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I don't think Microsoft had any part in convincing anyone that apps need heavy installation procedures. It evolved as a generic way to do some basic things: mov

I don't think Microsoft had any part in convincing anyone that apps need heavy installation procedures. It evolved as a generic way to do some basic things: moving the executable to a place the user wants, and setting up some registry values. Isn't that a reasonable solution for desktop applications? There is nothing wrong with the MSDN site. When you're storing millions of pages of documentation, things may get a little bloated. If you need to look up anything about the Windows APIs, or any information about .NET languages, you'll quickly see that MSDN does the job well.

mojuba 19y ago
One more point: you can set your registry values when your application runs for the first time. It's a common practice especially on UNIX and MacOS to generate configuration silently, when needed instead of focusing user's attention on that during installation. Other than that, installation is essentially copying. The proper place, file-type bindings, version checks etc can be done by the system automatically, again, without annoying the user (and the developer, too). And that's exactly what MacOS was doing since version 5 in 1980's. (Besides, Windows Registry is one of the main sources of complication).
mojuba 19y ago
Have you ever worked on Mac? Basically there is no such a thing like "installation" on MacOS. PC users usually don't believe it until they see it themselves. Simplicity requires some effort and thinking, and on the contrary, it is relatively easier to design bloated software. And I'm sure, when some Microsoft installer pretends it's "analyzing system configuration" and freezes for a dozen of seconds with no disk or CPU activity - I'm sure it's just a trivial call to Sleep().