{"id":399,"date":"2009-09-17T22:17:43","date_gmt":"2009-09-18T03:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/?p=399"},"modified":"2009-09-17T22:17:47","modified_gmt":"2009-09-18T03:17:47","slug":"installing-mac-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/17\/installing-mac-apps\/","title":{"rendered":"Installing Mac Apps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Daringfireball article on the shortcomings of the Mac application-install procedure<\/a> is worth a skim. Gruber’s suggestion that Mac OS X automatically move 3rd-party applications into the \/Applications\/<\/code> folder on first-run, (a la<\/em> the dashboard widget install process) is a good one1<\/sup>. Since Mac OS X already prompts you on first run<\/em> (“Are you sure<\/em> you want to run a program Apple didn’t write?”) it’s hard to see any downsides to this idea.<\/p>\n

But that’s not the behavior we have today1<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Don’t Use a Damn .dmg!<\/h3>\n

As it stands today, I don’t see a good reason to ship your apps as a .dmg. I’ve been suspicious of disk images for a few years now<\/a>; and usability tests show<\/a> that people get confused by them.<\/p>\n

Distribute your application as a single .app<\/code> in a .zip<\/code> archive<\/strong>. What possible use are other files besides the application? If a “Readme” file should be read before using the application, then show it when the application is first launched.<\/p>\n

Installers are opaque and un-Mac like. There’s always a risk that they’ll install something that breaks the computer<\/a>. As a developer I am even more suspicious of installers on the Mac, because I know how broken Apple’s installer tools are<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Of course, as a developer, I know that applications do<\/em> sometimes need to install components. And here the best solution is for the application to check it’s environment and ask to install missing components as needed<\/em><\/strong> (in essence be it’s own installer). It’s more robust, since it detects-and-corrects missing or damaged components. It always preserves the user-facing abstraction that the icon is the application.<\/p>\n

Applications shouldn’t install hacks dangerous enough to require<\/em> a bundled user-facing unisntaller. To make IMLocation<\/a> work, I had to install a background process — but I made it intelligent enough that it would uninstall itself if the main application had been deleted. Yes, this is more work, but it’s worth it.<\/p>\n


\n1<\/sup>Another idea is to make Safari and Firefox smart enough to download applications directly into the right \/Applications\/<\/code> folder, bypassing the usual downloads folder. This elegantly solves the instillation problem, although it creates some new problems.<\/p>\n

2<\/sup>Although it would be a cool hack to write.
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Today’s Daringfireball article on the shortcomings of the Mac application-install procedure is worth a skim. Gruber’s suggestion that Mac OS X automatically move 3rd-party applications into the \/Applications\/ folder on first-run, (a la the dashboard widget install process) is a good one1. Since Mac OS X already prompts you on first run (“Are you sure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,3,4,8],"tags":[340,67,279,59],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accessibility","category-macosx","category-programming","category-usability","tag-firefox","tag-installers","tag-mac-os-x","tag-safari"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}