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"The App store is just package management, which Linux has had for a while, and which Mac OS X is sadly missing." Ergo the users of Macs would have a better in

"The App store is just package management, which Linux has had for a while, and which Mac OS X is sadly missing." Ergo the users of Macs would have a better install/uninstall experience if they were running Linux. Ummm, OK.

SwellJoe 17y ago
Ergo the users of Macs would have a better install/uninstall experience if they were running Linux. Ummm, OK. I don't understand your sarcastic tone...they would have a better install/uninstall process if they were running Linux. Mac OS X has horrible package management (effectively none), while apt-get and yum are really, really good.
- glhaynes 17y ago
  The average install/uninstall process is ridiculously easier on Mac OS X. Literally, it's: 1. Drag the single icon (regardless of instruction set or sizeof(int)) into your Applications folder. 2. Double-click the icon. Oh yeah, step 1 is optional. Certainly if Mac OS X were primarily used for installing command line tools / daemons, a package manager would be a stark omission. But that's not what the incredibly vast majority of its users do with it. For the average Mac OS X user, application management is more pleasant than for the average Linux user.
  - SwellJoe 17y ago
    The average install/uninstall process is ridiculously easier on Mac OS X. Literally, it's: 1. Drag the single icon (regardless of instruction set or sizeof(int)) into your Applications folder. 2. Double-click the icon. What icon? Where do I find this icon? Does it magically appear on my desktop? Nope...you've got to go find the website, and then the download page, or you have to go out and buy the CD or DVD that contains the software. On a Linux system, if I know what it's called or what it does, I can find it and install it easily, using either a GUI or the command line. And, of course, it works well for things beyond simple applications, including packages and systems of packages that include hundreds or thousands of files. A weakness should not be held up as a strength. There are many strengths to Mac OS X, but package management is not one of them.
    - glhaynes 17y ago
      What happens when the user wants to install software that's not in one of the install's default repositories? The web page walks them through adding another repository URL to their package manager GUI [which is YA of a dozen]? I'm attracted to the idea of just building a sufficiently sophisticated app management utility and then everything will work perfectly, but in practice it just doesn't seem to happen. What a package manager does is build a necessarily-leaky abstraction over the set of operations needed to manage an application instance lifecycle. What if a non-experienced user wants to move an app from one system to another, though? No "mere mortal" is going to be able to accomplish that task on an average Linux box. Mac OS X instead relies on a convention of bundling all necessary files together into an app bundle that's self-contained (and represented as such) and thus can be treated by the user as a cohesive, unitary Thing. Thus installation, deinstallation, sharing, and migration of the app are all done through an identical metaphor which also applies to the other filesystem entities that users care about: documents. So, sure, Mac OS X doesn't have "package management" (as part of the vendor install) but its users have a more pleasant and unified experience. This provides a tremendously better sense of empowerement and relaxation to most users than a wholly separate GUI full of messages about "dependency resolution" and the like. Again, I understand where you're coming from, and in certain aspects and particular vertical instances I have no doubt the Linux automatic installer over package manager model could provide a better experience, but the average computer user is far better off with a less sophisticated system. (Yes, many Mac OS X apps use a separate install routine. I think this is unfortunate, but I don't get the sense that it's high on Apple's agenda because they're so pleased with the App Store model, which is another essay for another time.)
      - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
        Mac OS X app installation is terrible. That's just a fact. It's been well known and discussed by Mac nerds for years: "As someone who has answered tech support email for a Mac developer, I can confirm that the entire concept of a disk image is mighty confusing to many non-technical users, including many who have been using Macs for years, but don’t install new software very often. I think the recent trend of including a background picture in the disk image window, which instructs the user to copy the application icon to /Applications (or wherever), goes a long way to removing the confusion. But I agree with Mr. Frank that compressed archives (like StuffIt) are easier for most users to understand." http://daringfireball.net/2002/11/dmg http://daringfireball.net/2002/11/dmg The only reason people put up with it because it mostly works for geeks and it's better than Windows (and even then it's not hard to find people who will argue that download from random website and double-click is a better user experience despite all the damage it's caused) All the improvements of note in Mac OS X install seem to have happened because 3rd parties notice the confusion and adopt conventions to overcome the difficulties. Note also the amount of work put into 3rd party update via Sparkle which is part of package management too.

