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Comment by CGamesPlay | Hacker News Reader

+ Excellent website

+ Really well thought-out interactions (noticing when I download, auto installing to /Applications)

+ Plain-English ToS under creative commons.

- An unsigned latest.zip for downloading, at least use a dmg so you can sign and have more control over the presentation

- Extremely difficult to find Knock on the app store. The app could open a web page or itunes, right now I'm left searching and wading through knock-knock joke apps.

- Making me run software before telling me the price of the software

All in all, you're doing great with presentation, but it has a few minuses. I can't use the software because I don't have an iPhone now, so this is where my review ends.

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The website is so well done. I love the UX.

That was my first thought as well. Everything was awesome.

I disagree on the zip. dmg used to be the preferred format for reasons I never entirely fully understood, but that ship has sailed, and I think for the better. Zip is much more convenient. You can, of course, sign the app within the zip.

You can sign the app within the zip, true. The advantage of using a dmg is to control the presentation, which seems like a strong desire for this particular product. Downloading a file named "latest.zip" that had an unsigned binary in it was by far the worst part of the excellently designed experience of installing the software.

Apparently the iTunes link thing is a bug https://twitter.com/jschloss/status/397783949746769921

Please, don't use DMG. Just .app in a plain .zip please.

The nifty "presentation" adds a several needless steps and pitfalls to running an application:

• Mounting and verification of DMG is slow (Zip CRC and Developer ID signatures give you verification too).

• "Nothing happens" after clicking DMG — user has to find DMG mount on a cluttered desktop.

• Clicking app icon in the DMG window is tempting, but generally it's a no-no (some apps don't mind, but some ask to be moved to Applications, and some throw "error -13 read only volume" kind of errors).

• User is expected to copy the app to Applications folder, with instructions given in form of non-localizable non-accessible text-in-image, and it's trickier when sidebar with shortcut to Applications folder is hidden (and remember "Applications" folder name is localized and sounds nothing like it in many languages).

• User has to unmount and delete the DMG, but that gives non-obvious behavior when the app is running off the DMG.

• It gets super confusing when user has pinned app in the Dock while it was running off the DMG

The average Mac user is using Safari.

Mounting and verification is slow: Perhaps. Enough to matter?

Opening a DMG is a two-click operation from either the download progress bar on the top right, or two clicks (which visibly floats to the Downloads folder and bounces again when done). Hardly "finding DMG on a cluttered desktop". The mounted DMG pops to the front, at least on my system.

Many applications, if they detect they're running from a DMG, will offer to restart and copy themselves to the applications folder. This deals with the next 3 problems. Even then, it's possible to put text in the window saying "Drag this to the applications folder". It's a dance that anyone using a mac for a reasonable amount of time is familiar with.

I'd say, overall, the presentation on a DMG is so much better than an anonymous zip file dropping an anonymous app in the downloads folder.

> • Mounting and verification of DMG is slow (Zip CRC and Developer ID signatures give you verification too).

It takes a few seconds, hardly that much slower than opening a zip

>• "Nothing happens" after clicking DMG — user has to find DMG mount on a cluttered desktop

1) Unless you've really fobbed up your view settings, mounted drives show up, in alpha order, in the farthest right row.

2) DMG's have a bless value that makes them spawn a finder window on mount, the below command is run when my xcode spits out a new release build

    'bless --folder /Volumes/$Application --openfolder /Volumes/$Application'

>• Clicking app icon in the DMG window is tempting, but generally it's a no-no (some apps don't mind, but some ask to be moved to Applications, and some throw "error -13 read only volume" kind of errors).

Really a non-issue and only apps built on an old SDK should have this behavoir any more (more recent SDKs will let them shove things in /tmp while run from a mounted dmg)

>• User is expected to copy the app to Applications folder, with instructions given in form of non-localizable non-accessible text-in-image, and it's trickier when sidebar with shortcut to Applications folder is hidden (and remember "Applications" folder name is localized and sounds nothing like it in many languages).

The user also has to drag the zipped app to applications. You can also solve this "problem" by including a finder shortcut to the Applications folder in the the DMG. Finder automatically localizes the Application's folder alias because it's a special URI

>• User has to unmount and delete the DMG, but that gives non-obvious behavior when the app is running off the DMG.

User has to delete the .zip and sometimes a, now empty, folder.

>• It gets super confusing when user has pinned app in the Dock while it was running off the DMG

No it doesn't, the DMG is automatically mounted and the app run if they do this

> No it doesn't, the DMG is automatically mounted and the app run if they do this

It really does, especially if you're one of the 99.999% of users who deletes their dmg's after installing. Then you just see an app icon with a big (?) in the middle of it.

You're not "installing" if you just run it from the DMG, so your point is moot

No, don't use a .zip please. The point is to get the user to "install" the app, not open it once. A big aliased "Applications/" folder with a visual prompt to drag and drop the .app is all you need in the dmg. downloading & opening the dmg is a fairly seamless experience from Safari.

From a consumer (end user)'s perspective, you're pretty much wrong on all points except the last two. Those are valid, and i have accidentally done that before. Tis annoying.

And I disagree on the disagreement. :) If I download a dmg file, I assume the author knows how to write software for a Mac. If I download a zip, I assume they don't.

At least they need to change the name from "latest.zip" to "Knock for Mac.zip" or something like that.

Even better would be having it in the Mac App Store. Since you need to download the iPhone version from the App Store anyway, it would be better to keep things unified.

Right, companies like Rogue Amoeba, Flying Meat (Acorn), and Running with Crayons (Alfred) don't know how to write software for a Mac. Sure!

I'd buy the argument five or ten years ago. But times have changed.

I don't know, my xcode builds 'release' builds directly into a customized DMG that has background / README / some extras + layout all set.

Nothing says you couldn't do that with a zip file.

Actually everything says you can't do that with a zip. Custom background images and layouts are folder properties not supported by a zipped directory (or really any directory that isn't a DMG's top-level dir)

Layout works fine for me in testing, but the custom background image does not. I wonder what causes that. The .DS_Store file is present and clearly has a reference to the file in the unzipped version, but it doesn't show.

The difference is, I've heard of them. I haven't heard of the people behind Knock. It's all just a matter of perception.

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