Every installer I've used that had any user-friendly implicit settings, also had an "advanced" mode where you could override them, in addition to the button that just installed the software with default settings. Why can't it be put there?
I guess my real issue here is that this guy is picking the wrong fight. It's not about consent to install, it's about good or bad software.
Most of the stuff he calls out is probably a win for average users. They can click a link to a song and buy it right away, for example. It's good software.
I get the feeling this guy would be fine with things like the Yahoo or Ask toolbars (bad, horrible, terrible software) because if users stay on their toes while installing stuff they could opt out. Normal people just take the defaults though, and get stuck with a crapped up computer.
Adding choices to the installer feels like the smug, nerdy, you-need-my-help-to-use-computers approach.
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.
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.
Unintended side effects are bad.
* 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.
(Disclosure, I work at MS.)
There goes a non-sequitur.
I picked an extreme example to illustrate how broken asking users is. Probably shouldn't have dragged the author into it though.