SwellJoe 17y ago

Ergo the users of Macs would have a better install/uninstall experience if they were running Linux. Ummm, OK. I don't understand your sarcastic tone...they would have a better install/uninstall process if they were running Linux. Mac OS X has horrible package management (effectively none), while apt-get and yum are really, really good.

glhaynes 17y ago
The average install/uninstall process is ridiculously easier on Mac OS X. Literally, it's: 1. Drag the single icon (regardless of instruction set or sizeof(int)) into your Applications folder. 2. Double-click the icon. Oh yeah, step 1 is optional. Certainly if Mac OS X were primarily used for installing command line tools / daemons, a package manager would be a stark omission. But that's not what the incredibly vast majority of its users do with it. For the average Mac OS X user, application management is more pleasant than for the average Linux user.
- SwellJoe 17y ago
  The average install/uninstall process is ridiculously easier on Mac OS X. Literally, it's: 1. Drag the single icon (regardless of instruction set or sizeof(int)) into your Applications folder. 2. Double-click the icon. What icon? Where do I find this icon? Does it magically appear on my desktop? Nope...you've got to go find the website, and then the download page, or you have to go out and buy the CD or DVD that contains the software. On a Linux system, if I know what it's called or what it does, I can find it and install it easily, using either a GUI or the command line. And, of course, it works well for things beyond simple applications, including packages and systems of packages that include hundreds or thousands of files. A weakness should not be held up as a strength. There are many strengths to Mac OS X, but package management is not one of them.
  - glhaynes 17y ago
    What happens when the user wants to install software that's not in one of the install's default repositories? The web page walks them through adding another repository URL to their package manager GUI [which is YA of a dozen]? I'm attracted to the idea of just building a sufficiently sophisticated app management utility and then everything will work perfectly, but in practice it just doesn't seem to happen. What a package manager does is build a necessarily-leaky abstraction over the set of operations needed to manage an application instance lifecycle. What if a non-experienced user wants to move an app from one system to another, though? No "mere mortal" is going to be able to accomplish that task on an average Linux box. Mac OS X instead relies on a convention of bundling all necessary files together into an app bundle that's self-contained (and represented as such) and thus can be treated by the user as a cohesive, unitary Thing. Thus installation, deinstallation, sharing, and migration of the app are all done through an identical metaphor which also applies to the other filesystem entities that users care about: documents. So, sure, Mac OS X doesn't have "package management" (as part of the vendor install) but its users have a more pleasant and unified experience. This provides a tremendously better sense of empowerement and relaxation to most users than a wholly separate GUI full of messages about "dependency resolution" and the like. Again, I understand where you're coming from, and in certain aspects and particular vertical instances I have no doubt the Linux automatic installer over package manager model could provide a better experience, but the average computer user is far better off with a less sophisticated system. (Yes, many Mac OS X apps use a separate install routine. I think this is unfortunate, but I don't get the sense that it's high on Apple's agenda because they're so pleased with the App Store model, which is another essay for another time.)
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      Mac OS X app installation is terrible. That's just a fact. It's been well known and discussed by Mac nerds for years: "As someone who has answered tech support email for a Mac developer, I can confirm that the entire concept of a disk image is mighty confusing to many non-technical users, including many who have been using Macs for years, but don’t install new software very often. I think the recent trend of including a background picture in the disk image window, which instructs the user to copy the application icon to /Applications (or wherever), goes a long way to removing the confusion. But I agree with Mr. Frank that compressed archives (like StuffIt) are easier for most users to understand." http://daringfireball.net/2002/11/dmg http://daringfireball.net/2002/11/dmg The only reason people put up with it because it mostly works for geeks and it's better than Windows (and even then it's not hard to find people who will argue that download from random website and double-click is a better user experience despite all the damage it's caused) All the improvements of note in Mac OS X install seem to have happened because 3rd parties notice the confusion and adopt conventions to overcome the difficulties. Note also the amount of work put into 3rd party update via Sparkle which is part of package management too.