OS X, Apps, and Usability
Apr 16, 2007From Noodlesoft, via Daring Fireball, concerning how disk images just befuddle users sometimes.
The issue is that while dragging a new application from the disk image to the applications folder to “install” it isn’t difficult on Macs, it isn’t really intuitive until the first time you do it.
People are so used to self installers, especially windows users, that the whole concept of drag ‘n drop installing is almost too easy to seem like it’s the correct thing to do.
Many people just end up leaving the disk images on their desktop and running the application from inside the disk image every single time. My wife has done this before on her tank of an iBook G4, and she’s extremely computer literate.
Rather than asking developers to anticipate this issue every single time they write a desktop application for OS X, it would be great if Apple could just integrate this functionality into the Cocoa framework.
I’d also like to note that while people seem to think that web apps will never completely replace desktop apps, this whole problem doesn’t exist with web apps. People go to the app and start working. No installation issues, no future issues when an upgrade is released.