From: Patrick Carr Date: 20:50 on 01 Jun 2006 Subject: mac disk image images Dear (Almost) Every Mac Developer, Apple has anticipated that people would use the Applications folder pretty frequently, so by default it's right in the left side bar of every finder window. Convenient, no? Especially when downloading the newest version of App.App: It's right there for the dragging, from disk image to Applications folder all in one handy finder window. So why do you insist on customizing the disk image window so it has a picture of you, your kids, or some fucking cutesy-ass bunnies and taking off the side bars? Oh, right, the same reason you spend all your time making App.App skinnable and ignoring the memory leaks. Yours in hate, Pat P.S. Including a soft link to /Applications/ in the disk image is less hateful but not optimal.
From: Chris Devers Date: 23:24 on 01 Jun 2006 Subject: Re: mac disk image images On Thu, 1 Jun 2006, Patrick Carr wrote: > P.S. Including a soft link to /Applications/ in the disk image is less > hateful but not optimal. Lots of people (foolishly) remove Applications from the side bar, or turn off the side bar altogether. Putting the link there fixes this. Lots of people (tremendously foolishly) don't Grok disk images, and just download the .dmg to the desktop, mount it, launch the application in it (Firefox, etc), then are mystified that [a] they can't delete the .dmg (if they're the fastidious type that prefers to delete the .dmg, which most aren't, but those that do try are stymied), [b] the computer says there's a disk inserted but they don't remember putting one in the CD drive and the system won't let them eject it anyway, and [c] every time they click the Firefox (or whatever) dock icon, this other window pops up and then that disk they can't find reappears. It's all terribly confusing, but apparently that's how Macs work, so they live with it. From first-hand observation, the first item above (pruned or absent sidebars) applies to a significant minority of the Mac userbase, and the second (just running things from the .dmg) could apply to the majority. Eliminate the alpha-geek subset of Mac users, leaving the Limewire-using college students and the AOL-using retirees, and I'm fairly sure that such behavior *is* how the majority do things. Draw whatever conclusions from this that you like, but it seems to me that there is some kind of UI breakdown going on here. As much as the alpha geeks may be impressed by the "just drag from the .dmg to the Applications folder" "simplicity", maybe there's something to be said for a package installer that puts things away properly and -- hell why not -- moves itself from the desktop to the trash on successful installation, avoiding leaving downloaded turdpiles in its wake that will never ever get deleted "because it seemed to be important". As for putting an image behind the icon in the .dmg window, meh. It's an innocuous chance to have some branding for the developer, sometimes it's actually kinda cute (cf. Delicious Library), and other times it's actually useful (cf. Yojimbo). It's a tool, and it can be used well, just as it can be used badly -- just like most other tools.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 01:21 on 02 Jun 2006 Subject: Re: mac disk image images > Lots of people (foolishly) remove Applications from the side bar, or > turn off the side bar altogether. Putting the link there fixes this. That's because the sidebar is an evil waste of space. There should be one per screen, not one per finder window. They could call it the "dock". But of course Apple would only fuck that up too.
From: Patrick Carr Date: 16:33 on 02 Jun 2006 Subject: Re: mac disk image images On Jun 1, 2006, at 6:24 PM, Chris Devers wrote: > On Thu, 1 Jun 2006, Patrick Carr wrote: > >> P.S. Including a soft link to /Applications/ in the disk image is >> less >> hateful but not optimal. > > Lots of people (foolishly) remove Applications from the side bar, or > turn off the side bar altogether. Putting the link there fixes this. Unless, of course, I choose to install it elsewhere. But if I'm installing it elsewhere, presumably I have some clue. Hence the qualification. > Lots of people (tremendously foolishly) don't Grok disk images, and > just > download the .dmg to the desktop, mount it, launch the application > in it > (Firefox, etc), then are mystified that [a] they can't delete the .dmg > (if they're the fastidious type that prefers to delete the .dmg, which > most aren't, but those that do try are stymied), [b] the computer says > there's a disk inserted but they don't remember putting one in the CD > drive and the system won't let them eject it anyway, and [c] every > time > they click the Firefox (or whatever) dock icon, this other window pops > up and then that disk they can't find reappears. It's all terribly > confusing, but apparently that's how Macs work, so they live with it. I would contend that taking away the sidebar takes away the visual of the mounted disk image and makes it less obvious that it's not some magical "application launching window" that they're supposed to keep. Tangential point: Assuming all of your users are the most complete idiots imaginable is hateful for the rest. Why, for example, won't my bank email my online transaction receipts encrypted, especially since they xxxx out different quads in the credit card number than the merchants? (Seriously, if you had both a receipt and an email from the bank, you're down to guessing 4 digits. Of course, it's clearly easier just to steal the data from the bank or the government. But I digress.) Because people can't handle encrypted email, of course, so we won't even make it an option. Given the choice in application package management between "drag this to somewhere on your disk; it's self contained and upgrading involves dragging a new one" and "this installer will run and crap who knows where on your disk in directories that might have been on our system (why hello, /opt/intel/) and you won't know where because all you see is a spinning candy cane," I'll take the former. As an aside, I'd say well over 75% of the installer packages I've used on OS X ask for the administrator password, seemingly whether they need it or not. Where that package ends up going doesn't matter so much to me. A good indexing search can obsolete a complicated physical hierarchy (see gmail) and so it is with something like quicksilver (hate for the GTD crowd aside). I agree that it's hateful that Apple doesn't keep the binaries it updates separate, but that hasn't affected me (admittedly I don't administer hundreds of macs). Pat
