When I first came to the Mac from the Windows platform, I was amazed at how simple it was to install and remove programs: drag to install, drag to remove. No install routines. No uninstall routines. No dumping huge numbers of files all around the hard drive. It was like a breath of fresh air. But it turns out that this air is not without its drawbacks.
Alexander Limi has posted an interesting discussion concerning problems and possible solutions installing applications on the Mac. This is in response to articles on Daring Fireball, TAUW, OS News, and it all began with Limi’s original post on Improving the Mac Installer for Firefox.
In his latest, Limi proposes the following solution:
- When download completes, Safari will unpack the disk image, throw away the dmg file, and show a Firefox icon in its download window — as well as selecting it in the Finder in the background.
- When you double-click the Firefox file, it gives you the options to: (i) move Firefox to the Applications folder; (ii) add Firefox to the Dock; or (iii) set Firefox as your default browser.
Limi’s solution in (1) is to streamline the installation process as much as possible, mainly by giving the user an obvious target and implicitly prompting a click. This doesn’t seem like a bad thing, but I wonder if it goes a bit too far. I think something that is closer to the standard paradigm of a disk image would be better.
I propose the following: Have the dmg pop up the usual window that asks the user to drag the application to the application folder. If the user runs the application from the dmg (the work of detecting this may be done by using M3InstallController), ask if the application should be moved from the disk image. If so, move the application, and then eject and trash the disk image. This gives us the same result as (1). But I think it is better, in that it preserves the “drag from the disk image” behaviour that might be expected from a disk image.
And incidentally, I really do not like (2-ii). I’m not saying it’s not useful or interesting to present such an option to a user. But to me, it seems very Windows, and very not-Mac. There is only one way an application should appear in my Dock: if I drag it there. My Dock is dynamic and constantly changing; not a parking spot for applications that want to market their presence on my machine.
I understand why, in the highly competitive world of browsers, this is a tempting move. I even suspect Safari does this every time there is a browser update. But this doesn’t mean it should be that way. We can easily imagine the slippery slope: today, the Dock; tomorrow, the Desktop; the day after tomorrow, everywhere. And the latter is pretty much where many Windows applications install their shortcuts, today.
