When you look at an application in your Applications folder (like Safari or Microsoft Word), macOS makes it look and act like a single file or icon. But if you were to right-click (or control-click) on that app and select "Show Package Contents", you would see the truth: it is actually a folder structure.
As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
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Re: As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
#1726 years ago at a new job I was forced to use provided Mac laptop. Never used MacOS before.
So first thing first: get Firefox. Managed to download .dmg file. Double clicked it.
And now I see utterly confusing window with an image that tells me that I need to move downloaded Firefox to applications to use it. Where I am supposed to get the thing that I need to move? Totally not clear that the icon in this window is interactive and can be dragged. Why can not it do this thing by itself? At which point association with handling http links will be configured and whom? How am I supposed to figure out that dmg is like a zip archive?
I was completely lost until colleague showed me what I was supposed to do. I burst into laughter when he showed me. I don't think he understood why.
Re: As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
#173When you look at an application in your Applications folder (like Safari or Microsoft Word), macOS makes it look and act like a single file or icon. But if you were to right-click (or control-click) on that app and select "Show Package Contents", you would see the truth: it is actually a folder structure.
I'm guessing this is why Mac apps tend to be more self-contained while Windows ones like to be installed. An exe can have resource files archived into it, but it'd probably be inefficient to run the program off that.
Re: As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think less advanced users think that deeply about it. They just see “oh, I drag the app to applications”. The main issue I’ve seen is that people try to run the .app from the disk image, or forget to eject the image after moving the app. Well designed dmg drag-drop style deployments will actually put some background artwork with arrows and text instructions telling the user to drag and drop into Applications.…
> Still, I think .pkg package style installers are the most intuitive process for non-techies, especially those coming from windows where MSI and install wizard style exes are common. Nope. It's an app that is simply the .app bundle, skipping the whole historical footnote of a .dmg completely. Once you first run it, it asks if you want to move it to Applications, and promptly restarts from its new location.
A .app isn't a file, it's a folder. There's no good way to download a folder, you have to use zip, tar, dmg. I do like single binaries though, you certainly don't need a whole installer stage like Windows apps. Open package managers are even better
Re: As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
#175Re: As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
#176I think the most confusing concept in this process for new users is the shortcut inside the disk image because it breaks the isolation metaphor. So, you download a file, and it's something called an "image" which opens in Finder like you'd inserted an external thumb drive. Fine. You open the image, and inside is... Your own Applications folder? Wait, how can the file I downloaded contain all of my apps? This kind of…
I don’t think less advanced users think that deeply about it. They just see “oh, I drag the app to applications”. The main issue I’ve seen is that people try to run the .app from the disk image, or forget to eject the image after moving the app. Well designed dmg drag-drop style deployments will actually put some background artwork with arrows and text instructions telling the user to drag and drop into Applications.…
For installation, maybe. sometimes.
(The biggest issue I'm aware of is that if you have an old version of the app indexed anywhere on your root drive - for example in ~/qa/app-v1.02-DO-NOT-DELETE - it will literally stomp over that instead of installing the app to /Applications, even if the developer manually specified the install location as /Applications in the manifest.)
But for uninstallation, not a chance. There's no Mac equivalent to Add or Remove Programs on Windows - once you install a PKG good luck uninstalling it.
Re: As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
#177The dmg thing makes no sense. I do like that the app is self-contained, unlike Windows where it's always an installer, but don't like how deleting the app doesn't clear whatever files it put all over the place.
Of course it's not always an installer, there are "portable" zips on Windows as well
The dmg makes sense this way- you can have some filesystem-specific tricks in your app (special links) that might not be zippable, so you need dmg that is a more compatible container.
And deleting the app shouldn't clear everything (like user config) without a prompt, but otherwise it's indeed a big issue in how all the OSes are designed.
Re: As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not surprising, but at least devs are given a clear way to behave well if they want. I do think all desktop operating systems were overly loose with apps touching files, though.
Also, desktop app devs tend to touch files in a myriad places that you’d never expect. The os can never solve that anyway.
Of course it can, that's what sandboxes are for
Re: As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
#179Counterpoint: as a Mac user it is surreal to click Next Next Next to install a program on Windows. Same for uninstalling. Move to Trash and poof, unistalled. There is no standard way to install stuff, so neither MacOS nor Windows deviates from something. For all the bickering about it here in the comments, no one proposed an “ideal” solution to install a program on Mac.
What's the counterpoint if you're doing more clicks on a Mac, but those are harder than dumb linear next/next/next?
> Same for uninstalling. Move to Trash and poof, unistalled.
Of course it isn't, and you can do the same on Windows with the same "not really uninstalled" consequences
Re: As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
#180It really depends what you grew up with I guess. As someone originally coming off of RISC OS[1] way back when, the mac way is closer to intuitive than the windows way, while Linux's approach of splitting files across the entire FS so that you can't possibly find all of them is "The Real WTF". (Nixos is even further from that original intuition in a lot of ways. Oh for the days of drag-dropping the !App dir to whereve…
Agreed with the Linux thing. We have multiple different bin folders still, because some hard drive on a PDP 11 wasn't big enough?!?
On the other hand it has package management so you don't have to worry about it so much.