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Friday, October 18, 2002
11:18 - Well, it's progress.

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Recently I sent in some Feedback to Apple regarding the installer presentation of their applications-- the iApps, QuickTime, and so on. Specifically, I told them that having the disk image pop up a blank white window with a file in it called "iTunes.pkg", with a generic "package" icon, is daunting to newcomers to say the least.


See, here's the thing. Barring StuffIt archives (which expand into HFS+ folders in much the same way that ZIP files work in Windows), when you download a new Mac application, you first get a .dmg file-- a flat, extension-bearing, meta-data-less Disk Image file that you can mount as a "virtual disk", a native HFS+ environment from which to drag or install the application. You double-click on the .dmg file, and it mounts the Disk Image, which shows up as a white generic "disk" on the Desktop; you open up the Disk Image, and install the application from there (whether by dragging or by running an installer script).

Now, this has a number of advantages. For instance, it means the app developer gets to put the EULA screen right into the Disk Image, so you have to Agree to it at the time you double-click on it to mount the image. It means you have a read-only, disposable source from which to copy the files, which you can then unmount freely (or it goes away when you shut down), and a single definitive "archive" file that you can keep around for future reinstallations. So, no partially raided unZIPped folders floating around the system after an installation procedure that says "You can now safely delete the rest of the folder" or whatever. Disk Images can be burned directly onto CDs, encrypted, password-protected, and signed with security certificates. It's a very "clean" installation method, and conceptually very elegant.

But for newbies to the Mac platform, it seems unnecessarily complicated. They're used to a world where you download a single file-- either a ZIP archive, or a self-extracting, self-installing EXE-- and double-click on that. These methods have their drawbacks (ZIPs expand to folders, and you must then find the "setup.exe" file and run that-- though WinZIP does know to look for that file and run it automatically; and self-extracting EXEs, while they can incorporate all kinds of features, they can also incorporate viruses and Trojans tragically easily). But from the user perspective, it's simpler. You usually only download one file and double-click on it, and then "a bunch of stuff happens" and the app is installed. It's a weird, opaque procedure, and at the end of it your Registry has another layer of pollution to deal with, but as far as most users are concerned, it suffices.

So the Mac has front-loaded the complexity of the installer procedure; in order to ensure that you can install an application by drag-and-drop, anywhere in the system you choose, Apple has chosen to stick with some otherwise unfamiliar-to-Windows-users hoop-jumping in the initial download/extraction procedure. Newcomers to the platform, as has been the case a couple of times here at work, find themselves bewildered: "I double-clicked on the file I downloaded, and then there was this... little white thing on the Desktop. Now what do I do?"

And it doesn't help when Apple's own software is distributed in Disk Images that have no user-friendliness whatsoever.

Some application developers know exactly how to present an application in its Disk Image window:

Others, unfortunately including Apple, don't. Their installers are scripts (well, that makes sense, considering that it's fairly important that this stuff gets installed into the proper locations in the system, and that it gets authenticated properly by an administrator), and they're presented in a very stark and austere way. What's the newbie supposed to think? Is this my application? Do I drag it somewhere, or... what? Just double-click it? Experimentation will yield the correct result, but it's still a mixed signal that gets sent to the user, who may already have seen a .sit archive and a properly-designed drag-and-drop installer, as well as Windows-style ZIP archives. How many more installation methods does he have to know about?

So I wrote in to Apple, asking that they consider prettying up the Disk Image windows of their downloaded software. They can set background images in folders; why not use one, like OmniWeb does, to convey critical instructions to the user? They can make icons really big and demonstrative; why not do that? They can use long, friendly filenames, without extensions. Why not do that? And would it kill them to use custom icons for the Disk Image objects themselves, mounted on the Desktop?

Well, here's the installer window for QuickTime 6.0.2:


...Okay, so they've made the icon bigger. That's a start, I guess.


Actually, wait... it's probably just that I'd set my global icon-view options to use icons that size. Never mind.



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© Brian Tiemann