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I've always hated software grouped by vendor. Vendors have an inflated sense of self-importance; their name means nothing to anyone except them. And this pois

I've always hated software grouped by vendor. Vendors have an inflated sense of self-importance; their name means nothing to anyone except them. And this poison has made it over to Mac OS X, as well. Bundles should be installed directly in /Applications, because you know, they're bundles that can contain as many files as the vendor wants! But no, there's always somebody like Cisco that has to go ahead and create a stupid subfolder anyway.

derefr 11y ago
I enjoy Launchpad precisely because it routes around this brain-damage† abstracts away application-location. It used to be a useless extra way to view the same apps to me, but after organizing it a bit (mainly moving some utilities I use often out of the pre-made Utilities folder, and grouping a few other things in) and taking a few lesser-used things off of my Dock, it really does feel like the way programs should be launched. Pinch-together to get the picker, swipe (or type) to find a program, click it. It's slowly taking over from my previous "Cmd+Space to open Spotlight, type first two characters of program name, press Enter" habit. † ...which was never a real requirement anyway. Unlike Windows' Program Files, Mac applications (both before and after the transition to being NeXTStep bundles) are meant to just live wherever you want them to live. There were some really interesting application locations in the past—putting a Font Manager in your Fonts folder, for example. And you've always been meant to be able to keep programs that'll have a short lifespan directly on the Desktop, without that making a mess of anything.
gberger 11y ago
I'd argue that vendor folders make sense in the case the names do mean something to the user. For example, Photoshop and Lightroom under Adobe, and Word and Excel under Microsoft Office.
- makecheck 11y ago
  Not to me. In order to search for things, at least in some version of Windows, I remember having to type out the whole “Microsoft W” or “Microsoft E” to get it to match anything (as it would only search the beginning of a string). Fortunately the names of items in the Start menu could be customized, although I also found that updates or other Windows quirks could routinely reset any custom values. It got to the point where it wasn’t really worth it to tweak anything because I didn’t know how long my changes would last. Also, vendor names aren’t stable. What about when Flash was installed by Macromedia (but is now Adobe)? It makes no sense for products to shift around because of the company of the week.
ryandrake 11y ago
Yep, one of the many Windows headaches I don't miss: Compare and contrast Step 1: Install AwfulSoft. Step 2: Cool! Let's run it: START -> Program Files -> Uhh... where the hell is it? Browse, browse, browse, browse... What's that folder? "RogerSoft LLC"? Nope that's some shareware I installed a few weeks ago... Browse, browse, browse, browse... Oh, of course! "WorkerWare Inc." I think that was the company's name... Oh, another nested folder, "AwfulSoft", found it! Finally, the program launcher is a single icon inside yet another nested folder. So five clicks plus some browsing just to find this damn program...... Step 1: Install GreatSoft. Step 2: Cool! Let's run it: START -> Program Files -> GreatSoft. BAM!

derefr 11y ago

I enjoy Launchpad precisely because it routes around this brain-damage† abstracts away application-location. It used to be a useless extra way to view the same apps to me, but after organizing it a bit (mainly moving some utilities I use often out of the pre-made Utilities folder, and grouping a few other things in) and taking a few lesser-used things off of my Dock, it really does feel like the way programs should be launched. Pinch-together to get the picker, swipe (or type) to find a program, click it. It's slowly taking over from my previous "Cmd+Space to open Spotlight, type first two characters of program name, press Enter" habit. † ...which was never a real requirement anyway. Unlike Windows' Program Files, Mac applications (both before and after the transition to being NeXTStep bundles) are meant to just live wherever you want them to live. There were some really interesting application locations in the past—putting a Font Manager in your Fonts folder, for example. And you've always been meant to be able to keep programs that'll have a short lifespan directly on the Desktop, without that making a mess of anything.

gberger 11y ago

I'd argue that vendor folders make sense in the case the names do mean something to the user. For example, Photoshop and Lightroom under Adobe, and Word and Excel under Microsoft Office.

makecheck 11y ago
Not to me. In order to search for things, at least in some version of Windows, I remember having to type out the whole “Microsoft W” or “Microsoft E” to get it to match anything (as it would only search the beginning of a string). Fortunately the names of items in the Start menu could be customized, although I also found that updates or other Windows quirks could routinely reset any custom values. It got to the point where it wasn’t really worth it to tweak anything because I didn’t know how long my changes would last. Also, vendor names aren’t stable. What about when Flash was installed by Macromedia (but is now Adobe)? It makes no sense for products to shift around because of the company of the week.

ryandrake 11y ago

Yep, one of the many Windows headaches I don't miss: Compare and contrast Step 1: Install AwfulSoft. Step 2: Cool! Let's run it: START -> Program Files -> Uhh... where the hell is it? Browse, browse, browse, browse... What's that folder? "RogerSoft LLC"? Nope that's some shareware I installed a few weeks ago... Browse, browse, browse, browse... Oh, of course! "WorkerWare Inc." I think that was the company's name... Oh, another nested folder, "AwfulSoft", found it! Finally, the program launcher is a single icon inside yet another nested folder. So five clicks plus some browsing just to find this damn program...... Step 1: Install GreatSoft. Step 2: Cool! Let's run it: START -> Program Files -> GreatSoft. BAM!