[sili]

This is the same problem that has plagued Windows on PC for years before this. Buying a PC from Dell or any other large retailers with Windows pre-installed meant a day worth of removing their crap-ware, support software, and back-up suits. Or you could reformat straight out of the box.

Only this time the problem is more perwasive. With PC an average user did not get botherd by all this trash, the machine was good enough for surfing and email, which is what they used it for. Only advanced users and techies would get frustrated. However, with smartphones it seems to be a real problem even for an everyday user.

What I don't understand though, is all this fat that providers pile on the phones and PC really worth it for them. They spend time and money to develop all these custom themes and apps, than users remove them. Even if users don't remove them and find them good enough to use, where is the profit to the provider? Branding and recognition?

[neutronicus]

I think laptop OEMs got kickbacks for bundling crapware, especially antivirus software. I imagine the same is true of those mobile phones that bundle, say, Amazon.

[jdietrich]

At one point Sony offered a no-crapware option on some Vaio laptops. Until a PR shitstorm broke out, they were charging $50 extra. One can only imagine how much they're earning per-unit on kickbacks.

[amorphid]

Best Buy's "optimizes" computers prior to purchase. They charge something like $40 to remove the bloatware.

http://m.gizmodo.com/5439590/best-buys-optimization-is-offic...

[guptaneil]

PC makers made extra money on each PC sold by bundling other people's apps for them. Until recently, this was a reasonable business strategy, since users didn't have much choice and had to put up with the poor experience, so why not make extra money at the minor cost of frustrating your customers?

For wireless companies, the custom branding is how they hope to be considered more than just a dumb pipe by providing additional "value" to users. This is why Verizon bundles their Vcast music store, and AT&T includes their custom Navigation and Yellow Pages apps. They desperately want to be seen as content companies. This is not a reasonable business strategy though, because the more they frustrate their customers with this nonsense, the more those users will flock to the pristine shores of iOS, where carriers have even less control, thereby cementing their position as a simple utility.

[henrikschroder]

I find that the bundling on PCs have gotten much better in recent years. I bought a Packard Bell laptop for my dad, turned it on, chose the windows language and basic setup, waited half an hour for it to do its thing, and then it was good to go. An almost clean Windows 7 Home Premium, the only extra stuff on it was a 30-day Microsoft something trial, a 30-day Norton trial, and... that's it. And it's not even hard to remove those things if you don't want them.

So the PC experience has gotten a lot better in recent years. I don't know why though, perhaps the industry learned? Perhaps it's not worth it to pre-load it with crap anymore?

[sgk284]

Microsoft actively restricts and controls what can be installed by OEMs now. That's why it's gotten so much better with Win7.

The crappy first use experience was ruining Microsoft's image, because people associated the cruft with them.

[drcube]

Norton is not hard to remove??? Have things changed so much since I switched to Linux? I used to tell people they had to reinstall the OS to get rid of Norton.

I agree that unremoveable and unkillable apps are a huge problem with Android. This is why I switched to Linux in the first place and Google needs to fix it, ASAP.

[leon_]

Yeah, my last PC around 2004 came with Norton. Though I consider myself pretty computer savvy (C programmer) I couldn't remove that thing without reinstalling windows.

Maybe it's different now?

[mlvl-spb-rus]

Removed two Norton apps on a Packard Bell laptop my grandpa chose (and bought) for himself just yesterday. Hope they will not come back. We spend some time teaching him to do basic internet access and (me) assuring that it's no rocket science (by the way, he's an old-school soviet rocket (and not only) engineer, so ;).. )

[ianthiel]

Seeing as that was 7 years ago, yes things are a bit different now =P

[pmr_]

I really can not relate to that. I hat to "configure" a few PCs/laptops (mostly Acer and HP) during the last year. The amount of crapware was shocking and I'm not even talking about the horrible custom OSDs that some manufactures defile computers with.