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Comment by x0x0 | Hacker News Reader

Everyone who's spent 3 hours talking a parent through downloading and installing a Zoom client understands exactly why they're doing this. Mine are unable to (1) reliably download a zip file; (2) navigate to that file using Finder; (3) run something inside it.

By the time we were done -- I use copilot (basically VNC with NAT punching built in) -- and I got control of the laptop to just do it myself, there were 7 downloads and 4 unzip attempts.

My MIL and I have literally had facetime pointed at her laptop while I directed her where to to get copilot running for the quarterly cleansing-of-the-spyware.

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> My MIL and I have literally had facetime pointed at her laptop while I directed her where to to get copilot running for the quarterly cleansing-of-the-spyware.

I haven't used it, but macOS does have screen sharing built into Messages.

While I agree with you that this aspect of Mac app installation is confusing (especially with Safari where your download just disappears into the top right toolbar) - they need to have figured that out before getting this far into the installer. Once your in the installer its all about hitting buttons.

If that problem exists it needs to be solved at the OS level, not worked around in shady ways. BTW, can't Web pages link to the app store?

So you want Zoom and Webex to submit a patch to OSX?

I would say they should put pressure on Apple to make the install flow better, but what am I saying; this is Apple.

Haha :) Tiny companies should put pressure on $1T Apple to change the install flow...

I wonder how could Apple take 30% their revenue out of this -- yeah, by forcing them to submit the apps to the AppStore instead!

> BTW, can't Web pages link to the app store?

Yes. But neither are distributed on the App Store, so…

They need to do the work to get on the Mac App Store

If Apple didn't make the app store shit, it would help. Gouging on dollars, breaking opening from Finder, etc.

These are free apps.

And these apps deserve to have “breaking opening from Finder” and even more restrictions considering they have shown themselves to be completely untrustworthy, insecure, invasive and hostile.

I had this problem with Office. Powerpoint had fidgety dialogs every time I wanted to open a pptx file from a different directory. I wasted two weeks, deleted it, and reinstalled from the direct download.

The Mac App Store is a trap - The sandboxed APIs are severely limited, and no large company is going to let Apple get even more in-between them and their customers.

The sandboxed APIs should be more than enough for a video conferencing client. (Which, after all, can run in a browser…)

First, they can use the sandbox without going through the Mac App Store. Sandboxing is a good idea regardless of distribution method. That would improve security for everybody, without needing to 'let Apple get in between them and their customers'.

Second, Zoom already runs sandboxed for the other two ways you can run their client on Apple operating systems: the (iOS) App Store and the web. The Mac sandbox is the least strict of the three. So whatever they do, it doesn't seem to be hindered by 'severe limitations'.

I have yet to hear any feature that a legitimate videoconferencing application would need that would be disallowed by the macOS sandbox. Lots of other video chat apps are on the Mac App Store, like Facebook Messenger. Is the issue simply that Zoom is being sketchy and wants to continue to be sketchy, and sandboxing would not allow them to? That's not because the MAS is 'a trap'. That's its main feature.

The issue is not technical. It is political. Apple is arbitrary and capricious, and no one sensible wants every update to their software to be held hostage to Apple's whims. Large companies like Facebook can cut special deals.

Then I'm simply not going to install it. The only apps I have ever installed from the App Store are OS upgrades and I think Apple's office software, since neither is available outside of the store.

And how exactly does this type of script help? The hard part is done before the script runs.

Surely it would be easier for your parent / MIL to install from the Mac App Store.

I used to do FT-on-iPhone-pointed-at-computer also. Now it's easy to do screen sharing via Messages (formerly iMessage). Comes with built-in audio also, so you don't even need to make a phone call.

The problem is that you don't even need this; use a conferencing solution that works in the browser, such as Whereby.

It even works in Safari on an iPhone (!!!!!!).

zoom works in the browser, iirc

This is not a valid to excuse companies when they do this.

For this forum, maybe not. For 99.9% of their userbase, it plainly is.

This highlights a problem we should have addressed long ago - engineer a method to reliably educate old people about using modern computers so they could develop the same kind of intuitive understanding we have.

That would be good, but it seems to take kids a few years to learn the ropes. I don't feel like older people have the patience or peer pressure. Would love to be proved wrong, though. I would have paid money to make that problem go away when I had it with Skype.

User education does seem like a good solution to most of the problems being discussed, but that's certainly not a trivial thing to do, and I'm not 100% convinced that it can be fully solved. Learning to use a computer (well) is a decent amount of work.

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