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How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

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Re: How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

#11
post #5

But why are they doing this? What is the benefit?

If I had to guess, it’s an attempt to optimize install conversions. Every multi-step process you ask a user to perform is effectively a (marketing/sales) funnel. Some percentage of people drop off at every step. Maybe Zoom they thought that if they moved the actual installation closer to Step 1, then more people would accomplish it. It’s awfully sneaky though, especially that password dialog.

Re: How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

#12
post #10
post #6

Not that I'm in favor of this practice, but the one key feature that conference software must have is: it just works™. Nothing turns you off more from a conferencing solution than: any problem getting it working right now. When there is just the slightest issue, one person not being able to join, one person not getting voice to work, bad audio, your entire team is blocked/distracted. Which results in a collective dis…

I'm still curious why everyone thinks Zoom "just works" while others don't. Because in an enterprise context it is often hard to download an executable and run it with sufficient permissions. While Google and Microsoft both offer a product that "just works" with only a browser. What makes Zoom more "just works" than that?

Well, I have a feeling that the praise for zoom going around is not from people working in enterprises, it's people working for everything-but enterprises, who just want a solution that works.

In my experience (also not enterprise), Zoom is the simplest solution with the best quality and latency, compared to the alternatives. The UX could be better, but the performance of Zoom for all platforms makes you survive the UX.

Re: How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

#13
post #10
post #6

Not that I'm in favor of this practice, but the one key feature that conference software must have is: it just works™. Nothing turns you off more from a conferencing solution than: any problem getting it working right now. When there is just the slightest issue, one person not being able to join, one person not getting voice to work, bad audio, your entire team is blocked/distracted. Which results in a collective dis…

I'm still curious why everyone thinks Zoom "just works" while others don't. Because in an enterprise context it is often hard to download an executable and run it with sufficient permissions. While Google and Microsoft both offer a product that "just works" with only a browser. What makes Zoom more "just works" than that?

they work for your use case.

hangouts can’t handle many users (is it 10 the limit?), which is a deal breaker for me. we’ve tried and people couldn’t join the call.

if by microsoft you mean teams, i’m not aware of it working without accounts (not an issue for google as most people have google accounts).

Re: How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

#14

I think this also shows how macOS has been training users to enter their password in random dialogs that have absolutely nothing that identifies them as being legit OS dialogs. The dialog that Zoom uses could very well be sending the credentials to a remote server, and the user would be none the wiser.

Note that in this case, it's still a legit OS dialog. Preflight scripts are very much built into the macOS pkg format, they're just not intended to be used like this.

Re: How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

#15
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still curious why everyone thinks Zoom "just works" while others don't. Because in an enterprise context it is often hard to download an executable and run it with sufficient permissions. While Google and Microsoft both offer a product that "just works" with only a browser. What makes Zoom more "just works" than that?

Well, I have a feeling that the praise for zoom going around is not from people working in enterprises, it's people working for everything-but enterprises, who just want a solution that works. In my experience (also not enterprise), Zoom is the simplest solution with the best quality and latency, compared to the alternatives. The UX could be better, but the performance of Zoom for all platforms makes you survive the…

Yep, Zoom is the only one I've used where I have never had an audio problem, never a drop out or glitch.

Re: How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

#16
post #13
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still curious why everyone thinks Zoom "just works" while others don't. Because in an enterprise context it is often hard to download an executable and run it with sufficient permissions. While Google and Microsoft both offer a product that "just works" with only a browser. What makes Zoom more "just works" than that?

they work for your use case. hangouts can’t handle many users (is it 10 the limit?), which is a deal breaker for me. we’ve tried and people couldn’t join the call. if by microsoft you mean teams, i’m not aware of it working without accounts (not an issue for google as most people have google accounts).

Teams works for "guest users", but they have to be let into the meeting by a "real" user.

Also, I think it's possible for companies to disallow guest users on their team instance.

Re: How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

#17
I installed Zoom on macOS yesterday and I thought that the install was crashing because this is not the expected behavior. I would double click the download, try to install, and then the installation program would "crash", so I'd try it again. Did that a few times before I realized it was installed. Until now I thought it had somehow gotten far enough in the installation process before crashing that I could at least use the application. I'd been hearing everyone raving about how Zoom was such better software than anything else, and my first experience was their installer doesn't even work.

This was a horrible user experience for me, and I wasn't thinking about security implications at all.

Re: How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

#18
Two questions this raises, for me at least:

How do I know I’ve completely uninstalled all the things Zoom installed?

And, if Zoom provided a separate uninstaller (like many apps do) and it was verified to purge all of the stuff they installed (along with the uninstaller); would that appease people's concerns?

For now I’m sticking with the iOS app for video & their web-based experience for desktop sharing...

Re: How the Zoom macOS installer does its job without you clicking ‘install’

#20

Two questions this raises, for me at least: How do I know I’ve completely uninstalled all the things Zoom installed? And, if Zoom provided a separate uninstaller (like many apps do) and it was verified to purge all of the stuff they installed (along with the uninstaller); would that appease people's concerns? For now I’m sticking with the iOS app for video & their web-based experience for desktop sharing...

A previous version of Zoom installed a web server on MacOS without telling you, and left it there after the uninstall process. So the answer is no, you can't be sure.

Oh, and there was a known vulnerability in the web server that allowed remote access to your camera. The company claimed this was all intentional and was a feature and refused to remediate it for months. Eventually Apple issues a system update that removed the web server.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/zoom-webca...

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