From: Yoz Grahame Date: 02:39 on 04 Jun 2006 Subject: Re: mac disk image images On 6/2/06, Patrick Carr <pmc1@xxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > Tangential point: Assuming all of your users are the most complete > idiots imaginable is hateful for the rest. Why, for example, won't my > bank email my online transaction receipts encrypted, especially since > they xxxx out different quads in the credit card number than the > merchants? (Seriously, if you had both a receipt and an email from > the bank, you're down to guessing 4 digits. Of course, it's clearly > easier just to steal the data from the bank or the government. But I > digress.) Because people can't handle encrypted email, of course, so > we won't even make it an option. That sounds like a fairly good reason to me, not just because you'll be creating a feature for 0.01% of your customers, but also because of (a) the amount of work required to handle exchange and storage of public keys (b) the amount of support required for users who hear about this encryption thing but they've kind of set up this thing and they've got this confusing mess of files and do you want the one ending in .pkr or .skr and should they copy and paste it to you and also do they have to send a password as well and can they just read it over the phone? Email encryption software and its continuing lack of usability for anyone other than apha-geeks: HATE. Excellent rant on this: http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=22 -- Yoz
From: Yoz Grahame Date: 02:15 on 04 Jun 2006 Subject: Re: mac disk image images On 6/1/06, Chris Devers <cdevers@xxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > Draw whatever conclusions from this that you like, but it seems to me > that there is some kind of UI breakdown going on here. As much as the > alpha geeks may be impressed by the "just drag from the .dmg to the > Applications folder" "simplicity", maybe there's something to be said > for a package installer that puts things away properly and -- hell why > not -- moves itself from the desktop to the trash on successful > installation, avoiding leaving downloaded turdpiles in its wake that > will never ever get deleted "because it seemed to be important". Another major benefit of installers - on Windows, anyway - is that after the app is installed it is then linked from the standard place you go to when running an app, the relatively-easy-to-find "Start" button in the corner of the screen. Now, I'm certainly not going to claim that the Start button isn't hateful in a myriad other ways (in particular the way you have to run your mouse pointer along the expanding tree of programs without falling off, much like those old fairground games with the twisted wire you had to navigate with the little electrified hoop without touching it) but at least the "Programs" menu is considerably easier to get to than the "Applications" folder on OS X. As for the problem of shit getting installed all over your system: that's not a problem with installers, it's with leaky abstractions. -- Yoz
From: Peter da Silva Date: 04:34 on 04 Jun 2006 Subject: Re: mac disk image images > at least the > "Programs" menu is considerably easier to get to than the > "Applications" folder on OS X. In Windows 2000 it was. In XP it actually took me a couple of tries to find it... they really want to encourage you to use their software by choice... and of course in Panther and Tiger the Applications folder is right there in the hateful sidebar. Click the "smiley face" instead of "Start" to see it. I have a folder in my Dock that looks like this: lrwxr-xr-x 1 peter peter 13 Jun 2 09:21 Applications -> / Applications lrwxr-xr-x 1 peter peter 23 Jun 2 09:21 Developer -> /Developer/ Applications -rw-r--r-- 1 peter peter 0 Jun 2 11:16 Icon? lrwxr-xr-x 1 peter peter 19 Jun 2 09:21 My Applications -> / Local/Applications Apple needs to make this a smart folder that's right next to the smiley face, that you can drag stuff into and that gives you a menu on click
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 01:19 on 02 Jun 2006 Subject: Re: mac disk image images > every finder window. Convenient, no? Especially when downloading the > newest version of App.App: It's right there for the dragging, from > disk image to Applications folder all in one handy finder window. I *hate* that. There should be a "/Local/Applications" by default to drag stuff into and install stuff into, and "/Applications" should be stuff that only Apple fucks with. Then maybe the few remaining idiot developers who write pointless "installers" would catch on and at LEAST install to a hierarchy that you can drag into a new computer. It makes upgrades SO much easier. (as for the 'spatial finder', that's a whole separate hate)
From: Chris Devers Date: 02:17 on 02 Jun 2006 Subject: Re: mac disk image images On Thu, 1 Jun 2006, Peter da Silva wrote: > There should be a "/Local/Applications" by default to drag stuff into > and install stuff into, and "/Applications" should be stuff that only > Apple fucks with. Right-o, you're looking for ~/Applications. Basically nobody uses it, aside from a small handful of alpha geeks. My guess, and it's only an educated one, is that it's because muddling core apps with user installed ones in the same directory hasn't proven to be an issue for the vast majority of people. In theory it's sloppy, and would be better to have more emphasis on ~/Applications or perhaps /Users/Shared/Applications, but in practice, it's rarely a problem. If you need to do an archive & install, the standard applications move to /Previous Systems/Previous System 1/Applications and you end up with a known-good set of standard apps in /Applications. (And if you're doing upgrades some other way, you should reconsider how you're doing them.)
