Comments on: Software that SUCKS (but doesn’t have to)

By: Wendell

Wendell — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 04:43:07 +0000

Quicksilver’s filename doesn’t have any “special” characters in it — check it in the Terminal. He’s using localized names and overwrote the English one.

By: Wendell

Wendell — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 04:43:07 +0000

Quicksilver's filename doesn't have any “special” characters in it — check it in the Terminal. He's using localized names and overwrote the English one.

By: schwa

schwa — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:14:31 +0000

Gustav, you answered your own question.

Not all apps that request admin privs actually need them. Not all apps that install to /Library give the option to install to ~/Library.

There is a lot of sloppy development around, and it seems that installers are very prone to sloppiness. See http://www.noodlesoft.com/blog/2007/04/15/a-mod... for a possible “silver bullet” to (some) sloppy installers.

By: Gustav

Gustav — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:08:10 +0000

Why admin privileges? Well, do you want MacOS X to be secure or not? If an installer has to install into /Library/Services or another globally accessible location or not, it has to have authentication. I agree if it's just an Application, it doesn't need it. But apps like StickyBrain that install services for all users require it - and that's a good thing.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

By: schwa

schwa — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:14:31 +0000

Gustav, you answered your own question.

Not all apps that request admin privs actually need them. Not all apps that install to /Library give the option to install to ~/Library.

There is a lot of sloppy development around, and it seems that installers are very prone to sloppiness. See http://www.noodlesoft.com/blog/2007/04/15/a-modest-proposal-a-new-way-to-install/ for a possible “silver bullet” to (some) sloppy installers.

By: Gustav

Gustav — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:08:10 +0000

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

By: SubDude

SubDude — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 08:22:54 +0000

I used to ship an Apple installer (mainly to show the license agreement!) Now I go for a minimal approach. For web downloads Mac users get a .tgz file with the app inside and nothing else. By default the app will extract itself to your desktop. (Using .tgz rather than the traditional .tar.gz stops the Finder from creating an intermediary .tar file, I don't use .zip because I actually create these right on the Linux web server and the zip there doesn't handle Mac metadata.)

Windows users get an NSIS installer and have to click "Next" a half-dozen times. Gotta give people what they expect!

By: SubDude

SubDude — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 08:22:54 +0000

I'm the build manager for a commercial software company. (Is it kosher to comment on a post this old?) There's a reason you sometimes see redundantly compressed images (.dmg.zip etc.) If your MIME types are not set up correctly a .dmg will happily display its binary intestines in the browser window instead of downloading. I had to zip the dmgs for our software for a little while before fixing this.

I used to ship an Apple installer (mainly to show the license agreement!) Now I go for a minimal approach. For web downloads Mac users get a .tgz file with the app inside and nothing else. By default the app will extract itself to your desktop. (Using .tgz rather than the traditional .tar.gz stops the Finder from creating an intermediary .tar file, I don't use .zip because I actually create these right on the Linux web server and the zip there doesn't handle Mac metadata.)

Windows users get an NSIS installer and have to click "Next" a half-dozen times. Gotta give people what they expect!

By: Peter da Silva

Peter da Silva — Thu, 11 May 2006 22:42:29 +0000

PS:

1. thanks for the heads up on the Cisco VPN client. I'm sure that would have hit me in the "/opt" sooner or later.

2. Microsoft Office for the Mac is a surprising exception to the "sucky installer" issue. They do have an installer, but you don't actually need to use it: you can just drag the thing into the applications directory of your choice. Way to go, Redmond!

By: Peter da Silva

Peter da Silva — Thu, 11 May 2006 22:40:01 +0000

Applets that are installed through an inappropriate mechanism.

Internet Explorer and the whole Active Desktop/ActiveX/.NET mess is the posterboy, of course, but...

* Safari thinks installers are "Safe files" to "open after download". Even if Apple's installer has a redundant check for installers running shell scripts during the setup this is just dumb.

* Safari installs Dashboard apps directly... say what?

* Firefox, to pick on the geek chic flavor of the month, requires an extension to allow you to install extensions from the file system... it only wants you to install extensions from the Internet otherwise. Oh, sure, they have the mother and father of all annoying dialogs to keep you from doing it accidentally, but I'd still rather download the file and install it myself. I'm still boggled over this one.