Dear Apple, why does Safari control my default browser?

This is what some people are complaining about? First of all, Apple supplies these apps for your convenience... if you choose not to use them, then easily set another app as the default from within that opened app! Simple. Why should you have to go to some sort of pref pane or control panel? I don't see the logic. Maybe someone can explain.

Given that it is a system-wide setting, there should be a prefpane for it. It seems oddly un-Mac-like to have a client app control default behavior for that type of program.

Joe, Firefix has the 'Always check to see if Firefox is the default browser on startup'

It's basically the same thing.

ditto for chosing the in-browser pdf viewer. how many times have i hunted for the place to stop adobe reader from taking over my world

well, sounds like every browser EXCEPT firefox
has the browser pref built in.
wonder why firefox doesn't catch up?

Come on, Apple, continue doing what you are doing and don't listen to stupid requests from people who can find a time to write a blog post, instead of changing the the thing and be done with it (or checking prefs of their preffered browser) ... and please, Apple, don't litter our System Preferences with millions of useless preferences ...

Is this really such a big issue ?

I agree with mrjelly. Apple went for a decentralised approach and let every application decide if it wants to be the handler of a particular protocol or context. Preference panes usually work by allowing you to set your protocol. When you set your default browser, you want both HTTP and HTTPS support, maybe others as well. I'm too lazy to go to some pref pane and browse through hundreds of protocols to configure them to be handled by a particular app. The app that I want to handle that protocol should do the work for me. When you connect the camera, there is no protocol to configure.

Just like you don't expect to get a random exe file and run it on a mac, you shouldn't expect that just because Firefox exists for all platforms it shouldn't try a bit harder to fit in to the way mac does things. In reality, Safari is more democratic than Firefox, because it allows you to set ANY web browser to be default, whereas Firefox only allows itself to be the default. If apple changed that option in Safari to just set it as default, you'd have less choice and probably become happier.

The same logic is true for image viewers, ftp handlers , etc.

I remember when I started using Shiira I wanted to switch it to the default browser so that I could use it with quicksilver to launch my bookmarks. I spent half an hour searching high and low to try to enable it, even going so far as to drag a website to my desktop and setting it to open with Shiira. Despite my extensive search not once did it even remotely occur to me it was hidden in Safari's preferences. I eventually did find it, but only because I did what I always do in such situations, a google search...

I'll sign this petition too. Prefs like this should be global.

I believe the reason is the same as the inconsistent menu shortcuts (eg, Finder delete = command-Delete, iTunes delete = option-delete, iPhoto delete = option-command-delete), that is, because a different team works on each piece of software.

There needs to be greater communication between teams. That's probably the role of the product managers, and I would suggest they're not doing their job properly.

Steve, it's time for a bit of elevator talk...