with plugins. The problem is when I apply a plugin to one package (in these cases the core OS) and it silently adds a plugin to another package.
But I disagree that it's good software. Especially in the case of Windows Live, this is Microsoft forcing proprietary extensions in in lieu of actually developing tools for the open web. And in the case of Apple, I think the assumption that people want third-party tools adding hyperlinks to web pages is faulty. Mozilla puts out a solid product, and I haven't heard a lot of people complaining that it needs more tacked-on features.
What it comes down to is that software packages that modify other software packages are bad software. Packages should be self-contained.