Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 334 posts

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

#71

Post by aequitas »

paulgpetty wrote: post #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...

I think it's interesting to see the outcry when Apple poses new restrictions in the application distribution process (like signing and sandboxing) but conversely the same cries go up when there is an App that seems to be abusing loose control mechanisms.

I think a lot of power users rightfully feel they are belittled by sandboxes and application restrictions. But seeing that they are not the major userbase and most Apps don't really need any permissions at all for their intended purpose (the user's purpose at least) I think Apple is moving in the right direction.

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

#72

Post by kamyarg »

Fiahil wrote: post #7
capableweb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the current system and people in power seems to not give a damn about security and shady behavior, as long as the thing they are using is working and working well. Zoom is an example of very useful and performant software with shady company behind it, that's why people will continue using it. Same with Uber, Google and bunch of other companies. It doesn't matter what they do, as their product is helpin…

Enterprise customer DO give a damn about security. They can be slow to react, but rules are also there for a very long time. If Zoom doesn't want to loose most of their marketshare in favor of WebEx, they should probably address these issues.

As an employee of a corporate can tell you that they do not care about security more than money. cheaper the better. Money > Security

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

#73

Post by Ididntdothis »

Fiahil wrote: post #7
capableweb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the current system and people in power seems to not give a damn about security and shady behavior, as long as the thing they are using is working and working well. Zoom is an example of very useful and performant software with shady company behind it, that's why people will continue using it. Same with Uber, Google and bunch of other companies. It doesn't matter what they do, as their product is helpin…

Enterprise customer DO give a damn about security. They can be slow to react, but rules are also there for a very long time. If Zoom doesn't want to loose most of their marketshare in favor of WebEx, they should probably address these issues.

“Enterprise customer DO give a damn about security.“

When I look at IT they give a damn about some security but then completely ignore other huge problems. I think a bigger concern for them is cost, liability and convenience for the administrators.

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

#74

Post by mikorym »

capableweb wrote: post #4
t0mas88 wrote: post #2

The whole torrent of grey area, just over the line and outright shady behavior at Zoom is a problem in itself even if all the separate instances in isolation aren't grounds to stop using them. Their responses to security issues and today's revelation of misleading marketing on E2E encryption make it clear they're not just making isolated mistakes. Shady is at the core of how they operate, this is an indication that Z…

Unfortunately, the current system and people in power seems to not give a damn about security and shady behavior, as long as the thing they are using is working and working well. Zoom is an example of very useful and performant software with shady company behind it, that's why people will continue using it. Same with Uber, Google and bunch of other companies. It doesn't matter what they do, as their product is helpin…

I think you underappreciate one point here: We can still have long term alternatives to Zoom (and we can have them now).

Google and Uber are already difficult to replace or to otherwise challange.

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

#75

Post by specialist »

aequitas wrote: post #26
t0mas88 wrote: 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?

We just had a corporate presentation with around 250 people. Normally we use Teams or Slack for internal communication, this was also stated by management, that Zoom should only be used for 'big' meetings like this. I think they know the other solutions will not work as well for bigger groups. I've not had issues with using either solution for small group meetings. Actually I have to go out of my way to run Zoom in t…

App installation should always just be a file copy. Deinstallation should always just be a move to Trash (or ~/Disabled equiv).

IMHO.

I'm even uncomfortable with config scattered everywhere. The continued need for those 3rd party uninstallers is an admission of failure.

Source: released products ported to misc Windows, classic Mac, modern Mac. Our dev, QA, Test, tech supp was always so much easier on Mac. Not least because we could have multiple current versions installed. Which allows troubleshooting, rollbacks, etc.

Caveat: I personally use package managers and am curious to see if Nix becomes the norm. So I may change my mind in the future.

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

#76

Post by Hackbraten »

paulgpetty wrote: post #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...

If you have Homebrew installed, you can run `brew cask zap zoomus` to get rid of all the things (as far as we know) Zoom has installed.

If you prefer to remove it manually, here’s the list of files and folders Homebrew will delete on `brew cask zap zoomus`:

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/blob/a6026e0a36c22...

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

#77

Post by drampelt »

microtonal wrote: post #27
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I never understood why Apple still supports the pkg format. It seems a half-baked leftover from the 2000s and even then I was already surprised that there is no way to uninstall things through the macOS GUI. I am not sure if this has changed (I try to avoid pkg files and use Homebrew cask to uninstall such packages), but IIRC you had to list the files with pkgutil on the command-line, remove stuff by hand and then --…

> Everything should just be drag to install, drag to trash to remove.

I wish it were that easy, most apps leave files in other places on your computer like ~/Library that will never get cleaned up if you just move the app to trash.

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

#78

Post by [deleted] »

t0mas88 wrote: post #10
aequitas wrote: 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?

[deleted]

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

#79

Post by rgovostes »

I installed the WebEx client for macOS today and it seemed similar, installing almost instantly without going through the normal EULA, volume selection, etc. flow.

It seems like they've stuck their installation flow into an Installer.app _plugin_ which is unusual. I haven't encountered that before, and I'm somewhat surprised the feature exists considering Apple waged war on loading code into first-party software. (The user is prompted before the plugin loads.)

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

#80

Post by Wowfunhappy »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #69
javagram wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience I’ve seen even technical users (Who were used to windows) struggle with the idea of dragging an .app from an open disk image to the Applications folder. They would end up running the app from the disk image and then getting confused when it disappears after restart.

One wonders why Apple didn't just treat DMGs like Application Folders in the first place. If they had an icon and you could run them directly then there wouldn't be any confusion. AppImage works like that and I think it was a wise decision.

Developers can distribute .app's inside of .zip files, and many do, but this can result in users just running the .app inside of their downloads folder. And then this causes problems if they ever decide to clean out their Downloads folder.

The DMGs are a clever way to (A) make sure the app gets to the proper location while simultaneously (B) teaching the user about what's actually happening on their computer. As I said in a sibling comment, this all made much more sense when users also launched apps from the Applications folder directly.

Post reply on HN