As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program

But this really confused me when I first started using macOS as well. You're just expected to know that the applications folder in the disk image you just downloaded isn't actually inside of the disk image.

When I first opened a .dmg, I thought the arrow symbolised some kind of progress bar and waited for a moment to let it do its installation. That didn't work, so I copy-pasted the folder into my Applications folder manually. When I later opened a different .dmg that had instructions about how I needed to drag and drop myself, I actually realised what I needed to do.

They just see “oh, I drag the app to applications”. The main issue I’ve seen is that people try to run the .app from the disk image, or forget to eject the image after moving the app.

Well designed dmg drag-drop style deployments will actually put some background artwork with arrows and text instructions telling the user to drag and drop into Applications.

Still, I think .pkg package style installers are the most intuitive process for non-techies, especially those coming from windows where MSI and install wizard style exes are common.

On the other hand it has package management so you don't have to worry about it so much.

Example of this would be the ability to open a can of soda. You can do it because you saw someone else do it. Now give the can to an Amazon tribe that never saw the can nor how to do it before.

Windows uninstallers also do not clean up the system and leave trash everywhere. The registry is often the most litter filed area. Even Microsoft's _cleanmgr.exe_ does not fully clean your Temp folder and a manual removal is needed.

As a user of a number of systems; Mac installation is the cleanest and most simple. Linux's closest would be AppImage packaged applications.

Windows is one of the worst because often they are un-scriptable and require the end user to always interact. Mac and Linux can script their installations with ease. I'm saying this as someone that needs to manage systems which are air-gaped and service by others.

So as long as an interface is consistent with prior interfaces I guess it is "intuitive"

I have never used mac, but it sounds like a good interface to me, not the .dmg one, that one is. weird. but where the application is self constrained in it's own directory. The traditional unix method where the parts go according to their function (/bin /lib /share and all the /usr variants) is fine when all the software is system software(promotes reuse) and sort of works when you have a sys-admin whose job is to incorporate third-party software as system software(central package systems also fit this category), But it really starts to stink when you have independent third parties packaging their own software.

Another way to think about it is what is the best hierarchy function/application or application/function

Also, AFAIK, this mirrors how command line utils would work.

It turned out Minecraft Bedrock was an UWP app.

It also turned out that UWP programs, unlike traditional Windows programs, store their data inside of the application folder.

So not only did it delete the game, but also the game world I had just spent two weeks working on.

(Apparently you're supposed to run the debloater before doing anything else with the computer!)

The Windows way is inherently clearer than what Mac does now. You always open what it gives you, and you don't need to be told to do anything else. Also, move to trash doesn't exactly uninstall a Mac app right now.

Its so idk redundant

A myriad of „uninstallers“ exist but these are all third party and rely on crowd wisdom.

macOS has similar multi-step prompts for some programs such as Microsoft Office, Python, FUSE-T, VeraCrypt, etc:

click [Continue] [Continue] [Agree] [Continue] [Install] enter password [Install Software] [Close]

Then deal with the various popups in the upper right portion of the screen relating to Login Items & Extensions Background tasks. Dismiss them by clicking [x] several times or drill into them to adjust App Background Activity sliders etc.

I also never understood why some apps put the x.pkg inside of a x.dmg which makes people perform another click. Seems redundant to do that. I can only guess is they just want the customized background image of the .dmg instead of the plain skeuomorphic cardbord box icon of the .pkg.

That removes most of the program files, but there is no chance for the program to run any cleanup process in the mean time. Library Support, .cache, and all other kinds of remnants remain and have no way of getting cleaned up without manual user intervention. It's like hunting down broken uninstaller files in Windows 98 all over again.

The places that need cleaning up after uninstalling a program:

    ~/Library/Application Support/
    ~/Library/Preferences/
    ~/Library/Caches/
    ~/Library/LaunchAgents/

    /Library/Application Support/
    /Library/LaunchDaemons/
    /Library/LaunchAgents/

I do like the "folder as an executable" approach macOS has, but the way the ecosystem goes about program management isn't great. Storing caches and data inside of the app directory for applications installed to a user folder (not the global Applications folder, which would require administrative permissions) would go a long way. Entries in all the other folders could just be symlinks that don't take up any space after you trash a program.

As for installers, macOS comes with its own native install wizard format, akin to Windows' MSI installers. This seems to be the default way of installing programs that need things like drivers to function correctly.

> Same for uninstalling. Move to Trash and poof, unistalled.

Of course it isn't, and you can do the same on Windows with the same "not really uninstalled" consequences

Since then I also read dmg as damage :)

Of course copied binaries can cause plenty of trouble too, but I have much less of a reason to give an installed program admin privileges than I do an installer.

Keep in mind that a package installer becomes obsolete and nonfunctional when the code signing certificate expires, unlike an app.

But that is quite independent from the creativity people show in these install workflows. You could have both a cool .dmg and a proper uninstallation process (but we don’t, for the most part).

Don't knock on this feature, it can be a lifesaver if you've lost the license info. When you reinstall, sometimes the app can retrieve the license from old files.

It’s a classic cloud vs disk debate about where and who should persist and own the data. Lately I think it’s kinda refreshing that it’s entirely on your disk and up to you.

