Hacker News Reader

Comment by RivieraKid | Hacker News Reader

As an installer program, like on Windows. Or as an installable package (Mac OS should have an integrated package management system like Homebrew).

View on HN

DMGs aren’t installers, though, they’re disk images. There are separate installer packages, and disk images don’t have to contain software in them.

macOS installers exist; I think they were used more commonly before the .app format, but that's how you get the Windows situation where the "uninstall" operation is a crapshoot because relevant files are scattered across your system.

I don't know the exact purpose behind the "mount a virtual drive to install an app" model, but it seems far too deliberate to not have a purpose.

I'm sure there's some rationale behind it. But it's simply a UX fail.

I barely even notice it now. I’ve been a Mac user since OS 8, and the workflow of mounting a disk image to install software has been around since before OS 8. Regular .pkg installers catch me off guard sometimes

To be fair, there is no supported way to uninstall a .app with all of the scattered files, either (all of the things it places in ~/Library to run, like preferences).

For me, AppCleaner is one of the first things I download on a new machine.

For people who prefer the commandline: Homebrew can install not just open source software, but binaries as well, via Brew Cask. And often, you can choose to either uninstall an app with

  % brew uninstall <appname>

Or uninstall and remove all of its cruft as well via:

  % brew zap <appname>

Reply on news.ycombinator.com