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 02:43 on 02 Jun 2006 Subject: Re: mac disk image images > > There should be a "/Local/Applications" by default to drag stuff into > > and install stuff into, and "/Applications" should be stuff that only > > Apple fucks with. > Right-o, you're looking for ~/Applications. No. That's the third option for shared computers. > My guess, and it's only an educated one, is that it's because muddling > core apps with user installed ones in the same directory hasn't proven > to be an issue for the vast majority of people. I've had to help people clean up the results after they upgraded from one version of Mac OS to another more times than I want to think about. And remember when they created a new "Applications (OS 9)" folder to help people leave the OS 8 stuff behind cleanly? It's proven to be an issue, but not enough of one to escape the reality distortion field.
From: David Cantrell Date: 15:34 on 02 Jun 2006 Subject: Re: mac disk image images On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 09:17:29PM -0400, Chris Devers wrote: > On Thu, 1 Jun 2006, Peter da Silva wrote: > > There should be a "/Local/Applications" by default to drag stuff into > > and install stuff into, and "/Applications" should be stuff that only > > Apple fucks with. > Right-o, you're looking for ~/Applications. > Basically nobody uses it, aside from a small handful of alpha geeks. I was very pleased to find that Sim City 4's installer uses this by default. Yay! Thankfully, I can still hate it. The previous version was more fun (but not, I think, available for OS X, bah) and SC4 has all sorts of graphics bugs when running on a Powerbook.
From: Ricardo SIGNES
Date: 02:30 on 02 Jun 2006
Subject: Re: mac disk image images
* Peter da Silva <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2006-06-01T20:19:38]
> There should be a "/Local/Applications" by default to drag stuff
> into and install stuff into, and "/Applications" should be stuff
> that only Apple fucks with. Then maybe the few remaining idiot
> developers who write pointless "installers" would catch on and at
> LEAST install to a hierarchy that you can drag into a new computer.
The problem there becomes that people have more applications than they want in
the dock, so they're used to going to Finder -> Applications for anything they
run. ("Why do I have to go into /Utilities/? Ugh!")
djb-esque /command could be implemented as a smart folder located at
/Applications, aggregating from ~/Applications, /System/Applications, and
anything flagged @Application in Spotlight. There wouldn't be anything to hate
about that, right..?
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 02:38 on 02 Jun 2006 Subject: Re: mac disk image images > The problem there becomes that people have more applications than they want in > the dock, Yes, it's hateful how Apple blew the opportunity to have standard "Apple (Applications)" and "Local (Applications)" *folders* in the dock, and had them expand nicely on a normal click (instead of opening), isn't it? Then you could have a "My (Applications)" folder in there as well.
From: Bill Page
Date: 04:54 on 02 Jun 2006
Subject: Re: mac disk image images
I know it's probably classified as an alpha geek thing, but using
quicksilver kinda negates any use of the dock (or /Applications) as a
launcher - but if we're talking about people that leave things in dmgs
and run them from there, well. ouch.
On 6/2/06, Ricardo SIGNES <rjbs-hates@xxxxx.xxxxxxx.xxx> wrote:
> * Peter da Silva <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2006-06-01T20:19:38]
> > There should be a "/Local/Applications" by default to drag stuff
> > into and install stuff into, and "/Applications" should be stuff
> > that only Apple fucks with. Then maybe the few remaining idiot
> > developers who write pointless "installers" would catch on and at
> > LEAST install to a hierarchy that you can drag into a new computer.
>
> The problem there becomes that people have more applications than they want in
> the dock, so they're used to going to Finder -> Applications for anything they
> run. ("Why do I have to go into /Utilities/? Ugh!")
>
> djb-esque /command could be implemented as a smart folder located at
> /Applications, aggregating from ~/Applications, /System/Applications, and
> anything flagged @Application in Spotlight. There wouldn't be anything to hate
> about that, right..?
>
> --
> rjbs
>
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