On Windows, it’s not perfect because it’s ultimately cooperative, but at least the developer of the application can also configure how it should be uninstalled. If you mostly stick to “reputable” applications, you know they would have gotten so many complaints about random things they leave behind that they slowly fix their uninstaller. Also you usually get the option to completely uninstall or keep data files, etc. Though it’s not universal. Uninstaller apps like CCleaner used to be more popular, but I hardly hear about these things anymore and usually advise against them.

On Linux, the story is slightly better as you rely on your distro package maintainer to configure the right uninstall logic. Removing random config files in /etc/ or data files in /var/ or systemd units, etc. Usually maintainers get it right as long as you stick to those feeds, and when something is missed it’ll get fixed eventually.

On Mac it seems to be either google it to get a list of locations to clean (which is what I do), or just delete the folder and ignore the random files or use CleanMyMac ($19.99) or CCleaner ($12.99) or MacAppBeGone (that’ll be $8.99) etc. luckily you can try to stick to homebrew and the App Store, but it’s limiting.

It autodetects when you delete an app from the Applications folder runs a quick scan and suggests which other files you might want to delete (So you might save savedata or settings if needed)

[1]https://freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/

Also senior citizens might have no idea what they’re supposed to do with it, as I’ve seen, so could be more accessible. (Maybe that’s a feature if it’s a junk app.)

Also Apple: I bought my son an old refurbished iPad for watching Netflix on long drives. But you can't install Netflix! The OS is too old. What's the workaround? Simple, if you've previously installed a Netflix on another device you can "restore" it, and then Apple will let you install the old version. On the old OS.

Of course I didn't have an old Netflix installation so I went to install Netflix on my work laptop, but there is no Netflix app for laptops anymore! Finally, I got it working through Family Share after an hour of tedious effort. This may be more Netflix's fault than Apple, but why would an OS give that power to a 3rd party in the first place? What sense does this make?

It reminds me of NextJS where there is some minor niceties at the cost of magical thinking that you may need to move heaven and earth to circumvent in order to accomplish the most basic shit.

The click-and-drag to the Applications folder step is also odd. Presumably the user wants to install the app if they've double-clicked it, so instead of kludgily hacking the file manager (oof!), why not simply prompt "Do you want to install [application name]?" [OK]/[Cancel]? How would that not be clearer? (Can you even install an app via the keyboard alone with that interface? I assume you must be able to, but it's certainly not intuitive that you could tab and enter your way to installation happiness.)

I appreciate that TFA is all about the creativity that can be added to this step, but it seems to me to be poor UI/UX design to allow so many possible ways of doing something so fundamental as installing an application. Sure, it's cool and fun if you're young and creative; but likely confusing as all hell if you're older and less-computer-literate.

Linux has portable apps too - AppImages and static binaries.

As for Macs, dmg files are not apps, they're just archives like zip files. The apps go inside the dmg files. And these "apps" are actually just plain old folders with extra metadata that makes macOS treat it like it was an executable. But you can infact navigate to the inside of an app if you use the terminal, like you can literally `cd` to it and treat it like a folder that it is.

MacOS experience is t-e-r-r-i-b-l-e and it's getting worse on each release.

People who like macOS experience for me either suffer from Stockholm syndrome, or nostalgia about lost macOS 9 base. Or simply have no idea there's something better!

macOS today is not macOS at all; it's a rebranded NeXT computer.

MSI's biggest mistake was probably granting developers the capability of invoking any program they like. The format was originally designed similar to Linux packages. Installation steps were atomic and reversible. If something went wrong (i.e. you ran out of disk space halfway through), the installer can undo every change step by step so you can try again later without overwrite prompts. Unfortunately, adding the ability to call executables means that atomicity is usually lost.

macOS applications seem to just package every single DLL they need inside of their application folder rather than relying on the OS. I'd do the same if I were developing for macOS with how often Apple likes to make breaking changes.

The symlinking trick for .so files often breaks on Linux. Method parameters change, structs get altered, and you can quickly create working-but-unstable versions if you have a different version of the same program. The Windows way, used by Flatpak and Snap, of targetting known-good sets of libraries will work around that. The macOS way (AppImage) also works but doesn't allow for deduplication. It might, if the AppImage would be uncompressed and files would be extent-aligned on a modern file system, but in practice that won't happen.

In theory, Windows and Linux offer the same app installation flow as macOS. AppImage and huge .exe files can be moved around and deleted just as easily. Windows will let you do all kinds of things with desktop.ini, including custom folder backgrounds, and its native .iso support can offer a very similar mount-then-delete flow to .DMG files.

Disk images seem to be much rarer on other platforms, and are usually only used for images of optical disks. Even the concept of "ejection" can be confusing, especially since when mounted disk images appear almost identical to actual physical removable media. I'd like to hear the reasoning behind why mounting disk images isn't relegated to a vestigal "power user" feature by now, since it seems like zip files (especially in appledouble format) can serve the same needs for most normal user flows.

There is an advantage to being able to move a program to any locations and run it from there, and while the same can easily be done on Windows (just make one big .exe!), it's not expected for users to just move install directories around.

That said, programs break the same way: configuration pointing at wrong directories, permissions going wacky, you name it. It just seems to go wrong less often on macOS because of developer expectations.